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King’s Legacy: Fighting for Justice, Community
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While people of color have made tremendous progress in the past 50 years, there is still a long way to go before Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of justice and equality is realized. The union movement can play a big role at the front of the effort to create that new America, many participants said during the annual AFL-CIO King Day celebration.
One of the hallmarks of a more just society is that people take care of each other. On Friday, the more than 400 participants in the King Day celebration, which began Jan. 14 in Greensboro, N.C., spent the day in a mass community service project sorting clothes, supplies and other goods for distribution to local homeless shelters, unemployed people and others in need.
Said Jana Weaver, a member of AFSCME Council 24 in Madison, Wis., and a King Day participant:
Sometimes, unions get slammed for just caring about workers. But we are a positive force in the community. We’re always extending a helping hand to the less fortunate. The union and our communities are our family.
Lending a helping hand also means fighting to make sure everyone has the means to live a decent life. In her keynote address to the Greensboro gathering, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said it is time again to “take up the call to arms” to put people back to work:
Blacks, whites and immigrants have the constitutional right to sit at the same lunch counter today, but far too many of us are struggling to pay for that hamburger.
She called on Congress to enact the AFL-CIO’s five-point plan to create new jobs.
Holt Baker said today’s generation must leave our children and grandchildren a better life.
That is the legacy of the founding fathers and mothers of America’s civil rights movement. That is our responsibility.
Franklin McCain agrees. He’s one of the four trailblazing students whose sit-in at a Greensboro whites-only lunch counter 50 years ago ignited a nationwide effort that resulted in passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The four were honored today at the King Day event in Greensboro.
McCain says King understood it’s not enough to be able to sit at the lunch counter “if you don’t have any money in your pocket.”
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3 Comments
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Some photos of TWU members at the community service event can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/transportworkersunion/sets/72157623098771337/
It is time for Labor to wake up. We have put up with to much, it is time for the AFL-CIO to take charge and start a strong third party. Democrates always want Labors money, but “Stare up in the sky for UFO,s” when it is time to fight for us. I have been working in the airline industry for 36 years. I was “Raped” by Carl Icon! Who did the US Gov. protect? Carl!
When do we fight back? When do we stand up for something in this country? When do we stop worrying about the “Super Bowl” and fight for our future?
AFL-CIO! Start a National Labor Party!
That’s what bothers me (Christopher Foley on 16.01.2010 at 18:38) We do have a labor party in the USA, in fact 2 of them, one national, and one in South Carolina.
http://americanlaborparty.com/
http://thelaborparty.org/
I could kind of understand the AFL-CIO not actively supporting them before, when union #’s were larger and the DNC was actually doing something worth a crap for labor, they were scared to break that partnership, but there should be no hesitation right now. EVEN with #’s small (but growing) in union membership the fact is the dems would need us now more than ever.
Now, I say drop them anyway, except for Sen. Marcy Kaptur and Sharrod Brown, both of Ohio, most of the rest are either overly amicable to right wing nut jobs or just all together corrupt.
But if the reason the AFL-CIO leadership is sticking to this strategy is they think it’s the best they can get, it doesn’t make sense. Imagine right now, when approval is down across the board, what would happen if we all said you either pass EFCA without compromise and start massive trade reform now or we will put are full weight behind the American Labor Party and drop you. They would quickly make some changes (if ever so brief.)