A Summary of Beloved Community Center's Black/Brown work for Equality
Channel: Beloved Community Center
Date: 2012-02-26

The Beloved Community Center of Greensboro has a deep commitment to affirming the dignity worth and value of all people. This transformative work has led our center to the important work of building relationships between our African American and Latino communities. The Beloved Community Center hosted a MAJOR BLACK/BROWN Conference in 2008 which gathered over 400 people and served as a beginning to our discussions, efforts and work towards a better understanding and common ground of African American and Latino communities.
The Beloved Community Center has worked to pull together groups to stand against discriminatory federal policies, such as secure communities and the denial of the Dream act. The Beloved Community Center sees unity and honest dialogue as a way to confront the forces trying to divide the community and deepen the racism that exists in our culture. The Beloved Community Center visions this work to be foundational for the emerging period of economic hardship which will require a greater unity and deeper relationships
The BCC has worked in Partnership with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee and Oxfam to address human rights abuses within North Carolina's tobacco industry. This work is focused on Reynolds American Tobacco Company which operates a large part of its tobacco supply chain from the Eastern region of our state. This work has resulted in the release of a report released by Oxfam and FLOC that details the Human Rights abuses in the fields on NC.
Rev. Nelson Johnson has worked closely with the President of FLOC, Mr. Baldemar Velasquez giving voice to the issues affecting our migrant worker community. Rev. Johnson has worked with and organized several delegations of Ministers to take a journey to see and report back the story of the horrific living and working conditions of our Latino brothers and sisters in eastern NC. The work of growing the social justice conscious amongst our faith leaders is instrumental in building this movement towards justice for farmworkers and addressing larger deeper question of how do we build quality relationships with the most vulnerable of those in our society? as our faith calls us to do..
The compassion to care for our neighbor is called to action and this organizing effort to make visible these workers has been a major thrust of our black brown solidarity work. Students, Community leaders and Activists organized by the Beloved Community Center have also played a vital role in direct actions, community organizing and public education sessions to shed light on these injustices and work towards more just Labor relations.
Rev. Johnson also led the effort to work with Street Organizations, Particularly a Latino Street group to make peace treaties and work towards a non-violent street culture that has the opportunity to open the door for other marginalized groups and helping the community to see their unrealized potential. This important work has led the call for a more accountable and professional Police Department.
The BCC has works within faith, labor and community alliances to call for a greater and more unified social movement that speaks truth to power.

Copyright Notice: This video features the song "Barcelona Boo" by Eric Kamen available under a  Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license  

This video features photos by Steve Liss  and Lewis A. Brandon, III