Welcome to The Global African Worker
By Bill Fletcher, Jr., executive editor
The Global African Worker is a web magazine, sponsored by the Global African Worker Institute, committed to a progressive, anti-imperialist and worker-centered approach to analyzing and addressing the questions and challenges facing workers of Africa and the Diasporas (the African World!).
The Global African Worker will be a magazine that provides information and analysis concerning struggles in the African World, particularly those engaging working people of African descent. This does not mean a narrow focus on trade unions or economic issues. Rather, our aim is to provide a lens through which issues, movements, etc., can be understood with regard to the concerns of working people.
The Global African Worker will be a vehicle of debate. We are deeply committed to a principled, yet anti-sectarian approach meaning that we will not be agnostic as to our views but will encourage diversity of opinion and debate on issues of the day. This also means that we will reject any articles or other interventions that engage in personal attacks or self-promotion. Sharp differences and clarifying differences will always be on the table, but we believe that The Global African Worker must be a vehicle through which matters can be discussed and where it is legitimate for reasonable people to disagree.
The Global African Worker will promote and support not only progressive social movements, but also efforts towards the building and strengthening of progressive organization. We firmly believe that organization is the only real weapon of the oppressed. We also hold that history has demonstrated that the absence of organization among the oppressed, even in the context of inspiring mass movements, will inevitably result in failure and the devolution of the movement towards those who are organized, usually forces of reaction.
The Global African Worker shall be a transnational project and, as such, aims to be multilingual. Though beginning mainly in English, we seek volunteer editor-translators who can help to make the magazine accessible to multiple languages in the African World.
The Global African Worker will present, and welcomes, contributions that include commentaries, journalistic accounts, and cultural interventions.
At a time when there are many people, including committed activists, who believe that it is archaic to speak of the working class and working people, we believe that one of the challenges of the 21st century is to affirm the standpoint of working people who have all too frequently been marginalized in the aftermath of otherwise successful or nearly successful struggles for national independence, national liberation and national/racial equality. 21st century Pan Africanism, to the extent to which it has a future, must be grounded among the oppressed and dispossessed; it must be grounded among working people.
Welcome to The Global African Worker! Please help us through your generous financial contributions that can be made in care of our fiscal agent, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists at:
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
Attn: Global African Worker Institute
P.O. Box 66268
Washington, DC 20035
USA
"Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories…."
-Amilcar Cabral