McDonald’s has long portrayed itself as a champion of black uplift through black ownership of its franchises. But McDonald’s version of black capitalism, like the idea of black capitalism as a whole, has only ever benefited the few, not the many.
By excluding jobs held by black and brown workers from basic worker protections, the Fair Labor Standards Act, adopted decade ago during the New Deal, injected institutional racism into a federal wage and hour law.
The South is more than its shading on an Electoral College map; the entire region is home to a rich history of resistance against the twin forces of race hierarchy and class exploitation. The Amazon workers union campaign is part of that history.
Unions must root out the racism within their ranks, then leverage relationships members have in their own communities and focus on transforming the lives of workers, both inside and outside the workplace.
While protesters hold up the simple message “Black Lives Matter,” organizers in the Movement for Black Lives make clear that this fight is as much about ending racial capitalism as it is anything else.
Members of Unite Here Local 23 union and African Communities Together have circulated a rent strike petition to residents of a complex’s five buildings.
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