Black protests about workers and economic issues

One of the things that surprised our team as we read and coded Black newspaper articles about protests was the high frequency of protests by and about workers in Black newspapers. We also saw a lot of coverage of protests about cuts in public services in cities with high Black populations, protests that often linked public workers and residents. We focused our initial efforts on the period 1994-2010 where we could compare Black newspapers to mainstream newswires. But we are slowing working (currently without funding) through our trove of Black newspaper articles about protests 2011-2019. As I read through articles from 2011 and 2012 I realized that Black newspapers gave a great deal of attention to the Wisconsin Uprising in 2011 and the Occupy protests later that year. These are both protest campaigns that are typically viewed through a mainstream White lens, sometimes with a mention of Black people feeling excluded. But putting this coverage in the context of what we had previously seen about Black newspaper coverage of worker protests, we are now in the process of developing qualitative and quantitative papers about these protests and how Black newspapers described them.

The main thing we are digging into is that Black newspapers talked about worker issues and class issues as Black issues.

This blog post offers some time trends to help contextualize our work. I’ve extracted all the protests we have classified as being about workers or unions as well as those about public funding for services and those about national economic policies.

Note for screen readers: the numbers underlying all the graphs are in tables at the bottom of the post.

The first graph shows articles in Black newspapers that our project has identified as including a protest-relevant event involving workers or economic issues. “National economics” excludes the occupy protests. “Local funding, control” includes events about schools and other local services that are mostly protests about funding cuts but sometimes about loss of local control. “Private workers, unions” is all protests about worker issues that are not included in the next few categories. “Workers in general” are protests about worker rights or wages as a general issue. “Public workers” are protests and labor actions by public workers, including teachers but excluding the separately tabulated Wisconsin and Ohio protest episodes. “Wisconsin Act 10” are the protests specifically about the February 2011 omnibus bill that eliminated collective bargaining rights for public workers, effectively cut public worker pay, and included many other economic proposals to benefit wealthy people and cut services to low income people. These proposals led to a month-long occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol building and massive daily protests for a month. “Ohio Bill 5” was similar legislation in Ohio called Senate Bill 5 that led to multiple large protests. “Occupy” Collects all the protests that used the “Occupy” label, including Occupy the Hood. Although the overall theme of these protests was the 99% versus the 1%, many of the local protests using the Occupy label had other issues. Later work will seek to sort out the diverse threads within this broad occupy group.

The next three graphs show articles, events covered by Black newspapers only, and events covered by any source (which includes newswires for 1994-2010). The main picture is a huge uptick in protests in 2011 in all the relevant categories, not just the three big episodes.

Because the large majority of worker and economic related protests were covered only in Black newspapers and not in mainstream newswires, we don’t get many more protest events 1994-2010 when we include them; the Black newspapers alone are giving us the same picture.

In short, Black worker protests and Black protests about economic issues are longstanding and an important dimension of Black collective action that has often been ignored. There are histories of the Black labor movement and of the role of Black workers in public service unions which we are consulting as we do our work. But even those sources have very little information about the time period we are studying.

It is also helpful to get a close up of what happened in 2011 and 2012. The next graph focuses in 2011 and 2012 and shows event counts per month by issue group. Remember, all of these events are mentioned in Black newspapers. The Wisconsin and Ohio protests centered in February and March 2011. The “worker general” protests in April were a huge wave of coordinated events centered on April 4, the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. These events had workers and unions and collective bargaining as central themes. The Occupy protests begin in September 2011 and their peak is October and November, although they continue throughout most of 2012.

Table 1 Articles per year (Black newspaper)

	national economics	local funding, control	private workers, unions	workers in general	public workers	Wisconsin Act 10	Ohio Bill 5	Occupy	Total
Year
1994		11	11	1	3				26
1995	3	21	8	4	13				49
1996		22	38	4	16				80
1997		24	51	6	4				85
1998		27	37	8	36				108
1999		24	30	6	22				82
2000		14	44	6	13				77
2001		31	32	3	12				78
2002	1	32	34	5	8				80
2003		53	38	7	23				121
2004	1	18	46	9	29				103
2005		14	40	5	26				85
2006		8	52	2	35				97
2007	2	15	30	4	9				60
2008	4	8	32	3	12				59
2009	1	35	15	4	13				68
2010	2	23	36	4	7				72
2011	8	76	67	52	15	80	16	160	474
2012	10	55	45	14	35	10	1	35	205
Total	32	511	686	147	331	90	17	195	2,009

Table 2 Events per year (Black newspapers)

	Issue Group
	national economics	local funding, control	private workers, unions	workers in general	public workers	Wisconsin Act 10	Ohio Bill 5	Occupy	Total
year
1994		13	20	2	5				40
1995	3	36	26	7	14				86
1996	1	45	62	4	15				127
1997		37	53	9	4				103
1998		24	52	9	19				104
1999		28	32	10	30				100
2000		27	59	13	14				113
2001		42	31	3	13				89
2002		59	35	5	21				120
2003		68	46	10	43				167
2004	3	21	50	6	47				127
2005		18	56	6	26				106
2006		15	62	4	27				108
2007	2	19	46	6	11				84
2008	7	10	35	4	4				60
2009	4	43	21	7	8				83
2010	3	34	43	3	9	1			93
2011	12	80	64	30	18	36	23	143	406
2012	12	54	56	21	26	2		36	207
Total	47	673	849	159	354	39	23	179	2,323

Table 3 Events per year, all sources

	Issue Group
	national economics	local funding, control	private workers, unions	workers in general	public workers	WisconsinAct10	OhioBill5	Occupy	Total
year
1994		13	22	2	5				42
1995	3	38	29	7	17				94
1996	1	46	79	4	19				149
1997		41	55	9	4				109
1998		26	56	9	19				110
1999		28	36	10	30				104
2000		27	70	13	14				124
2001		43	34	3	13				93
2002		60	35	5	21				121
2003		68	46	10	43				167
2004	3	21	50	6	47				127
2005		18	59	6	26				109
2006		15	67	4	27				113
2007	2	19	47	6	11				85
2008	7	12	37	4	4				64
2009	4	43	21	7	8				83
2010	3	34	43	3	9	1			93
2011	12	80	64	30	18	36	23	143	406
2012	12	54	56	21	26	2		36	207
Total	47	686	906	159	361	39	23	179	2,400

Table 4 Events per month

	Issue group
	national economics	local funding, control	private workers, unions	workers in general	public workers	Wisconsin Act10	Ohio Bill 5	Occupy	Total
Month
jan11	1	6	6	1					14
feb11		14	9	2		18	7		50
mar11		6	6	3	1	14	6		36
apr11	2	9	2	11	5		6	1	36
may11		10	4	1	1		1		17
jun11		12	3	3		4	2		24
jul11		3	6	1	2				12
aug11	1	4	8	1			1		15
sep11	6	2	5		7			24	44
oct11		5	3	2	1			67	78
nov11	2	3	8	2	1			49	65
dec11		6	3	3				2	14
jan12	1	13	5	3	1	1		9	33
feb12	1	4	3					3	11
mar12		5	2		3	1		5	16
apr12		10	4	2	1			6	23
may12	4	8	3		1				16
jun12		5	1		5				11
jul12	1	2	3	9	2			2	19
aug12		1	2		1			1	5
sep12	3	3	13		7			7	33
oct12	1		11	1	3			2	18
nov12	1		5	2	2			1	11
dec12		3	4	4					11
Total	24	134	119	51	44	38	23	179	612