Editor's note: Bill Fletcher is the president of TransAfrica Forum, a founder of United for Peace and Justice and the Black Radical Congress. This interview was conducted by Debbie Bell.

PA: How did you become involved in progressive and left politics and causes?

BF: My parents and my sister were and are very progressive. They were union members, and we regularly talked, both in my nuclear family and in the expanded family, about politics. I had an uncle who was close to the Communist Party and would regularly agitate at family gatherings about politics. I was also a child of the 1960s, and the developments in the African American and anti-war movements all affected me. What brought it all together was reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X. I picked it up when I was 13. When I finished it, I knew what I needed to do with my life. My politics began to become more consciously radical, by the time I got to high school. I was influenced by the Black Panther Party, read their paper and got involved in student organizations that were Panther-like. I started seeing myself as a socialist pretty early. My politics kind of mirrored the Panthers: revolutionary nationalism and socialism. When I went to college, I originally intended to be a lawyer like William Kunstler.

But I lost interest in going in that direction and became more interested in committing myself to social justice and organizing. Part of what happened was that being a radical and being an aspiring Marxist, like many other people of my generation, we decided that it was important to be in working-class struggles. I was influenced while at Harvard by an old family friend, Ewart Guinier, who was the chair of Afro-American studies. Guinier took me on like a grandfather, and I developed a deep devotion and love for him. He taught from a working-class point of view and really emphasized the importance of the trade union movement while never portraying it as a panacea. Guinier emphasized the potential of the trade union movement, and particularly the critical role that Black workers could and can play in influencing its development.

I graduated and decided to go to work. At first I took some odd jobs and then ultimately became a welder in the shipyards. I got involved in the trade union movement as a conscious Marxist, as someone committed to Black liberation. I felt that it was very important to organize Black workers, not simply as part of the working-class movement but in order to influence the Black freedom movement. So there I was a Harvard graduate at the shipyard. I worked in the shipyard for three and one-half years and was involved in the reform movement there. Then I left, got involved briefly in community organizing and then fell into a job as a paralegal involved with desegregating the building trades in Boston. From that I ended up on the staff of UAW District 65. It was a very mixed experience, but it eventually led to my going to the National Postal Mailhandlers Union, the Service Employees International Union, and ultimately going to the AFL-CIO.

PA: Can you talk about your current work at TransAfrica and its role today?

BF: I took over at TransAfrica in January of 2002 and have been working to rebuild it. The organization had fallen on hard times and was near collapse. We’ve been working to focus its mission which is two-fold: to influence US foreign policy when it comes to Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America and, secondly, to build solidarity between African Americans and the peoples of those regions. Specifically, we are working right now on a major campaign called the “One-Standard Campaign.” It focuses on the plight of Haitians immigrants and refugees. The thrust of the campaign is to level everyone up to the status of Cuban refugees. If you think of the refugee situation, there are these bookends. On the one side are Cubans; on the other are Haitians. Everyone else is in between. It’s cynical and racist and is driven by political and racial objectives. Part of what we are attempting to do in this campaign is expose this.

We are also working to publicize a major lawsuit against 20 banks and corporations that collaborated with the apartheid regime in South Africa. We are beginning to explore the issue of pharmaceutical genocide, and the approach of the Bush administration as well as the pharmaceutical companies when it come to providing assistance to those countries that are suffering from the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And obviously we are very involved in the anti-war movement.

In relation to the anti-war movement I would like to make a point. Some months ago I was asked to call to one of the original founders of TransAfrica. She wanted to know what we were doing these days – she had long since parted company with the organization. I described to her the anti-war work and also talked about trying to increase the profile of the organization when it came to Latin America. In fact, I’m taking a delegation to Venezuela in January. This person took issue with us for being so outspoken on the war of aggression against Iraq. She said, had we been quiet and reserved we might have been effective in getting the US to better things for Africa. In other words, we would have been listened to inside the administration. I had to stop for a second after hearing that. I said that there was no way in the midst of a world-historic event such as the preparation for and actuality of the Iraq war that we could take a pass. It would have been morally unacceptable for us to do this.

The board of TransAfrica Forum really understood this. I went to them soon after I started helping to build United for Peace and Justice, because I really needed their involvement and they unanimously passed a strong resolution against the build up for the impending war. That was the right thing for us to. White people often pigeonhole us, but even we – this person who I’m talking about is a Black woman – often pigeonhole ourselves and say that we should only be focused on matters explicitly having to do with Africa, the Caribbean and Black Americans. Somehow stepping outside of that realm and taking up the war against Iraq, the threats against North Korea or globalization in general is inappropriate. That’s not the approach TransAfrica Forum is taking at all. As far as we are concerned, if it has anything to do with foreign policy, we have every right to be involved.

People of color need to be leading the global justice movement. While there are obviously criticisms that can be made of white organizers out in the global justice movement about what they have or have not done, the notion that we should sit back and wait for an invitation is absurd. We should be the ones leading the movement. We should be the ones that are taking up the issue of pharmaceutical genocide. We should be the ones taking up the US aggression against Venezuela.

I’ve heard people say, “foreign policy is well and good, but Black people are getting our butts kicked here in the US and there are more pressing issues.” Tell that to the people who died on September 11th. Foreign policy has an immediate impact on our existence. Tell that to the people who are suffering because every state in the union is nearly bankrupt because of the war and occupation.

PA: What about the Black Radical Congress?

BF: I continue to believe that the BRC is one of the most important developments in Black America and on the left in the last ten years. The Seattle demonstrations against the WTO were earth shattering. The birth of the BRC was not earth shattering, but it was very significant. I often quote Jarvis Tyner who said, “If the BRC wasn’t in existence, someone would form it anyway.” There’s truth in that, in the almost mythological way it exists out there. There needs to be a voice and a home for broad, disparate groups on the political left. We made some important advances, despite many significant problems that we ran up against. But when I think about where we were in 1995 at the time of the Million Man march, or in 1996 when frankly many of us weren’t talking with one another, we were all in our own little cocoons or foxholes carrying on struggles, sometimes more, sometimes less in significance. But through the BRC, we’re able to build a camaraderie, which I think for the most part will last.

We ran up against some significant problems though, which cannot be underestimated. At some point we need to write about it and actually theorize the problem. Trying to build an organization that is both a united front of organizations and individuals is historically complicated. When I look back at the history of the formation and existence of the National Negro Congress (NNC), I see some of the exact same problems. In the initial stage there were a lot of organizations and individuals involved. But when you remove the mythology around the NNC, a lot of those organizations dropped away. The National Negro Congress ended up being mainly a membership organization. That was a problem. I don’t think we have come up with a solution, but you begin by accessing and identifying the problem. We also ran up against the difficulty of limited resources, financial and otherwise, which in a period such as this where the political right has the initiative, is very complicated.

There is a common recognition that a campaign is needed to unify the organization. I felt – and I was in the minority – when we formed the BRC that there was a certain interesting moment that we existed in. There was a reform movement going on in organized labor that I believed Black progressive and radicals could influence if we were sufficiently organized and focused. I wasn’t able to convince the majority in the BRC that this was something we should focus on. So there were tension between different poles: reparations, economic justice and education. That might have been ok if we had more resources to anchor each of those, but we didn’t and that tore at us. But there is nothing that has convinced me that the BRC is any less necessary than it was in June of 1998 when we went to Chicago.

PA: When you reflect on the BRC’s Freedom Agenda and the Principles of Unity, how do they impact the BRC’s ability to engage in struggle given the overwhelmingly democratic and progressive sentiment in the Black community?

BF: The Principles of Unity and really do outline the basis for strategic engagement within the Black left. Anyone who fits within those POUs, whether they are formally or informally in the BRC, should be working together and looking at that working relationship as a long-term engagement, as opposed to tactical. It’s really important when you look at what the POUs say. There are many people who consider themselves as activists and radicals, but are weak on the issue of gay and lesbian rights or may be homophobic. They may be Pan- African, but not thoroughly anti-imperialist. They may be interested in progressive Black politics, but really may see the future narrowly constrained within the two-party system. What we came up with in the principles of unity was that if you are in this big tent, then we should be working together. I think that’s the attitude we need in order to continue to build the BRC. The Freedom Agenda is a concise and great proclamation of the issues that face our people and what needs to be done. It is something – and I don’t think we’ve made good use of it – that should be moved, along the lines of a plank, that we hold our leaders and elected officials accountable to.

My answer to your second question may not be very popular. Part of the problem that Black America faces is the economic and emotional depression we are in. What I mean is that in many respects the Black working class reached at point of strength around 1973, particularly in the manufacturing sector. There was a high percentage of the African American population in unions there still are, actually and Black workers were poised to play influential roles in many key unions. When the 1973-74 recession hit, followed by the 1982-84 recession, (the Volcker/Reagan recession), Black workers took a battering unlike any group in the country, which has not stopped. The economic costs of that battering have included the destruction of our communities. When people like William Julius Wilson talk about the desertion of the black middle class to the suburbs, that’s not really what happened. There were certain Black middle-class people who moved to the suburbs that’s true; but the so-called Black middle-class included – because that section is determined by income – a section of the Black working class along with a section of Black professionals. What in fact happened with the destruction of the economic base of the Black workers in places like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, California in the aerospace industry and in auto, the Black working class eroded and imploded. That is what has had an impact on our communities.

What we are looking at today is the devastation brought about by nearly 30 years of the economic restructuring of capitalism and the corresponding impact on the Black working class. We can then see the effect that this has had on our people. Then you had the political battering, the murders and assassinations, etc., as well as the political attacks by the anti-affirmative action forces and others.

When you bring all of this together, part of what has happened to our people is that many in US question whether struggle – social, political or economic – pays, that is, whether it makes any sense to fight back or whether it is hopeless. This is critical for Black organizers. If we don’t recognize that there is a certain level of despair that exits in our communities, you come up with bad strategies and tactics. In fact, you can find yourself engaged in voluntarism. Take the war situation for example. African American opposition to the war at it’s lowest was 61 percent; at its height it was about 85 percent. More than any other group, Black America realized this war was nuts! Anywhere you went Black folks were saying, “this is crazy!” The difficulty was translating that angry, verbal opposition into active opposition. That is not just a problem I want simply to foist on the anti-war movement and say, “once again white folks should have been better.” I think that Black organizers actually did not do a bad job, but we need to do much more to really motivate folk into recognizing that taking this struggle up was essential.

PA: Anything you would like to add?

BF: I’ve enjoyed working to help build the BRC with you. I feel like the relationship we have developed over seven years now is in some ways a metaphor for the possibilities in the Black left. We didn’t know each other, and we approached each cautiously, though cordially, but with some mutual suspicions because we came with very different political histories. And over six or seven years this has changed dramatically to viewing each other as comrades. That is a benefit of the BRC. That’s a very valuable lesson for the larger Black left regardless of generations. We can build something. There will be substantial obstacles, but at the end of the day that unity can both translate to important friendships but also sound working relationships. That’s something we should hold up and cherish and celebrate.