December 1998
Column: Workshop Talks by S. Hamer

"Young Warriors" keep fire burning

by S. Hamer

Ever since I wrote the article in N&L last month about how we lost the union representation election at Super Value Lewis Grocery in Indianola, Miss., I have been thinking about the "generation gap" between the older workers on day shift and the younger workers on nights. Day shift had senior employees, with 15 or even 25 years seniority. Many of them said that they would vote for the union. But on election day, they couldn't vote against Mr. Lewis, the main owner, because they have a stereotype in their minds about the white man always being right. The night shift was mostly young Black men, 20 to 32 years old, radical-type guys who showed a lot of courage. I kept thinking about why there was such a difference between the two shifts.

The union drive wasn't started by the union, UFCW Local 1529. It was started by these young workers. A call came to the union hall back in April, asking the union to send representatives to a meeting at a lounge. When the union reps walked into the room, they found 45 workers already there, hostile to the company and ready to fight to make a change.

They had made up their minds that they were through with being treated like boys. They had spunk. This was the first time I ever saw so many young men working together for a cause. To me, they were our young warriors. They were so strong and determined, they could have run a race forever.

But the more I thought about it, the more I saw the difference between the shifts was not just about age. At Delta Pride Catfish, the stronghold of our union, many of the younger generation aren't really active. They don't care about things because the way was paved for them; they didn't have to fight the harassment and plantation conditions that we faced when we built the union there. It makes a difference when you have been through a struggle and when you haven't. So even though they are young, they don't have the same revolutionary attitude that the Lewis Grocery workers have.

It's like we say in the News and Letters Committees Constitution, that youth are "builders of the new society" when they refuse to just accept this existing adult society which they didn't make and when they are energized by their "idealism" to try to make the idea of freedom a reality.

For me this means we have got to get involved with young people more and help them get a better understanding of our history. I didn't get much Black history when I went to school, only during Black History Month. Since I've known News and Letters, I have learned about people like Denmark Vesey. If you look at our history you ask questions. If Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others gave their lives to change things, why is Mississippi so corrupt today? Why is there so much racism and mistreatment of Black workers? Why did the fire burn out? We need the younger generation to keep it going. This movement for a new society and for freedom has got to be passed down, like racism was passed down through the white generations.

The Civil Rights Movement is an unfinished revolution today because we still have so much of a struggle of the mind ahead of us. We have been damaged in our minds as a race. Over the centuries, there was so much torment and so many killings. So even today there is an afraidness there for a lot of us.

We have had daring leaders from among our people, but we still suffer from the stereotype that the white man is superior. Some workers see the white man on a pedestal and say, "If I cross him I won't survive." Other workers see it differently, because once you break that barrier and recognize that "I am somebody," then his hold on your mind is gone. All of us, the youth too, have to go through this struggle of the mind.

And then after you lose that fear, you still have to go on to develop your mind. When I became a Marxist-Humanist I saw you could develop in a way that gives you the strength to keep going, even when that unfinished revolution is all around you.

When Dr. King was killed in Memphis in 1968, it wasn't the end of our movement for freedom as a people. To me, it was a new beginning. As I got involved with union organizing, I felt that Dr. King had died for the freedom of Black workers in the South. I knew that what he and the sanitation workers started in Memphis, it was up to us to finish.

I have a dream, too. My dream is that one day Mississippi will be a place of freedom. I mean this for the whole world, but I say Mississippi because it is the boiling point of America. If the state of Mississippi could be changed, it would spark a change in so many other places.

For this we need the youth, especially young workers. They are the ones who have a chance, if they develop their minds in the struggles, to make sure that the fire does not burn out. Just imagine what we could do if hundreds of youth like the ones at Lewis Grocery put their minds in struggle for freedom.

When I read Raya Dunayevskaya, I saw that what I call "not letting the fire burn out," Karl Marx called "revolution in permanence." You have to go through all these battles of the unfinished revolution, what Marxist-Humanists discuss as "transformation through stages," one after another, searching for freedom, so that one day we can live in peace. This is what we are trying to do in Mississippi.

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