TSU Hosting Workers Rights Conference

By Logan Langlois

NASHVILLE, TN — Tennessee State University’s Avon Williams Campus will be hosting the 13th bi-annual Southern Human Rights Organizers Conference, SHROC, this December 14th through 16th. SHROC founder Jaribu Hill said the conference allows workers struggles activists to exchange ideas and network. Hill said topics for the weekend will include institutional inequalities which consolidate wealth, workplace systems Hill said enslave workers and abuse Black and Brown citizens, and the prospect of a ‘Cop City’ being built in Nashville.

Hill said since SHROC is a Black-lead organization they wanted to uplift a college historically important to the Black community, which is why they chose William’s Campus as their location. Hill said that SHROC has been hosted in a variety of different southern cities since its first event in 1996 in Jackson, Mississippi. During her time, Hill said she has seen a variety of different real-world activism begin with conversations being had at these conferences, including SHROC recently standing with hospital workers in South Carolina.

Hill said that she has been encouraged by seeing workers’ rights organizations and unions around the nation gain traction in bettering workers’ conditions and representation. She said featured speakers who represent much of the current push for workers’ rights include the current president of the Amazon labor union Chris Smalls, fast food workers’ rights activist Fran Marion of Kansas City Stand Up, and Black Alliance for Peace Founder Ajamu Baraka among many others. She continued that the conference will also hold time specifically to hear the thoughts, concerns, and opinions of the Nashvillian community.

When addressing the prospect of a possible ‘Cop City’ build site being identified near Nashville, Hill said that she first believed that the money being spent on such a project could be better spent on social, medical, and education programs lacking in high crime areas around Music City that are economically disadvantaged. Regarding ‘Cop City’ itself, Hill said SHROC’s main concern is that such a construction would further embolden what they “see as a police state system.” Hill said the “police state system” is one that disproportionately issues out physical harm and even death to POC citizens citing crimes no greater than their white counterparts.

“It’s important for us to get in on the front end raising our voices against this type of formation,” Hill said. “Against this type of institution that further supports the awesomeness of police power.”

SHROC said the conference’s theme is “radical alternative for liberation & human rights,” which Hill defined as approaching societal issues by asking what’s good for society rather than what’s good for capital. Hill said that it’s society’s current capital-first system that has led to the system of worker oppression practiced throughout the United States. Hill said that it’s under American society’s current capital-first system which has allowed for the widespread and even institutional practices of white supremacy, as well as its byproducts of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and classism.

Hill said that she sees the conference as a way of uplifting social activism in the South, where she said the United States experiences its main zone of oppression regarding workers’ rights. However, Hill was also quick to mention that the oppressive systems SHROC fights against are not exclusive to the South.

“We want to lift up the south and we want to lift up the importance of southern organizing and the importance of looking at the modern-day forms of Southern oppression,” Hill said. “How we see the modern manifestations of Jim Crow, how we see the modern manifestations of segregation and apartheid in our country, it really can be seen most starkly in the south.”