Black Radical Congress plans national meeting

Special to the People’s Weekly World, 31 January 1998

NEW YORK—The Black Radical Congress, in its two-day meeting here, laid plans for its founding conference in Chicago in June. About 100 organizers from the East Coast, the South and Midwest attended the Jan. 24-25 meeting at Columbia University.

The conference call is an appeal to Black people within the framework of the present economic and political crisis:

If you hate what capitalism has done to our community - widespread joblessness, drugs, violence and poverty—come to the Congress, the document says. If you are fed up with the two-party system and want to develop a plan for real political change, come to the Congress. If you want to struggle against class exploitation, racism, sexism and homophobia, come to the Congress. The Black Radical Congress is for everyone ready to fight back.

The Call to the Congress is simply an appeal to the workers and progressive radical elements, unions, community-based organizations, churches, feminist organizations and others, said Jarvis Tyner, one of the organizers and a vice-chair of the Communist Party. We must do more, and we realize that time is not our friend, with the conference being only six months away. We must lay concrete plans for the Congress in Chicago now. We must put high on the agenda the question of mobilization.

Participants at the planning meeting heard reports from various committees on a program, local organizing, mobilizing and fund raising.

Given all the ideological differences, it is quite remarkable that the group was able to hold it together, Tyner said. The meeting ended with everyone in good spirits, headed back home to organize and mobilize for the Congress in Chicago.