Dara Walker-The role of students in League of Revolutionary Black Workers, black power movement in Detroit,1967-1970

Here is a short clip, 11-1/2 minutes, from the November 14 2021 Zoom session “Discuss, Cuss and Fuss” of the General Baker Institute in Detroit. Carolyn Baker as always does the lead-in and introduces Penn State University Adjunct Professor Dara Walker who presents the role of black students in the creation and activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit, during the period following the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, a period when the Revolutionary Union Movement or RUM groups were being formed by black workers in the auto industry in Detroit.

General Gordon Baker, Jr. was among the founders of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the first org. to make up the LRBW. He had been in Cuba in the mid-1960s and became a vocal draft resistor to the war in Vietnam, and was as he said “Johnny on-the-spot” when the 1967 Detroit Rebellion broke out over one particular incident of police abuse of black workers in Detroit.

Many of the youth members of the LRBW were not at the time even employed, but were drawn in to the radicalization of the working class in Detroit at the time and carried out important tasks such as printing pamphlets, leaflets, and newspapers, along with distribution and all sorts of outreach activities.

This is not mere nostalgia, because as we look around today, we discover that the Generation Zero youth are emerging as leaders in many of the social movements of the world at present. In the USA, the fact that 48% of the youths in Gen Z are from communities of color (National Public Radio) assures that once again, youth of color will play a crucial role in the developing revolutionary movements of our time–and on a global scale.

Here is Dara’s presentation.

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