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Every schoolchild knows about Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, but working people across the country recognize that King was also a warrior for social and economic justice. Over the weekend, workers across the country rededicated themselves to follow his legacy and stand on the frontlines of justice for workers.
Speaking to the annual AFL-CIO Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Memphis, Tenn., which ended yesterday, AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy reminded the more than 1,300 participants that King, a longtime supporter of unions, went to Memphis in April 1968 to lend his support to the sanitation workers’ strike and was assassinated while in that city.
This was not a typical strike, of wanting more money per hour or another day’s vacation. This was a strike about respect and dignity, a struggle by 1,300 men to say to themselves and the city, “I am a man.” It was a struggle about wanting to be treated like a man.
Those of us who were fortunate enough to be participants in that owe to these men a whole new experience in our lives.
In what was the highlight of the five-day conference, Lucy moderated a panel of veterans of the 1968 strike. “It was one of the most moving experiences of my life,” says James Gibbs, organizing director of the Mine Workers, who heard the panelists.
This is what being in a union is all about—people fighting against all odds, putting their lives and their livelihoods on the line to just get what’s due them—respect, dignity and to be treated fairly. Just to be treated like a human being—it shouldn’t be this hard.
Speaking in Austin to the Texas AFL-CIO, federation Organizing Director Stewart Acuff sounded the same theme:
…corporate America really does not want you to know is that Dr. King fought for economic justice and he fought for our labor movement and the right to form unions and bargain collectively. He fought for the dispossessed and the power of the working class.
Dr. King fought to change an economic system designed to allow the few to profit obscenely from the work of the many, to allow the few to gain vast amounts of power at the expense of the many. Dr. King fought an economic system rigged to ensure that the work of us, our kids, and our grandkids profits those who do not know what it means to work hard all day, day after day. Corporate America does not want you to know that.
Fred Mason, president of the Maryland-D.C. AFL-CIO, says King’s legacy is one that could inspire all Americans.
He was a student of history. He understood that a people who are determined to be free, just as the founders of this country were, cannot be stopped. That’s why he consistently called on America to live up to what it says it stands for—equality and justice for all.
Dorothy Crook lives King’s legacy every day. Crook is director of AFSCME Local 1733, the union that was formed by the striking sanitation workers. Crook, whose local now represents thousands of public workers throughout the Memphis area, says you can’t separate civil rights and workers’ rights:
Labor and civil rights are one in the same. They are part of who you are, what you do every day and part of the things you do for working people.
Crook is one of several people featured in a series of video clips from the annual King Day celebration on the AFL-CIO website. Click here to see the videos from the conference and videos that chronicle King’s support of the strikers.
To fully live out King’s dream, Acuff also told the Texas group:
Dr. King believed and showed us that in our hands joined in struggle we have the power to beat Jim Crow…to beat George Bush and the radical right-wing forces that have run our country and our lives too long.
One of the leaders of the Memphis strike, Jesse Epps, says the need to organize is just as great now as it was then:
Organize our community so we can unionize the workplace. It is a repudiation of the good of this nation when 15 percent [union membership] carries the other 85 percent on their backs.
With the 2008 elections less than 10 months away, those who gathered in Memphis on Jan. 17–21 focused on taking political action, helping workers form unions and building coalitions to ensure that King’s dream becomes a reality.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker says:
In 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told the AFL-CIO convention that “when the Negro wins, labor wins,” and that is just as true now as it was then. He warned us that the forces that fought against unions also tried to keep Negroes from voting and in poverty.
King’s words ring true today as studies show 45 percent of African Americans who were born in the late 1960s into middle-class families have fallen into the bottom 20 percent of income
To help ensure that the issues facing people of color and workers are heard in this election, participants in the King Day celebration spent nearly four hours Friday afternoon in get-out-the-vote training sessions.
They also reached out to those in need in Memphis in a big way—just as Dr. King did. The AFL-CIO and member unions, especially the Transport Workers (TWU), donated 30 computers to schools in the Memphis area, including an entire computer lab to Caldwell Elementary School, where 96 percent of the pupils are considered disadvantaged. AFSCME also donated $15,000 worth of clothing, toys and school supplies to three Head Start centers.
The Electrical Workers (IBEW) wired the computer lab, and the donations had the full support of the AFT and the National Education Association.
Historian Michael Honey, who is taking part in the events this weekend, published a book on the sanitation workers’ strike, Going Down Jericho Road, which is available here. During the strike, workers carried signs proclaiming “I Am A Man.” A poster of that image is available here.
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Tags: Martin Luther King Jr., William Lucy, Arlene Holt Baker, Michael Honey, Memphis, civil rights, workers’ rights, union, unions, labor, union blogs, AFSCME, Electrical Workers, IBEW, AFT, National Education Association, Mine Workers, UMWA, Fred Mason
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