Current Campaigns

By: Kenneth Yates x370724

A place called Shockoe Bottom in Richmond, Virginia was once the center of the African slave trade in North America. However if you were to visit this area you would never know it. Beneath the night clubs, condominiums, office buildings, and streets lies a history grossly repressed by capitalist appetites for commercial development.

One hidden piece of history in particular lies beneath a parking lot publicly owned and utilized by the Virginia Commonwealth University & Medical College of Virginia staff and students.

In 1992 local historian and author Elizabeth Cann Kambourian, while researching for a book about a local slave rebellion leader named Gabriel, discovered something. Around 1800, inspired by the Haitian Revolution which was in full swing at the time, Gabriel plotted one of the most organized slave revolts in United States history. The plan was for hundreds of enslaved Africans, free Blacks and a few whites to to enter the city of Richmond, take the governor hostage and demand the abolition of slavery in Virginia. The revolt, however, was crushed after an intense 100 year storm flooded the area, making it impossible for Gabriel and his army to enter the city.

With information given by one of Gabriel's collaborators, the then Richmond Governor James Monroe formed a militia to hunt down Gabriel and his co-conspirators. Gabriel was eventually captured, tried and, on Oct. 10, 1800, executed at the town gallows, located in what was then called the Burial Ground for Negroes. At least 25 of his comrades met the same fate, either at the same site or in surrounding areas.

The burial ground was retired sometime around 1810, after hundreds, perhaps thousands of enslaved Africans had been buried there. The exact number is unknown. Before long the burial ground itself fell into obscurity, eventually buried beneath 10-20 feet of filler as the land took on many other uses over the years.

Kambourian discovered an old Richmond City map placing the African Burial Ground just north of 15th & Broad Street. That area is now partially covered by Interstate 95, with the remaining portion of the Burial Ground buried beneath a parking lot utilized by both VCU & MCV staff and students. The exact boundaries are yet to be determined.

The Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality have been fighting to reclaim this sacred ground from its present desecration. VCU & the City of Richmond have been aware of the history surrounding the Burial Ground since its discovery in 1992, however they have to this day done nothing to preserve and respect the dead residing there.

The Defenders have initiated an on-line letter writing campaign directed at VCU President Michael Rao, Richmond City Mayor Dwight C. Jones, & Virginia Governor Bob McDonell, demanding that they "End VCU / MCV Parking on Richmond's African Burial Ground."

Please visit http://tinyurl.com/275kzuj and sign or edit the following letter. If you are sending the e-mail on behalf of an organization, please also include your position in the group.

This article originally appeared here

Dear New Socialist Group,

A friend recently sent me issue 60 of New Socialist. I enjoyed reading it, especially the discussions of unions and union organizers. I plan to read a lot more of your writings as soon as I'm able.

In this letter I'd like to pose some respectful questions and criticisms. I also want to think out some issues I am unclear about and have been having conversations about with some close friends and comrades. Just so we're clear, and since electronic communication makes it much easier to come off polemical when that's not my intention, I mean these as a sort of "can think about this together?" rather than an attempt at the sort of point scoring that sometimes stands in for political discussion. I've only read some of your publications - I plan to read more of them - so if you deal with my questions elsewhere I would love to know. I should also say, I'm a member of the small radical union the Industrial Workers of the World and the small political organization the Workers Solidarity Alliance. My experiences in those organization shape my views, but I write in a personal capacity.

I liked the piece on the comrade who worked for SEIU. It did well in getting at some of the limits of AFL-CIO and CtW unionism. I would like to know, however, if she learned anything positive from doing that work. Perhaps she didn't. My experience working as an organizer had a lot of the negative components that that comrade described and others too, which is why I no longer do that kind of work. I ran into iterations of the same problems when I worked as a community organizer too.)

That said, as much as working as an organizer was a lousy job, I learned a ton doing that job. As much as the bosses were jerks, I learned a lot from following their orders and from the training they provided. I learned stuff which set me up to go on to organize at my own workplaces in the jobs I worked afterward, and this has enriched my IWW activity too, in my opinion. I'd like to know if NSG has anything to say about working as organizers in order to learn things for a while - not as a career path but as an educational detour. Personally, I think more radicals should so then come back to the shop floor.

IWW members met in St. Paul, Minnesota this past weekend for the annual IWW General Convention. Wobblies from the US, Canada, the UK, and Germany gathered to discuss union business, vote on constitutional amendments and resolutions, and of course to meet and get to know one another! The convention took place at Macalester College.

In addition to attending the convention, wobblies participated in a picket outside one of the Twin Cities' nine Jimmy John's locations on Saturday.