Labor unions fight for the human right to earn a living in humane conditions. AFT 2121 recognizes the work of our Black siblings in the history of the labor movement, from the National Association of Afro American Steam and Gas Engineers in 1867, to the Knights of Labor in 1875, to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the American Federations of Labor in 1925, to the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1980. Black and White labor organizers have come together to fight for labor rights. While this coming together was fraught with racially informed challenges, the efforts were made and successes were achieved.
In this spirit of human commonality, AFT 2121, representing the faculty of City College of San Francisco, stands united with African Americans to condemn the ongoing racist police attacks and killings of Black people, most recently the murder of Breonna Taylor, an off-duty first responder who was sleeping in her home, and George Floyd, whose breath was cruelly and shockingly choked out of him, likewise the racist acts that resulted in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery as he was jogging in his own neighborhood.
As we grieve for these recent deaths, we continue to seek justice for Alex Nieto, Mario Woods, Luís Góngora, and Amilcar Pérez-López, young Latino and African American men, some of them CCSF students, who were murdered at the hands of San Francisco Police officers. And now we must say the name of CCSF student Sean Monterrosa as we add yet another name to the growing list of those killed by Bay Area police.
These assaults have been ongoing, targeting the very communities served by our college. Each time is one death too many. We call for police accountability in San Francisco and nationwide.
At the same time, we condemn the ongoing structural racism and everyday racist micro-aggressions that permeates our culture and supports physical and psychological violence done to Black bodies and Black minds every hour of every day. The overt and horrific police killings of Black people are the inevitable result of racism. We all need to start seeing, naming, and addressing racism so that healing can begin.
As a faculty union, we have a special obligation to our African American students who represent our future and to our African American faculty who continue to bear the burden of racialization, marginalization, and inequality. While we continue to struggle to maintain our 85-year history of serving San Francisco, a struggle only exacerbated by the new COVID-19 pandemic, we recognize the need to shift our focus at least for 8 minutes and 49 seconds – the time that elapsed as George Floyd fought to breathe.
This statement stands as evidence that we are not silent. That we remember the protests of the 60’s and the 90’s and that we recognize that our Black siblings are still fighting against a system that seeks to destroy them. We continue in the spirit of historical efforts to unify Black workers with non-Black workers. As a diverse union, we recognize the right for all African Americans to freely breathe, just as A. Phillip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters did in determining their best way forward.
We lend this support fully cognizant of our need to deepen our own learning about dismantling racism, build anti-racist action into our institutional and organizational work. We not only commit to maintaining a place for our Black and Brown siblings at the table of labor organizing, but also to fight for Black and Brown leadership at that table. We reject the social contract that controls and oppresses the Black narrative.
We want our union leadership and membership to become better allies and advocates for our Black faculty members and students. It is with that understanding that we commit to ensuring that BLACK LIVES MATTER AT CITY COLLEGE OF SAN FRANCISCO and that we will stand with our African American students and faculty in their continued fight to freely breathe.
Follow Us!