Black History Month Challenge: A Youth-Led Jobs Revolution
By Leo W. Gerard and Fred Redmond
On Feb. 1, 1960, when four African American college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., they ignited a youth-led movement to challenge racial segregation and injustice in the South.
The freshmen refused to stand and eat at the F.W. Woolworth counter as the policy of that time required. They were denied service but remained in their seats. The manager left the students alone hoping they would eventually leave.
He assumed wrong.
Thomas Perez: Fighting Discrimination a Top Priority
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More than 40 years after Martin Luther King’s death, the nation still has a long way to go to achieve his dream of equality and justice, says Thomas Perez.
In a Point of View guest column at the AFL-CIO site, Perez, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, says if King were alive today, he would be fighting for economic justice:
He would continue his quest for economic justice for all Americans to be able to access the great wealth and promise of our nation….He would urge our nation’s leaders to move forward on health care reform, repeating his painfully accurate observation that “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
He would join with you, and with your fellow workers nationwide, in calling for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act to ensure that workers can stand up for their rights in the workplace.
He would ask the question: If women outnumber men in the workplace, then why are women still fighting for pay equity in the workplace?
Top Civil Rights Official: Discrimination Persists in 2010
After eight years in which “critical civil rights protections gathered dust,” the Obama administration has made enforcement of civil rights laws a major priority, the nation’s top civil rights official said over the weekend.
Thomas Perez, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, told the AFL-CIO King Day celebration in Greensboro, N.C., which ended Jan. 18:
In 2010, we have an African American president. And yet discrimination persists—both blatant discrimination and the dangerously subtle kind—in so many of our institutions, showing up in our schools, in our workplaces, in our health care system, in our financial system.
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.
Arlene Holt Baker: Without Jobs, Civil Rights an Empty Promise
Without good jobs, the gains of the civil rights movement are empty: Just as Martin Luther King Jr. fought to secure basic rights for all Americans, we must now fight for economic justice, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said.
Speaking this morning at the Martin Luther King Prayer Breakfast in Atlanta, Holt Baker said:
The freedom to sit at a lunch counter or in the Oval Office was won for us.
Now it is our time to win for the next generation the economic strength to take advantage of those freedoms. Today more than ever, we understand that without jobs, civil rights is an empty promise. And without good jobs, there is no real freedom.
The annual prayer breakfast is sponsored by the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council.
Create New Jobs Now to Save African American Communities
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The job crisis has hurt everyone. But for African American communities, which were suffering before the crisis hit, it has been a disaster. Unless the nation takes immediate steps to create jobs now, the damage will become more entrenched and we will all pay the price.
Unemployment among African Americans is more than 16 percent, and that’s not counting those who can find only part-time jobs or who have just given up looking for work altogether. African Americans also stay unemployed longer.
The strides made by African American workers in the 1990s are being wiped out in this current job crisis, and millions of people of color are no longer making middle-class incomes. As unemployment has grown, local tax bases have shrunk, eroding education and destroying public jobs, public services and public safety.
A Call to Arms for Civil Rights Activists
In this cross-post from the United Steelworkers (USW) website, USW Vice President Fred Redmond challenges civil rights activists to volunteer to help fill the needs of those communities hit hard by the recession. Nationally, activists will come together for a day of service during the annual AFL-CIO Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance in Greensboro, N.C., Jan. 14-18, 2010. Click here for more information.
Today, I issued a call to arms to the civil rights activists of the United Steelworkers union.
This was no summons to warfare, though.
To the contrary, I challenged USW civil rights committee members to shield the downtrodden in society, to aid those felled by the current economic crisis, to serve as their brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, not just for labor union companions, but for all fellow community members.
SCLC Launches 21st Century Poor People’s Campaign
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) today announced the rebirth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Poor People’s Campaign” to fight poverty in some of the poorest regions of America. Launched in 1968, the campaign’s first major initiative sought to win economic justice for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. It was there on a motel balcony where King was assassinated April 4,1968.
In a press conference at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., SCLC General Counsel Dexter Wimbush said the campaign’s goal is to
finish the unfinished business of Dr. King.
New Project to Combat Unconscious Racism
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While the election of President Obama shows that overt racism is less acceptable in America, a new project launched last month by the Institute for America’s Future explores the large role unconscious racial bias still plays in our politics and society.
The Americans for American Values (AAV) project will research the effects of unconscious racial bias on decision-making and develop strategies to support decision-making based on consciously held American values rather than on racial anxiety and stereotypes. The project began with the release of a series of educational videos and a set of research studies. View the new videos and learn more about AAV here.
john powell, the project’s founder and executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, said racial equality and fairness are values widely supported by Americans, but hidden biases often undermine these values.
As society tries to move beyond racial discrimination, a better understanding of implicit bias is needed. Our two-fold goal with this study is to help the American public better understand implicit bias and to give them ways to avoid triggering these biases.
Celebrating Black Labor History Month
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February is Black History Month, and with just a few resources, teachers, parents and union locals can turn it into Black Labor History Month.
The American Labor Studies Center (ALSC) and unions such as AFSCME and AFT have compiled numerous excellent resources to help highlight black history this month by focusing on the history of African Americans in the labor movement.
A key teaching point is the shared values of the civil rights and union movements. One of the best resources for exploring the common ideas and goals of the two movements is the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who died in 1968 while helping striking sanitation workers in Memphis form a union with AFSCME. (See video.)
