When Public Employees Were Under Attack, Rev. King Stood With the Workers

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/157816/when-public-employees-were-under-attack-rev-king-stood-workers

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated at a rally organized by a right-wing talk radio host, or at the inauguration of a conservative Republican governor.

King, the Nobel Peace Prize–winning campaigner for economic and social justice whose legacy we celebrate with a holiday that falls on January 17 this year, died while supporting the right of public employees to organize labor unions and to fight for the preservation of public services.

That inconvenient truth is sometimes obscured by pop historians, who would have us believe that King was merely a "civil rights leader." King's was a comprehensive activism that extended far beyond the boundaries of the movement to end segregation. His most famous address, the "I Have a Dream" speech, was delivered at the 1963 "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom"—a historic event that explicitly linked the social and economic demands of campaigners for civil rights and economic justice.

And King always saw that linkage as being well-expressed—arguably best expressed—in the struggles of public employees and their unions for dignity, fair pay, fair benefits and a recognition of the contributions made by those who collect our garbage, clean our streets, police our communities, protect our environment, care for our aged and infirm family members, teach our children and deliver our mail.

More at the link --

[defendandprotect]

1. kr

[old mark]

2. K&R- And so few have stood by us since then...In my state, PA, publuc employees

are forbidden by law from active participation in politics beyond voting. Writing a LTTE, or handing out leaflets of even having a sign on your property or a bumper sticker was cazuse for termination, with loss of you rpension and benefits...of copurse the politicians were free to use us as targets for their most creative and outrageous lies..to the point where we had practices for bomb threats and evacuation drills in case we were attacked by angry citizens...(never happened, of course.)

Republicans always talked worst about us, but gave us decent contracts...Democrats praised us, then screwed us every time we came up for contract negotiation or whenever the economy got tight.


mark

[leftstreet]

3. K&R

[NNN0LHI]

4. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Labor

http://www.afscme.org/about/1550.cfm

Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires, and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor's needs — decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.

AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961



I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. That is the dream...

AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961



New economic patterning through automation is dissolving the jobs of workers in some of the nation's basic industries. This is to me a catastrophe. We are neither technologically advanced nor socially enlightened if we witness this disaster for tens of thousands without finding a solution. And by a solution, I mean a real and genuine alternative, providing the same living standards which were swept away by a force called progress, but which for some is destruction. The society that performs miracles with machinery has the capacity to make some miracles for men—if it values men as highly as it values machines.

UAW 25th Anniversary dinner, April 27, 1961



As I have said many times, and believe with all my heart, the coalition that can have the greatest impact in the struggle for human dignity here in America is that of the Negro and the forces of labor, because their fortunes are so closely intertwined.

Letter to Amalgamated Laundry Workers, January 1962



It is in this area (politics) of American life that labor and the Negro have identical interests. Labor has grave problems today of employment, shorter hours, old age security, housing and retraining against the impact of automation. The Congress and the Administration are almost as indifferent to labor's program as they are toward that of the Negro. Toward both they offer vastly less than adequate remedies for the problems which are a torment to us day after day.

UAW District 65 Convention, September 1962