Film, talk focus on black worker activism

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_3508

The event was yesterday. I wish I'd read the story to post about it before it happened. I'll watch for a follow up on how it went.

19 February 2008
MINNEAPOLIS - A former leader of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers will discuss "Detroit's Revolutionary Unions of the '60s and '70s" and present a screening of the film, "Finally Got the News."
The speech and screening will take place Saturday, Feb. 23, at 1 p.m. at the Sabathani Community Center, 310 East 38th St., Minneapolis. The program is free and open to the public.

Speaking will be Luke Tripp, a professor and chair of Community Studies at St. Cloud State University. A leader in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Detroit chapter of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, he is an activist and author of several articles on black college students and black workers.

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers united radical black organizing projects in Detroit's factories, neighborhoods, high school and college campuses against the racist and exploitative conditions that dominated life for African-American workers in the 1960s and '70s.

"Finally Got the News" is a forceful, unique documentary that reveals the activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers inside and outside the auto factories of Detroit. Through interviews with the members of the movement, footage shot in the auto plants and at leafleting and picketing actions, the film documents their efforts to build an independent black labor organization to respond to the assembly line speed-up and inadequate wages faced by both black and white workers in the industry.

The program is sponsored by the Twin Cities General Membership Branch of the I.W.W., the Industrial Workers of the World.