King’s Call for Worker Justice Runs Through April 4 Solidarity Actions
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Monday, April 4 marks the 43rd anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was assassinated while helping Memphis, Tenn., sanitation workers fight for the same workers’ rights that governors and state legislators in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states are now trying to eliminate. These assaults have sparked energy and built a solidarity movement to defend workers’ rights and middle-class job
Starting this weekend with religious services around the nation and continuing next week, working people will gather in We Are One events to honor King’s memory and stand in solidarity with workers across the country who are facing unprecedented attacks on their rights and their jobs.
More than 400 events have already been set and union, civil rights, faith and community activists are announcing more each day. We expect as a many as many as 1,000 large and small events nationwide, from more than 100 teach-ins to candle-light vigils and worksite actions. Click here to find an event near you.
There is still time to plan an event—a get together with co-workers at lunchtime, spending a few minutes with friends to e-mail or call your state legislators or congressional representatives, or holding a bake sale or carwash to help raise funds for working people fighting for a better life. Click here for ideas you can use to stage your own event, here for resources and here to add an event to our We Are One calendar. (Follow the events and tell about yours on Twitter with the hashtag #april4)
King often drew a parallel between the civil rights and union movements. Economic justice and workers’ rights were an integral part of his vision for racial equality. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says King was “a tireless champion of the working class.” Read the rest of this entry »
King’s Legacy: Fighting for Economic Justice
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In his latest book, All Labor Has Dignity, historian Michael Honey brings together 16 of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches on economic justice, many of them unpublished until now. Honey, a professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, edited the speeches and wrote an introduction for the book. AFL-CIO Now senior writer James Parks interviewed Honey about King and his legacy of economic justice.
Q: In All Labor Has Dignity, you say King’s dream called for “economic equality.” What does that mean and how do we achieve it?
Honey: At various times he says he is not opposed to people having wealth, he’s opposed to people having wealth at the expense of other people not having wealth…and ignoring the poor. His “Poor People’s Campaign” was really about economic restructuring. His plan was to put pressure on Congress to shift its priorities from war and military spending to housing, health care, jobs and education, focusing especially on the people who were losing jobs because of automation of industry and outsourcing.
It was a two-pronged approach—one was that there were these people who were being thrown out of the economy to starve and something had to be done about that. But secondly, the priorities of the country are all wrong.
Award-Winning Author to Discuss King’s Quest for Economic Justice
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Michael Honey, award-winning author of Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign, will talk about the Memphis sanitation strike and King’s unfinished quest for economic justice and workers’ rights at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., March 17 at 7 p.m.
Going Down Jericho Road (available from The Union Shop OnlineTM in hardcover and paperback) won the prestigious 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. In the book, Honey, a professor at the University of Washington-Tacoma and president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association, recounts the 1968 walkout of 1,300 sanitation workers, nearly all of them African American, in Memphis, Tenn. The workers were demanding recognition of their union (AFSCME), an agreement that the city would withhold union dues from workers’ paychecks, a small pay raise and improved safety standards.
Our Picks for Holiday Gift-Giving
Now more than ever, this holiday season is the time to support our flailing economy with holiday gifts that are union made and made in America. The AFL-CIO Union Shop OnlineTM offers CDs, DVDs, books, buttons and more. Our blog and Web team has assembled our favorites here. Items ordered no later than Dec. 17 are guaranteed for delivery in time to be wrapped and ready.
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Mike Hall’s pick: If you’re like most of us this holiday season, thrifty will trump extravagant during your shopping adventures. But for under $25, I came up with a fun-and somewhat practical-six-piece, activist, pro-union gift set. Or, if you’re into quantity, you can wrap each one individually.
For just a buck each, you get the now classic “Kickin’ Ass for the Working Class” button along with a “Fight Ignorance, Not Immigrants” button and the Mother Jones “Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflict” bookmark.
