At the 2017 LRAN National Conference held at Howard University, we convened a workshop about the dearth of Black researchers in the labor movement and how our movement was weakened by this lack of Black strategies and perspectives. This workshop led to subsequent conversations that identified a broader need for more Black strategists (researchers, lead organizers, allied scholars) and a Black and Southern-oriented school of thought anchored in the principle that working people’s ability to organize and collectively bargain, alongside voting and other forms of civic participation, is a prerequisite for a healthy society and economy. In the fall of 2020, Jobs With Justice Education Fund, Institute for Policy Studies' Black Workers Initiative, and Morehouse College International Comparative Labor Studies launched the Advancing Black Strategists Initiative (ABSI). ABSI continues to remain connected with LRAN and our 2022 conference will be held at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA.

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