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.
Civil Rights Pioneer: Post-Racial World Doesn’t Exist
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The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is a good time to assess that post-racial world we’re supposed to be living in now. So, how’s it working out?
Not very well, according to Franklin McCain. He’s one of the four trailblazing students whose sit-in 50 years ago at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., ignited a nationwide effort that resulted in passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Says McCain:
I don’t know where I was when racism disappeared from these United States of ours. This new right and the Tea Partiers have taken the position that anybody who talks about racial discrimination or affirmative action is a whiner or a civil rights pimp. We have to get off the sidelines and attack [that kind of language]….They are taking parts of our gains and using it against us. And it’s ridiculous.
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.
King Day Celebration to Focus on Economic Justice
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This Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, more than 400 union activists will remind the nation that without economic justice, King’s vision is unfulfilled. During the annual AFL-CIO King Day celebration in Greensboro, N.C., Jan. 14-18, union members will call on the White House and Congress for meaningful jobs creation policies.
They will discuss the course of the civil rights struggle from two key perspectives. On Jan. 16, participants will honor the four trail-blazing students whose sit-in at the Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter 50 years ago ignited a nationwide effort that resulted in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The next day, Thomas Perez, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, will speak on civil rights priorities in 2010.
AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and AFGE President John Gage will address the delegates. Rebecca Blank, undersecretary for economic affairs at the U.S. Commerce Department, will speak about the importance of the 2010 census.
