Washington, DC — Transafrica is selling its elegant building in Washington, DC. The money will help breathe new life into the organization which, its new president, Bill Fletcher has acknowledged, is broke and in debt. The organization plans to use some of the sale money to purchase a modest facility "somewhere" in Washington, DC, says Fletcher. "We are looking." The current building "is not a movement building. It demands silence. I want a messy building, a movement building, a building where you can see people working, using the building for various campaigns we plan to mount."
Fletcher, a long-time labor union activist and one of the organizers of the Black Radical Congress says he is "retooling" Transafrica for the 21st century. In an interview with AllAfrica.com's Charles Cobb Jr. he described his plans to center Transafrica's work around organizing for "Global Justice" and education. Excerpts:
You took over as President of Transafrica at the end of last year. Many people want to know just where you plan to take the organization. Have you been surprised by what you've found as you have settled in?
The best way I can answer your question is to say that we are rebuilding and retooling Transafrica Forum. Although I knew that this would be a rebuilding operation, I did not realize how much work I was actually being confronted with. We have put out a request for contributions, donations to Transafrica Forum. We are short of cash there's no secret behind that, and we're in a process of selling the building. When we sell the building we anticipate that we will be able to stabilize our situation and actually go forward and do some exciting work.
In the sense of this being a rebuilding operation, are you only talking about cash and dollars here or are you talking about constituency as well? Transafrica has not been particularly visible for many years and if I'm right, Washington D.C. is the only city with a Transafrica chapter.
First of all I think that it is important to understand that there are two organizations This is something that has been confusing. There is Transafrica, Inc. and Transafrica Forum. And I'm the President of both. Transafrica Forum is a nonprofit tax exempt and Transafrica, Inc is nonprofit but not tax exempt. Transafrica, Inc had about 14 chapters around the country at one point. There is one left. But let me go to the gist of your question. Transafrica has not been visible for quite some time. So the rebuilding that I am talking about is both financial and programmatic. We need to have at the financial level, a steady income stream which we haven't had. We have depended on the generosity of certain individuals who have made various contributions to this organization but we don't have what you could call a steady stream. It ends up being emergency funds. No organization can sustain itself over the long run without some sort of income stream. So, we have to change that. And that was one of the reasons I put out a request last week to the 5,000 people that are on our listserv, saying, "Look we need some help." And we've gotten great responses; people have been very generous. People have sent whatever they could afford - ten dollars, a hundred dollars.
The other part of the rebuilding is programmatic. And that is not simply "rebuilding," it's retooling and reshaping the organization. I'm looking for Transafrica Forum to be more of an organizing center and educational center. I see Transafrica Forum as being an organization which, in cooperation with other organizations, watches and campaigns around major issues facing the [African] Diaspora. So there are programs we are currently doing that we want to continue. We have guests coming here who do book signings and give public addresses; all that's very important. But I'm saying that we need to go beyond that. We need to have organizers. We need to hire organizers who are out building campaigns, talking with regular people in Black America about the issues facing the Diaspora, whether it's HIV/AIDS in Africa and Brazil, or whether it's issues of economic development, structural adjustment programs, runaway shops that leave the United States and go into the Caribbean or Latin America and the impact it has on us here are well as the countries they are going to. These are the issues that we need to be talking to people about.
There's a wide range of possible issues here. What would your priorities be?
The possibilities that I'm suggesting to the board...
This would be a new board?
At this point it's the existing board of Transafrica Forum but there may be new people who come on. That's one of the issues that's in front of the board. We're going to have a retreat in March and we're going to be talking about that. The programmatic issues that are confronting us that I'm putting forward are: Global Justice, and I'll explain that in a second, support for labor movements in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, building a student and youth component to our work, and continuing the work Transafrica has done in the past around normalization of relations with Cuba.
