Racial Unity Dialogues

Starting in March 2024, EAT and Working Family Solidarity are collaborating on Racial Unity Dialogues. This series of six sessions will bring Black informal workers and Latinx migrants together to build interracial solidarity among low-wage and contingent workers. These sessions will take place throughout 2024 (3/21, 5/23, 6/27, 7/18, 9/12, and 10/TBD).

When Black southern migrants came to Chicago in the thousands during the Great Migration, fleeing racial terror and lured by the promises of better wages, homes with running water, & basic freedoms that were denied to them in the South, they instead faced overcrowded tenements, violence, and entrenched racism. Today, Black communities in Chicago continue to endure the impacts of system oppression, from chattel slavery to modern-day mass incarceration. Current statistics reveal stark disparities for Black people in employment, life expectancy, homeownership, education funding, and incarceration rates.

Currently, thousands of people are also being displaced by the interconnected border and climate crises, as well as the decades of harmful US foreign policy that led to economic collapse in many Central American countries. Having been forced out of their homes, these Latin migrants are now facing similar hardships that Black southern migrants experienced decades earlier. Narratives of scarcity are renewed in today’s migrant crisis with little regard for the lessons of the past. As a result, both communities remain cut off from accessing the vital resources they need to survive.

Furthermore, stoked by the media, racial tension between Black and Brown communities is growing. The need for cross-racial dialogue amongst working-class people is at an all-time high. To unpack and understand the interconnectedness of our struggles, EAT hosted a series of six racial unity dialogues in partnership with Working Family Solidarity throughout 2024.

Collectively, our goals are to:

• Build working-class solidarity between Black and Brown informal workers/ migrants;
• Hold space for Black and Brown working-class people to unpack the root causes–both distinct and interconnected–of the border crisis and the systemic injustices Black communities experience in the US;
• Highlight how winning comprehensive reparations for Black communities would establish the infrastructure for Chicago to actualize its commitment to being a sanctuary city;
• Build consensus around how vital it is to simultaneously fight for reparations for Black communities and safety & dignity for all migrants seeking refuge from the climate & border crises;
• Deconstruct the false dichotomy between Black and Brown communities’ struggles for equity and justice.