Black Socialists of America Is Putting Anti-Capitalism on the Map

Teddy Ostrow

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Z, the co-founder of BSA, talks with The Nation about building alternatives to capitalism.

Z co-founded Black Socialists of America in 2017. (Photo: Adam Kargenian)

As Z and Sean watched the leftist ecosystem expand in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, they noticed something still missing: There was no broad socialist organizing grounded in the black radical tradition. And so, in 2017, they founded Black Socialists of America, and declared it internationalist, eco-socialist, democratic, intersectional, nonsectarian, anti-war, and revolutionary. It quickly earned the endorsement of Noam Chomsky, who wrote that it was “particularly encouraging” that BSA was attempting to create “the germs of a future and better society within the deeply flawed existing one.”

As its 26-year-old national coordinator, Z conceived of the collective’s most ambitious project yet: the Dual Power Map, which seeks to plot every worker co-op, small-business development center, community land trust, and “dual power” project in the United States. Along with a snappy Twitter feed and a wealth of radical knowledge, BSA seeks to inspire and aid an international rainbow coalition, which Z insists will be one day realized. (Z and Sean requested that their government names not be used to protect their privacy.) To discuss the organization and “dual power,” The Nation spoke by phone with Z.

—Teddy Ostrow

Teddy Ostrow: What is Black Socialists of America, and what are you hoping to achieve with it?

Z: Black Socialists of America is a network of anti-capitalist black Americans who are not just interested in building up a platform for black American leftists or getting the ideas of black American leftists out into popular dialogue; we’re also trying to push mass education in poor and working-class black and brown communities to dismantle capitalist relations and the capitalist state.

We’re not advocating for a black nation state, but we believe that black people need to be able to build in self-determination—in coalitions with people from other communities—to ensure that our particular needs and interests are met and that we have space to implement the various ideas, organizational structures, and approaches that we know best fit our communities.

TO: What does Black Socialists of America do on a day-to-day basis? What are the main activities and operations?

Z: What we want BSA to be as time goes on is essentially a national collective and network for black leftists who are trying to build on what we’re calling “dual power projects” and Cooperation Jackson. Some of their members are a part of our organization, and we’re formally partnered up with them. Their project—a federation of predominantly black-owned worker cooperatives based out of Jackson, Mississippi—is utilizing the tools of what we call the “solidarity economy movement” in order to build on this idea of economic democracy and community control. They’re doing it under an explicitly eco-socialist, anti-capitalist politics.

And so we want to catalyze the development of Cooperation Jacksons throughout the country, and we want to be able to support and connect these various initiatives.

TO: Why do you think poor and working-class communities of color need to mobilize with socialism as a guiding philosophy?

Z: There’s a lot of ways I can answer that question, but I want to start by quoting one of the first black socialists of America, who was a preacher by the name of George W. Woodbey. He has a quote, and mind you, he said this in 1909: “Negroes…are yet under the impression that the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few Negroes will solve this problem…notwithstanding the fact that a few white men have all the wealth and the rest of their brothers are getting poorer everyday.”

First and foremost we have to understand that we—poor and working-class black people—are in the position that we’re in because of capitalist relations and a capitalist logic in tandem with white supremacy and various other systems of oppression that we’ve been dealing with since chattel slavery. You can’t use exploitative methods to transcend a system of exploitation.

TO: I want to get more into those weeds in a little bit. But first, tell me a bit about yourself. When did you come to be a socialist, and how did you come up with the idea for this organization?

Z: I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household. For the first 17, 18 years of my life, everything was oriented around Jesus Christ and the types of values that came along with that. There are figures throughout the black radical tradition who had a similar upbringing. I don’t believe in any organized religion at this point in my life, but I do think that might’ve played a role in shaping my values and in how I perceive the world around me, perceive people in my community, and perceive struggle—what that means and what that is.

But I really didn’t come around to socialism explicitly until sometime after university. Throughout that entire period, I took a deeper dive into left history and theory and heterodox economics, which is still something that I’m learning. But in December of 2017—it was actually after Cornel West put out that piece in The Guardian critiquing Ta-Nehisi Coates—the response he got infuriated me. Black petit bourgeois academics calling him a hater, that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that he’s washed up, all these different things. I was like OK, there needs to be some sort of platform for black leftists in the United States.

So in December of 2017, I started Black Socialists of America as a social media platform to let people know that not only are black anti-capitalists here in numbers, but also black socialists have been here for well over a century—well over a century. Black people have been using mutual aid and cooperative economics since chattel slavery. We had black American socialists back when Karl Marx himself was still alive. Peter H. Clark, for example, who we identify as the first black socialist of America, was writing about socialism in the 1870s.

Through this platform I curated that history from the 1870s to today, covering the Black Panther Party and various individuals and movements throughout history—sharing pictures, quotes, videos, articles. And after a certain amount of time, I started sharing more of my views. Doing threads on various dynamics got a lot of traction. Within six or seven months, in the middle of 2018, we partnered up with Cooperation Jackson formally.

It went from being “black American leftists need a platform” to we have a chance here to present to people a concrete practical strategy and model that can allow us to start building counter power and counter institutions against capitalist relations.

TO: What does BSA offer to black leftists that other organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America, do not?

Z: I mean, where do I start? I just want to preface my response here by saying that I have comrades in DSA, and they’ve been supportive of us for a long time. Before Black Socialists of America, there was no all-encompassing organization that represented us and our history. There are black anti-capitalist organizations that have been here for a long time, but if you googled “black socialists,” you weren’t going to get a lot of results.