By Cameron Harrison and Eric Brooks
Photos: People’s World\Facebook
ORLANDO—“We will not sit down! We will not give up. We will stand up, and we will fight until hell freezes over. And when it freezes over, we put on ice skates, and we don’t stop, we just keep on fighting.” With those words, Rev. Terrence L. Melvin, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) President, continued that organization’s fighting focus on countering the MAGA agenda through united, worker-led action.
With Donald Trump’s ongoing attacks on the labor movement and Black elected officials in mind, along with his recent display of racist disrespect toward South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, chants of “We have nothing to lose but our chains!” echoed through the convention hall as over 800 delegates from 60 unions gathered for the CBTU convention in Orlando.
This year’s theme—Unbought, Unbossed, Unstoppable—set the tone for a fiery opening session on Thursday, where labor leaders condemned the Trump administration’s attacks on workers and called for unified, worker-led resistance. But for the first time in the coalition’s history, founder and former president William “Bill” Lucy was not present. He passed away at the age of 90 last September.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler didn’t mince words: The first 120 days of Trump’s billionaire-backed agenda have been “designed to put workers in the background and the billionaires in the driver’s seat.”
Rev. Terrence L. Melvin, CBTU President, went further, accusing the federal government of being dismantled “by the rich, for the rich.” Mentioning union-prepared toolkits for action that were available, Melvin called on all the convention participants to take those toolkits home and take up the work of actively resisting the Trump agenda in their workplaces and communities.
“Many of us, including our veterans, have lost vital services while others have lost their jobs,” Melvin said. “There is a full-on assault against working people.”
Shuler warned that the administration’s policies aren’t just an assault on unions—they’re a deliberate attack on Black workers and history itself….
