A shift is needed in our country. Our neighbors and loved ones are being terrorized by lawless federal agents on their way home from work and school. Our tax dollars are being used to escalate dangerous wars and attacks, launching missiles at schools and hospitals around the globe. Speaking out against injustice is condemned with surveillance, harassment, and imprisonment. While we witness and live this nightmare, we also show up to work day after day, working harder than ever, but left out of the key decisions that shape our lives.
While it’s easy to name our obvious opposition, we must also acknowledge how our progressive movement has played a role in the moment we are in now. Whether we’ve been advocating for equitable healthcare, workers’ rights, disability justice, reproductive justice, or another critical need, we operate in silos that fragment our movements and weaken our collective strength. Collectively, our vision lacks clarity, deep thinking, and cross-sector planning, leaving many of us feeling disconnected and uninspired. We have democratic leaders with corporate interests abandoning their constituents and delegitimizing our democracy. When our leaders have no plan, it leaves our people without hope.
Our story doesn’t end here — our lives and legacies reach further, and we have the power to rise higher, do greater, and become more. We’ve forged a North Star to lead our community toward a new era of freedom — Freedom 2.0.
The most powerful symbol of the underground railroad was the North Star. The North Star served as a bright, consistent guide on the journey toward freedom for enslaved Black people. It told our ancestors they were headed in the right direction as they saved their own lives from violence and exploitation. In situations of life or death, the North Star helped our ancestors travel through dark woods toward safe houses, railroad stations, and to freedom in northern states. That same symbol still holds deep meaning today as we carry our ancestors’ dreams of freedom forward.
At the National Black Worker Center, our North Star is intersectional worker power. We are strengthening and refining our strategies to shift power to the people and ensure Black workers claim and receive the full value of their labor. We envision transformed labor practices that respect Black workers and pay us our worth. We are working to build environments where Black workers are not just fighting back against exploitation, but also actively shaping every aspect of our work — what it looks like, how it’s valued, and who it serves. We are advocating for workers to have the ability to define and set standards for safety, wage equity, career pathways, and labor protections that follow workers when they transition between jobs.
To achieve intersectional worker power, we must step out of silos and embrace an intersectional approach that recognizes how anti-Blackness shapes the exploitation of all workers. To build integrated ecosystems, we must shape our organizing spaces into cross-sector community hubs for Black workers to connect and strategize across fields and professions. We’re reimagining worker centers, unions, and mutual aid groups, making sure we include cultural workers, artists, and healing practitioners in our organizing as core members and contributors, not add-ons. These shifts will support Black workers in building new labor systems where healthcare, childcare, and housing are seen as core worker issues, not separate matters.
The voices and experiences of Black workers are valuable to our society and needed in our movements. We can begin to harness our collective power today, and we can start from where we’re at. Join our efforts to build intersectional worker power by finding a Black Worker Center near you, or starting one in your city. Despite what we’re up against, our North Star keeps us grounded and focused, and uniting our efforts brings us closer to the dignity and respect we deserve.