Interview With NYLHA Working Group Member Courtney Francis

Where did you grow up?

I was born and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York.

Do you have any union experience in your family or in your work experience?

My oldest brother is a sheet metal worker in a sheet metal worker’s union that is the only union experience I know. But, some members of my family, going back a few decades to their time in Grenada, were activists who understood the necessity to organize, the necessity for working people to have organizations of their own.

Where did you study and what?

I studied Marketing Management at the New York City College of Technology.

How did you get interested in history?

I read the Autobiography of Malcolm X when I was 12 years old. I understood from this book that there was more going on in the world, than just me and my little world, to say the least. It made me think. Malcolm X educated himself in many different things while in prison, which I thought was interesting. I never liked schooling or formal education, at least the way it’s currently set up here. I wanted to be like him, so I started reading and educating myself to history, philosophy, economics and politics.

Describe the labor history class you teach at WPC?

It’s a three-part class, and starts from colonial times to about 2005. I tell volunteers in the beginning of the class that they don’t have to worry about remembering the specific dates and names of the people, because they’ll miss the point. The purpose of the class is to look at the approach of how working people throughout history fought against the oppression of the government and the wealthy people it serves. The class looks at organizations like the IWW, Knights of Labor, Ancient Order of Hibernians, Southern Tenant Farmers Union and many others, and how they organized, what were their goals. The class also looks at how the wealthy reacted, how they used the government and its laws, as a tool to uphold their interests, and then destroy and malign these organizations. These organizations engaged in strategies and tactics some of which were successful and some unsuccessful – our point is to learn from what didn’t work and take what they did that was successful and engage in organizing to learn what it takes to change the underlying economic system to eliminate poverty.

What do you think is especially important about labor history?

Labor history, like all history, is a guide for action today. The media and education system is removing these historical lessons from textbooks, which we need to understand because the conditions for working people in the U.S and in many countries are getting worse yet in other countries are vastly improving.  We need to teach that working people HAVE fought and won gains – that it IS possible.  If we don’t know the history of what their struggles were about and what happened, working people and their organizations can become demoralized, or resort to experimenting and re-hashing the same mistakes over and over again, and working people just can’t afford to lose anymore. While Forbes list adds 200 more billionaires to their list in the last year so there are now 1,426 in the world with 442 in the US, the number of U.S. households living on $2 or less in income per person per day in a given month increased to 1.46 million in 2011, a  130% growth from 1996!

How does the work that you are doing contribute to building a better world for working people?

I think a better world for working people starts with leadership and organization OF the people to truly represent their interests.  That leadership and organization has to work toward a goal of a better world for the majority of the people on the planet, not just for a handful of the wealthy. I’m a full-time volunteer organizer for an all-volunteer independent media organization called Women’s Press Collective. Over 90% of mainstream US media is owned by corporate conglomerates, and they promulgate information that can confuse, attack, degrade, and misrepresent the interests, goals, organizations, and movements of working people. Their media makes working people who are organizing look like the bad guys, like we’re the problem. There will be people who will believe the lies and sensational stories in the media and get confused and won’t fight. They are kept ignorant of those who are wining and bettering their conditions as the mainstream media will just not report on this news or bury it. There needs to be leadership and press organizations to break through that also.  90% of the media – including internet sites, TV, radio, publications – are now owned by six wealthy corporations and the government allows for this super-consolidated ownership to take place. I started organizing full-time as a volunteer, with WPC in 2010 because the brutal conditions of poverty must change, the media has a strong influence on our thinking whether we can break these chains of poverty and we need true leadership and organization to fight our way forward.

My family and I were in poverty like millions of working people. I saw what that does to people and I think we need to fundamentally change the root cause of poverty. I saw that one element of what it would take to change things is having a media that serves the interests of working people and their efforts to better their conditions as they organize production resources into the hands of working people. So every single day I’m out in the community, talking to people from all walks of life about the need for an independent press and finding people who will volunteer and support this effort. I organize the same way any serious organizer in history has done, face-to-face and arms length. I consider organizing my profession. Throughout history individuals decide to make a political commitment towards changing the conditions in their country, but individuals can’t do it alone so they join an organization. This is nothing new within struggles for working people.

I help teach our members of low-income workers, small business owners, cash-strapped associations and organizations with causes how to produce materials that can assist them in their daily lives – some have small businesses and need to design a business card, some need printed or designed materials for their cash strapped low-income schools.  In other cases they are producing literature and publications they need to spread the word of their own fight to change working conditions for their group. It gives them a voice. I meet journalists, printers, photographers that are fed up with how they’re been de-professionalized, underpaid, and they hate working for corporate media and want a way to use their skills to aid the community. I also teach people how to organize and anyone can learn how to organize and build organization that serves the interests of working people.

How do you see the future for working people?

It all depends on what we do now and how we organize today. If working people decide to study history and learn from the winners, they can start to have power in the U.S. over their lives. This can lead to something to emulate for improvement of conditions for working people in other countries who also suffer form these problems.

Anything else that you want to add?

If anyone wants to volunteer to learn organizing, has a publication project that they want to start, or wants a copy of WPC’s magazine Collective Endeavor, you can reach me at Women’s Press Collective 718.222.0405.