Now when I talk of Global Justice, there's a number of things there. And this is ideal for coalition work with other organizations. Global Justice is one of the terms that describes the response to globalization. It is talking about the fact that the character of globalization is not simply the globalize d economy. It's the dominance of the multi-national corporations and international financial institutions. It's the blackmail that those institutions have used against countries in the global South - in Latin America, Asia and Africa - to dictate to those countries the developmental path that they should follow. It's not just about easy access on telephones. It's also about who is wired to the Internet and who is not. It's about trade policies that undermine the ability of countries in to global South to develop fairly and fully. So, "Global Justice" is responding to those injustices that I am describing. I am saying that Transafrica needs to be a part of that. And that we haven't been - not centrally. And when you look at the rise of this thing that people call the global justice movement, whether it's demonstrations like in Seattle in 1999, Quebec, Genoa - we need to have more of a Black presence; not only among the participants, but also in leading, shaping that movement. I'm saying that that's something that Transafrica Forum should be about.
Doesn't this in some ways represent a fairly significant shift for Transafrica in the sense that Transafrica started out with the intention of being a lobbying organization for Africa and the Caribbean and it was mainly focused on shaping opinion and generating influence here in Washington, D.C. - Capitol Hill, the Congress, the State Department - among people who were making decisions that affected African and Caribbean countries? Now you're talking about what seems to be a grassroots organizing institution.
Yes it is. But it builds on what has been done. The lobbying that was done, primarily by Transafrica, Inc., I think was very, very important. However, I'd like to say that our greatest lobby is Black America. It's not what we do on the Hill, or what some lobbyists do on the Hill. It's whether issues resonate within Black America and how Black America responds. In order to implement this we have to be very grassroots oriented - there has to be grassroots education and grassroots organizing. We need to be talking with out people about HIV/AIDS not simply in terms of the number of people dying, but also the impact that it has on the economies of Africa. We need to be talking with our people about structural adjustment and what does that mean in terms of economic development in Africa. We need to be talking with our folks about the companies that close down in Chicago or Cleveland or Detroit and move to the Caribbean or move to Latin America. What does that mean? What happens to those communities in the United States, but also what happens where those companies relocate? What happens to the communities there? So yes, that is a different orientation, but it's what I think we need in the 21st century.
Also, the shape of the issues are different. You know, when the antiapartheid struggle was re ignited in the United States in the 1980s, it wasn't just Transafrica doing that. There were all kinds of organizations that had been working for years around the issue of Southern Africa. When that movement caught fire the enemy was very clear and it was clearly evil. We're in a situation now where our opponents often look like us. They are not visibly controlled by outsiders. They have in some cases aligned with institutions and corporations which do not have the best interests of our people at heart. So the race aspect, the colonial aspect is more complicated. We are dealing with neocolonialism as opposed to the blatant old colonialism. We're dealing with leaders in some countries that were at the forefront of national liberation but have now caved in. We're dealing with a situation here in the United States in which Africa and the Caribbean have been marginalized, where the discussions that now seem to be taking place about Africa are more about military issues and defense issues and security issues as opposed to developmental issues. I think that means we need a different kind of Transafrica Forum.
Why do you think that now - particularly in a time of recession - it's possible to build a constituency for Africa in the Black community of the United States? Historically in the Black community, while there is some sympathy for the more blatant manifestations of racial oppression in Africa - South Africa come immediately to mind - there really hasn't been substantially interest in these more complex and less visible issues such as neocolonialism, even HIV/AIDs and other issues that hamper African development. People on the streets here say 'I got enough problems.' Why do you think you can build this constituency?
I think that it goes back to the McCarthy era actually. Forgive me if this sounds a little round about. There's a very interesting book I just finished reading about a month ago. It's called Race Against Empire. It talked about an organization called the Council on African Affairs that had been led by Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois. After World War II there was actually a substantial constituency in the United States within Black America that was concerned about colonialism and racist oppression - not just in Africa, but also in other parts of the world. When the cold war starts there's an orchestrated move made to crush that sentiment and to re articulate Black America's relationship with Africa, the Caribbean and the rest of the global South. So in 1946 you have open discussions in Black newspapers about colonialism and about opposing colonialism and opposing the tendency on the part of the United States immediately after the war to come to the aid of the colonial powers. When the cold war unfolds, this is crushed! And then you start to have arguments about, 'Well the United States should not support colonialism because that will promote communism.' It's a whole bogus line of thought. But it becomes very popular. Also, Africa and the Caribbean become more exotic. There's less analysis of what's going on in Africa and the Caribbean. And whether in popular media like the movies, or even in newspapers, there's less attention to what is really going on in Africa. So, the whole description of Africa becomes much more exotic, much more distorted, more openly racist.
