AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff spoke to the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Minority Caucus conference in St. Louis on Jan. 12. Here are some excerpts from that speech, which focused on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for working people.

The labor movement has been under an all out assault for 25 years by the forces of reaction—corporations and right-wing politicians. The effects of that assault have been devastating. We’ve lost membership and market shares, bargaining power and political power.

It is tempting to hunker down and stay on the defensive. But the IBEW led by (President) Ed Hill is going on the offense, devoting more money than ever to organizing, opening up to tens of thousands of new members, making members into full-time, professional organizers, using creative tactics and strategies to grow and restore market share.

IBEW is growing in other ways. I was in Tennessee last fall when a young black man ran to be the first African American elected to the U.S. Senate from a southern state since Reconstruction—Harold Ford. And I watched the IBEW stand up for Harold Ford, stand up for social and economic justice, and, yes, stand up for racial justice across that great state.

That is part of living the legacy.

Our labor movement can no longer afford division. Workers cannot afford to be divided. Unions cannot afford to be divided.

It is past time for workers to tear down a barrier that comes between us—our race, our gender, our sexual orientation, our nationality, the land of our birth, our language. We must tear down all that would divide us.

We are all the same in the eyes of an Almighty God. We have the same needs, the same wants—and the same enemies: unbridled corporate greed, right-wing reacting politicians, politics of hate and fear.

So as we approach the holiday to honor Dr. King, what is his legacy?

First, he was a man of God, a preacher and pastor, but more. (He was) a prophet in the mold of Jeremiah, who said: “Render justice every morning and deliver those who are oppressed from the power of their oppressor.” And Isaiah who said: “Is this not the fast (struggle) I have chosen, to loose the bonds of wickedness and free the oppressed.” As did Jeremiah and Isaiah in their time, Dr. King called his country and people to justice and to freedom, to social and economic justice and racial justice.

He was a man of love. He told us that over and over. Dr. King believed what Paul said to the Romans: “Be ye not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Dr. King believed in the power of love, God’s love for us and our love for one another.

The corporations and mainstream media will tell you he was a dreamer. He did, indeed, have a dream, but he was no dreamer. Dr. King lived in the arena of life and struggle. Dr. King did not watch as people marched in Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala.; and Atlanta; and Charleston, S.C.; and Chicago. He led those demonstrations. He took being spit on, (having) bottles and rocks thrown at him in Chicago and Skokie Cicero.

Ultimately, as he said in his last speech the night before his death, he knew that his place and leadership in the arena of struggle would cost him his life. Not only did he engage himself, he called others, including children to engage and struggle and take risks. Dr. King knew, as did A. Philip Randolph that freedom and justice aren’t given to oppressed people, freedom and justice…they are won.

Dr. King believed in…the power of people united by love and a hunger for justice to win. And the movement Dr. King led fundamentally changed the most powerful country in the history of the world.

Dr. King struggled for economic justice. Dr. King and SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), which King founded, led the hospital strike in Charleston, S.C., and the Scripto strike in Atlanta. And, of course, he died helping to lead the AFSCME strike in Memphis.

Indeed, I would submit to you that Dr. King was a trade unionist. He believed in our movement and struggled for our movement. He knew and he preached that civil rights were inadequate without economic rights. Dr. King knew that our economic system allows a few to have too much power and wealth and workers to have too little, so he believed that we have a responsibility to struggle to push down wealth and power from those who have too much to those who have too little. That is why he was a trade unionist. His last great campaign was the Poor People’s Campaign to organize America’s poor to fight for economic justice and dignity.

Well, you say, Stewart, that was 40 years ago. What does all that mean for today?

Dr. King would look at our country and he would call us to struggle! To engage! To take risks! To fight for justice! He would look at life for too many Americans—45 million more without adequate health care; a minimum wage with less spending power than at any time in 70 years, a minimum wage that hasn’t been raised in 10 years, 20 percent more people living in poverty than when George [W.] Bush became president.

The assault against the workers of America, their families and their unions began 25-30 years ago. The consequences of that assault have been terrible:

• Although our productivity has gone up by 105 percent in the last 25 years, our wages have been stagnant for 25 years.
• Market share has declined. Union membership and density has declined.

That decline in density on the percentage of workers in unions has cost us dearly. That decline in density has cost us bargaining power. It has cost us political power.

I think Dr. King would say it is time we had a fight to restore workers’ rights in America and worker power in America and to rebuild the American Labor Movement.

I think Dr. King would look at what they’ve done to the working class and say to all of us—now what are you gonna do?

They offshored our manufacturing base and destroyed America’s industry and manufacturing and industrial jobs. We’ve lost 3 million manufacturing jobs since Bush was elected.

They’ve assaulted public education!

They’ve privatized public sector jobs—turning them from good-paying union jobs into poverty-level nonunion jobs.

And, most important, they’ve destroyed our right to organize and bargain collectively.

What are we gonna do? It is time to have a fight in America for America’s workers!

We can and expect to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in the House of Representatives by summertime! Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi (D-Calif.) has committed to that! Call your senator and member of Congress today (at) 202-224-3121.

Then it will be a helluva fight in the Senate and we’ll have to elect a president who will sign it—but we can win this fight.

Organize more and more and more. Engage our political leaders—call today! Link our politics to organizing.

Finally, I think Dr. King, a man of peace, would call on us to stop the war and occupation in Iraq.