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Holt Baker: Union and Civil Rights Movements Can Turn Country Around |
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In this pivotal election year, the union and civil rights movements together can turn the country around from the disastrous course we have been on in recent years. But it will require members of both movements to “get angry and get our voters to the polls, fight through the barriers, wait in the lines and stand up” for our neighbors who are suffering in this economy, says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker.
Speaking at the annual Labor Luncheon at the NAACP’s national convention in Cincinnati this week, Holt Baker said:
It seems to me that for the past 30 years, our country has been headed in the wrong direction, with our dual movements for civil rights and union rights struggling against a huge tide of oppressive history.
What we need now is a brand-new deal, because instead of a “can do” country, we’ve become a “negative nation.”
Holt Baker pointed out that the nation has lost half a million jobs in the past six months alone. Instead of investing our tax dollars in education for our children, she says, the Bush administration is “spending $10 billion a month on an unjustified war in Iraq and killing other people’s children.”
She challenged the audience to mount a campaign to counter corporations and the wealthy elite who are benefiting from the widening gap in wealth and who are thwarting workers’ efforts to join unions to create a better life.
The rich people and the right wingers in our country have their hands in our pockets up to their elbows, and they are not going to give up or give in without a fight.
To defeat them will take more than just a bigger and more powerful campaign by the civil rights movement and the labor movement. Together, we will turn around our economy. Together, we will turn around our health care. And together, we will turn around our country.
The NAACP’s long-standing relationship with the union movement has been strengthened by the selection of Benjamin Jealous as the new president and CEO of the organization. Jealous, who takes over in September, comes from a union background. He once worked for Frontlash, the AFL-CIO’s outreach program for young people. Frontlash helped lay the groundwork for later AFL-CIO programs, most notably the Organizing Institute, which trains and develops organizers from our membership, staff, community and college campuses across the country.
After the Labor Luncheon, delegates marched to Cincinnati’s City Hall to rally in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. In June, Cincinnati’s City Council took an important step in protecting workers’ rights, by passing a resolution urging passage of the bill.
“I commend the city council members who voted for the passage of this resolution,” said Doug Sizemore, executive secretary-treasurer of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO.
If local elected officials believe in strengthening workers’ voices on the job, a presidential nominee like Senator John McCain should as well. This is an opportunity for workers to level the playing field for those who seek to form a union for a better life.
Holt Baker echoed the remarks by Sen. Barack Obama who told the full convention earlier in the week:
What Dr. [Martin Luther] King and [former NAACP Executive Director] Roy Wilkins understood is that it doesn’t matter if you have the right to sit at the front of the bus if you can’t afford the bus fare. It doesn’t matter if you have the right to sit at the lunch counter if you can’t afford the lunch.
What they understood is that so long as Americans are denied the decent wages and good benefits and fair treatment that they deserve, the dream for which so many gave so much will remain out of reach; that to live up to our founding promise of equality for all, we have to make sure that opportunity is open to all.
McCain, who addressed the NAACP convention, has said he strongly opposes the Employee Free Choice Act, while Obama supports it. Working people have made passage of the act a major issue in the 2008 campaign.
The labor delegates also presented their major honor, the Benjamin Hooks Keeper of the Flame Award, to five individuals who have provided outstanding support for labor and working family causes. The winners include Ana Aponte-Curtis of the national NAACP staff; the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina state NAACP; WillieAnn Moore, Toledo (Ohio) NAACP president; Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake City branch of the NAACP; and Robin Williams, associate director of civil rights for the United Food and Commercial Workers.
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