In the background during all of this you have a segment of Black America that continues to hold up the banner against colonialism and white minority rule. Eventually through the civil rights and Black Power movements opposition openly emerges. That's the backdrop to the problems that we face now about keeping a constituency interested. I would argue that there is interest there in Black America, but it's unfocused and it is not something that will necessarily respond immediately to simply a clarion call. Because of the nature of neocolonialism, because we're dealing with leaders and countries that often look like us, and can wrap themselves in the flag of nationalism even as they are oppressing their populations, we are talking a more long-term educational effort that has to take place. And i think that many of us have underestimated what that means.
Let me say one other thing. We're also now talking about class. And there are two issues in Black America that we don't like talking about that much: homosexuality and class. There are a lot of us in Black America,when the issues of homosexuality and class come up, who all of a sudden become mum. It's as if we've lost the ability to speak. When we're talking about the current situation in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, we have to deal with issues of class. We have to deal with leaders - business leaders, government leaders - who will come to the United States and will articulate a message that has nothing to do with the masses of their people. But they can drape themselves in the national flag. It's a different era; that's what we have to recognize. Many of us - particularly the baby boomers - who came up when the enemy was very clearly Portuguese colonialism, Spanish colonialism, white minority governments, it's a real readjustment.
To the extent that we can draw a linear political scale, this would seem to put Transafrica clearly on the left end of that political scale. Who else in the spectrum of Africa interest groups here will share this particular - radical if I can use the word - outlook?
Let me first go back to the categorization. As you were raising your questions I began thinking about Malcolm X who said he wanted to be careful talking about people being on the 'left' because he didn't want people to think he was left out. I'm not going to say where on the spectrum Transafrica and Transafrica Forum fall. I can talk about where I fall, and as I love to say, I'm unapologetically on the left. Transafrica Forum is reaching out to a very diverse constituency. There are people within that constituency that fall on the left, and there are people within that constituency who are corporate types, who would not see themselves on the left. But they are very concerned about the marginalization of the Black world. And I don't want people like that to be turned away. And I'm hoping to extend my hand and continue to work with people like that. I see this as a very broad front.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Africa Action led by Salih Booker is absolutely an ally. I have nothing but the highest level of respect for him and that organization. I'm the new kid on the block. I feel I have a lot to learn from people who have been doing this work much longer than I have. I come out of the trade union movement and I feel that there are certain things that I bring from that movement. But I don't want to give you the impression that this is completely new to me. I've been involved in issues relative to Africa in one way or the other since college. But there are folks who have made this the central piece of their work, the central piece of their lives and I feel I have a lot to learn from them.
What was it that attracted you to this very difficult position in a very difficult time?
Well, as my said to me when she encouraged me to apply: This organization and this role bring together diverse aspects of my life. I have been doing things in the international arena for quite some time. There's the issue of neoliberal globalization that I've been deeply concerned with. There are the issues of grassroots education which I think have to be central to the work of Transafrica Forum. And then there's the class question that I raised earlier. I believe the only way that an organization like this will survive in the 21st century is if we deal with this issue of neocolonialism and the issue of class. If we deal with the millions of people in the Diaspora who are existing on a dollar a day, who have no visible means of employment, who may be in the informal sector, who may be in oppressive sweatshop - these are the folks we have to be oriented towards. We have to be building links with organizations on the ground who are taking up this work. And in many places the trade union movement is that key force. The work that I have done up until now has positioned me to develop and strengthen certain ties that I think are going to be critical for Transafrica forum. I'm not interested in building a charity. This is not about charity, it's about solidarity!
And it's not about us telling people overseas what they should do. I want to be very clear about this. In my limited experiences overseas I have found that even African Americans can be overly American in our attitude when we talk with folks overseas. I have spoken with people in Brazil, in South Africa who have not been very pleased with African Americans who have come to visit them who've often felt like we come telling them what they should do, telling them how they should look at their situation. That's not what Transafrica Forum needs to be about. We need to be building alliances, learning from those experiences and figuring out how we can offer support.
