• the sociopolitical thought of General Baker, DRUM & The League Of Revolutionary Black Workers

  • Jul 6 2024
  • Duración: 1 h y 12 m
  • Podcast

the sociopolitical thought of General Baker, DRUM & The League Of Revolutionary Black Workers

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  • Today, we will listen to General Baker from a 2010 talk he gave at the U.S. Social Forum held in Detroit where he maps the history of struggle in Detroit, the formation of radical workers movements, and the legacies of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 6, 1941, right after his family had moved north from Augusta, Georgia. General Baker’s father worked for Midland Steel in the 1940s, and later in a job with Chrysler. The Baker family settled in a home in Southwest Detroit. Gen Baker grew up in a union household, and often attended union events with his father. Baker graduated early from the nominally integrated Southwestern High School in 1958. General Baker is one of the founding members of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) in 1968 and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in 1969. Baker’s involvement in radical politics dates from the early 1960s. He had been a member of UHURU and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and later the Communist League. Following the Detroit riot of July 1967, an event known to some as the Great Rebellion, General Baker and his fellow radicals sensed an opportunity for new organizing efforts. In September 1967, Baker, John Watson, Mike Hamlin, and Luke Tripp started a newspaper called the Inner-City Voice. The paper focused on issues of concern to Detroit’s Black population, including working conditions, housing, health care, welfare programs, and schools, all from a Marxist perspective. In addition to publishing the Inner-City Voice, Baker, Hamlin, and other Inner City Voice staff members formed a study group to discuss how to implement revolutionary political change. On May 2, 1968, in response to a work speedup at the Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck, Baker led several thousand workers out of the plant in a wildcat strike. On May 5, the Chrysler Corporation dismissed Baker from his job for violating the no-strike clause of the collective bargaining agreement between Chrysler and the United Auto Workers (UAW). As a result of this strike, Baker and his fellow activists formed DRUM. DRUM saw both Chrysler and the UAW as enemies of workers of African descent, and from 1968 into the early 1970s, DRUM worked to gain more power for African American workers and to improve working conditions at Dodge Main. General Baker is and will continue to be one of our important sociopolitical and cultural theoreticians of the 20th century that provided essential perspectives for the 21st century. As part of the collective of revolutionary workers who sought to organize the Black working class in conjunction with addressing issues in the larger Black community, Gen Baker was a living example of theory and practice in context of Black liberation, globally. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana; Ayati; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.
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