“We are building a multi-racial powerhouse to change the landscape for all workers.”
– Rod Adams, Confluence Executive Committee member; Executive Director of New Justice Project of Minnesota
Workers Confluence supports strategic partnerships between unions and community organizations, including worker centers. We also engage with a broader set of stakeholders through meetings and events aimed at strengthening Minnesota’s worker justice ecosystem.
This often means that participants are connecting across differences in race, ethnicity, and immigration status. Many represent organizations that have their own language, analysis, and priorities around racial justice. We use the following principles as a guide to moving through whatever tensions arise in ways that are respectful and generative.
In Workers Confluence spaces, advancing racial justice means:
- Understanding the intersections of race and the economy. We can’t have racial justice without economic justice. We need truly equal opportunities for Black workers and other workers of color to earn family-sustaining wages, and we need a bigger slice of the pie for working people as a whole. Otherwise we’re left fighting over crumbs.
- Realizing that racism weakens and limits our movement. Supporting Black and Brown workers organizing is not an add-on or a side project. It is necessary and central to building a more powerful labor movement.
- Centering others’ humanity. We value learning each others’ stories, and using each other’s preferred language around race and other aspects of identity. I support you in succeeding on your terms, not just on mine.
- Acknowledging past and ongoing harms. Unions have a mixed track record when it comes to racial equity and inclusion of workers of color. We make space to sit with these uncomfortable truths, knowing that this is a necessary part of moving forward together effectively.
- Striving to deepen partnerships and avoid transactional or tokenizing relationships. Confluence strives to nurture partnerships past platitudes and into the space of real change.
- Balancing rigor with flexibility. We can have high standards for our work together and also recognize that we are all learning as we go. When someone falls short, canceling isn’t the answer; the point is to build together.
- Remaining open to feedback and continual improvement in how we carry out this work. Unlearning and dismantling white supremacy is an ongoing process, not a goal we will achieve and move on from.
- Recognizing that we must move on many fronts simultaneously. What we achieve together in Workers Confluence spaces must not stay limited to these spaces. Instead, it should be a catalyst and motivator for the further work we each undertake to address racism at the individual, community, and institutional levels.