Amazon Faces Black Lives Matter in Alabama

 


Amazon is facing a strong union effort in its huge Alabama warehouse. About 3/4th of the two thousand who work there are black. I've read several accounts of how it is to work in an Amazon shipping warehouse. It is tough.

The union trying to organize the Birmingham capitalizes on the economics of the warehouse as well as the solidarity linked to Black Lives Matter (BLM). BLM is accused of far left, even communist, ties. This was the same accusation made of other unionizing efforts and of civil rights struggles. It was especially used against Martin Luther King. Those communist ties to Martin Luther King somehow did not stop streets all over the U.S., including one right near me, from being named after him.

We're used to thinking of the "solid South." For many decades, we all know, it was the segregation Democratic Party's solid South. Since the Kennedy period it has been Republican solid South. As the link points out, however, the South has always been in turmoil to one degree or another. Alabama, for example, has a huge and well funded association of atheists. And remember all that Martin Luther King did in that state. 

While Alabama produced Selma, Jeff Sessions, Sheriff Jim Clark, Roy Moore, burning and lynching, black people have always worked at unionizing themselves. It was going on in the days of share cropping. In that context the effort to unionize Amazon is not surprising.

The link says black people in Alabama politically are among the most liberal and even radical in the country. It's as if the more segregationist the white majority became the further to the left moved black people in their own politics. 

Looking at a map with Georgia and Alabama sharing a long border, it's fun to speculate on what direction lies ahead in each state. Atlanta, Georgia, votes Democratic. It is only a few miles from the Alabama border. I need not remind others that Georgia just elected two Democrats. 

Republicans might be better off building a wall between Alabama and Georgia than between the U.S. and Mexico. Maybe Black Lives Matter would not crawl over it.

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