CommUNITY Health & Wellness Day
Organization for Black Struggle, Youth Council for Positive Development & Partners presents a day to unite us. – Sat. October 3, 2020 11 am-2 pm Dr. Martin Luther King & Hodiamont
September 29, 2020
The Struggle Continues!
Support our work for racial justice and our 40-year-old struggle to advance an empowerment agenda for Black and Brown working people.
40 years advancing black liberation
Raised $26,698.51 of $100,000
Join us in advancing the struggle! Your financial support will help us to advance racial justice and promote economic equity by institutionalizing 40 years of proven social activist strategies. We appreciate your support.
For a tax deductible donation, give to our fiscal sponsor
The Organization for Black Struggle (OBS) appreciate the unwavering support of people like you. OBS has organized locally and nationally for nearly four decades. In 2014, the police killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson Uprising positioned the organization for national prominence. We were instrumental in sustaining one of the longest protests in modern history. Along with our allies, we created a movement for accountability that inspired reforms in policing and in the court system. Ferguson became the catalyst for centering the Black Lives Movement to continue the national reckonings on police violence and the need for racial justice and all-around accountability in the 21st century.
Your financial support will help us to advance racial justice and promote economic equity by institutionalizing 40 years of proven social activist strategies. The global push for criminal justice reform coupled with community-level political accountability is a core part of OBS’ DNA. The reckoning that is being amplified by the growing Black Lives Matter movement has been the cornerstone of the OBS mission throughout its history. Join us in advancing the struggle!
Who we are
The Organization for Black Struggle (OBS) was founded in 1980. A group of veteran activists, students, union organizers and community members in St. Louis were seeking to address the needs and issues of the Black working-class. There was a vacuum of Black radical leadership that could boldly speak and act, unencumbered by government or corporate structures. In retrospect, this was a challenging period.
The FBI’s CounterIntelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO, wreaked havoc on the leaders and organizations of the Black Liberation Movement. By 1980 the right was beginning to consolidate its power politically, with a conservative in the White House for the next 12 years. The country was struggling to get out of the economic recession. It was out of this abyss that OBS was born.
Our Mission,Vision & Theory of change
- OUR VISION: To contribute to the creation of a society free of all forms of exploitation and oppression.
- OUR MISSION: To build a movement that fights for political empowerment, economic justice and the cultural dignity of the African-American community, especially the Black working class.
- OUR THEORY OF CHANGE: To educate and organize the Black working class to act and in their own self-interests and to build political and economic power in a unified, strategic way.
Our Work
Racial Justice
Our people deserve court systems that are just and free of political corruption. We will fight for a society in which every person and every community is liberated from state repression and violence. We are determined to end police brutality and murder. We will fight for the abolition of the prison industrial complex and the death penalty.
Women's Rights
OBS upholds Black, radical feminism and recognizes the intersectionality of race, class and gender. We fight against all forms of patriarchy, such as sexism and misogyny, that stifles the full human rights of women in all areas of personal, social, economic and political life. We respect the spectrum of gender and sexual identities.
Black Workers Rights
We demand a re-structuring of the capitalist economy to ensure human needs are met over the accumulation of corporate super-profits. We seek full employment at livable wages. We support the right of workers to organize themselves in public and private sectors. Workers deserve a safe and healthy work environment.
Black Political Power
We believe in Black self-determination in all areas of society. We fight for a political system that results in a real democracy where Black people and all marginalized people can effectively exercise full political power and govern. We demand the end to voter repression and disenfranchisement.
Youth Empowerment
We believe our children are truly our future. The quality of their lives is based upon quality education, health care, housing, recreation and nutrition. We fight for the end to the dehumanization and criminalization of our children and youth. We seek to build communities that are child-centered and that support families in a holistic way.
Get the book
Ferguson, MO became the epicenter of a major political earthquake in 2014, shaking the core of how we see Black America, police and policing—jolting us into a new political normal that continues to shape the contours of race and class in this country. Jamala Rogers lays out the historical roots of rebellion in the region and whose seeds have been sown in urban areas across the country. The Ferguson Uprising was no anomaly but a permanent powder keg of conditions waiting to be ignited by the next flagrant act of racist violence.
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Stay connected
Organization for Black Struggle
P.O. Box 5277
St. Louis, MO 63115
(314) 367-5959 | contactus@obs-stl.org
The Organization for Black Struggle is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization.