Black Women Are Driving the Rebirth of the Labor Movement
http://jezebel.com/black-women-are-driving-the-rebirth-of-the-labor-moveme-1729175217?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflowThe Wall Street Journal reports that women have been increasingly part of the labor movement since the early ‘80s, and are expected to make up the majority of union workers by 2025. Many of them are joining in traditionally low-wage sectors like fast food, where women and minorities are more likely to be employed. In 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men and women were union members at nearly equal rates: 11.7 percent of men and 10.5 percent of women. Compare that to 1983, when 24.7 percent of men in the workforce were unionized, compared with only 14.6 percent of women.
While those numbers show in depressing relief how fast and far union membership in America has fallen, the good news is that unions are still surviving, becoming more diverse (black workers are now the most likely to be unionized, according to the BLS), and moving into new fields. Fight for $15 is making real gains in the fast food industry and new media organizations are unionizing one right after the other these days (ahem). Latino workers still have the lowest rates of union membership, a gap that labor organizations are trying hard to close.
At NBC, Kimberly Freeman Brown points out the other labor organizations led by black women: the National Domestic Workers Alliance, North Carolina’s Forward Together Moral Movement, and Wisconsin Jobs Now, among others. They’re among the women profiled in Freeman Brown’s And Still I Rise, a report and “love letter” to black women in labor released this year.
But, as always, this is a struggle in progress: And Still I Rise pointed out that while black women are joining unions in strong numbers, they’re not being promoted to leadership positions. Less than three percent of women surveyed had held an elected position of any kind, and less than five percent had been president of their union or labor organization.
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From the comments, so true!:
miamayaAnna Merlan
9/07/15 2:40pm
If Black women were the only demographic allowed to vote the U.S. would have a living minimum wage, universial healthcare, labor rights, well funded public schools.etc. Black women voters are typically progressive and emphathetic on social policies.. They are more likely to vote for the collective good. Unfortuately a signficant percentage of Whites in the U.S. vote, not for the greater good, but mainly to keep Brown people from benefiting from “their” tax dollars.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I was fighting a cold, all the students have been passing it around. But I rested, and used it as an excuse to binge-watch House of Cards. 
I hope you had a nice weekend!
Seriously, I do believe that's at least part of what's going on.
[div class="excerpt"]But because of racism, and likely to a lesser extent sexism, she was only ever allowed to be a school teacher. And she was a damn good one but in another world, she could have been president. And we are all lessened as a result of the bigotry that kept her and millions of others down and denied their brilliance and their contributions because it didn't come in pre-approved packages.
My dad's mom - the same.
My Gramfeathers - I've posted about her back here before . . . A woman whose mother was a suffragist, grandfather fled West Virginia for fear his he would be put in a position of having to treat (he was a physician) Confederate soldiers (border of VA) . . . Who took his abolitionist underground railroad stop parents with him - she had great hope for you and me. How is it a white woman born in Denver Colorado in 1904 could have so much hope for us and our ability to transform the country?
The few years before here death was when I got into the works of Faludi and Wolf. She read those books - she wanted to understand this new feminism. This is the early 1990's. She pointed out to me - I have this in one of the crazy letters she wrote me "Pinfeathers, you aren't in there. And that's a good thing. They can't see you coming in the back door."
I'm pretty sure she left this earth believing that transformation of the American experience would come from the day to day work of black women - just from the fact that not being the beauty standard freed us up to focus solely on accomplishment.
I'm sure there is an AWESOME explanation for that nickname! 
Not that I can talk myself. My grandfather gave me some of the weirdest nicknames in humanity. And everytime I remember him, I remember those names.
How is it a white woman born in Denver Colorado in 1904 could have so much hope for us and our ability to transform the country?
Your gram sounds wonderful. You have a really interesting family history.
cant refute the reality and facts so they say ridiculous shit like if we really supported POC we would donate all our money to reparations, etc.
or whatever nonsensical comment they come up with.
They know they are wrong, about everything, and that is why they are so angry at us all the time.
But then we white liberals who support minority groups are less effective than we otherwise could be because we cant EVER know what it is like, as we cant know what a Trans or Gay person deals with.
It is all abstract to us, even though we do and say the right things.
If you are a con reading this, one of my many fans who really hates me because I am SO supportive of Black folk and Gay folk, all I have to say is:
you wouldnt know a good time or the truth if it fell out of the sky, landed on your dumb stupid face, and wiggled
stupid bigots
out" when all the old racists die. Racism is nowhere near dying out. Like you said, millenials are every bit as racist as their parents. White liberals are no more immune from racism than white conservatives.
I saw that poll about the millenials and it just made me weep. I also saw another poll where a sizeable number of white people said that racism against white people is actually GREATER than racism against minorities. 
I also posted another poll that said that almost 1/3 of white people in TWO THOUSAND AND FUCKING FIFTEEN still think it's okay to discriminate against black people in housing situations. It is going NOWHERE.
And even on a "liberal" web site, a discussion about white people's reluctance and inability to intelligently discuss racism in a healing way brings out the cries of victimhood -- from white people of course. 
It is going NOWHERE.
