Anniversary of MLK assentation also a day to show support for collective bargaining

Organized labor has long marked the anniversary of the senseless assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4 1968 in Memphis, Tenn. Because he long recognized collective bargaining as a civil right and risked his life to protect it, but this year the anniversary has special meaning with the all-out attempt by Republicans to roll back that important civil right.

Beginning with worship services on Sunday, and continuing through the week of April 4,unions, people of faith, civil and human rights activists, students and other progressive allies from all over the country will host a range of community and workplace focused actions, from a teach in at the University of Michigan to a vigil at 6 p.m. today on the Capitol steps in Lansing.

The respected and revered civil rights leader who preached non-violence and civil disobedience to further civil rights was gunned down on a motel balcony, shot in the neck as he was preparing to lead a march of sanitation workers in that southern city protesting against low wages and poor working conditions. The workers had been granted a charter by AFSCME in 1964, but the city refused to recognize it.

King had long supported the civil right of collective bargaining, like his 1961 quote about right to work for less were he linked collective bargaining to civil rights, saying, “"In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right to work.' It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights."

Working condition had gotten worse for the sanitation workers with the election of a new mayor in Memphis in 1968. He had refused to take dilapidated trucks out of service or pay overtime when men were forced to work late-night shifts. Sanitation workers earned wages so low that many were on welfare and hundreds relied on food stamps to feed their families, according to the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. That is currently the direction we are heading today.

On Feb. 11 more than 700 men attended a union meeting and unanimously decided to strike. The strike might have ended a few weeks later on Feb. 22, when the City Council, pressured by a sit-in of sanitation workers and their supporters, voted to recognize the union and recommended a wage increase, but Mayor Henry Loeb rejected the Council’s vote, claiming that only he had the authority to recognize the union and refused to do so.

The following day, after police used mace and tear gas against nonviolent demonstrators marching to City Hall, Memphis’s black community was galvanized. Meeting in a church basement on Feb. 24, 150 local ministers formed Community on the Move for Equality (COME), under the leadership of King’s longtime ally, local minister James Lawson. COME committed to the use nonviolent civil disobedience to fill Memphis’s jails and bring attention to the plight of the sanitation workers. By the beginning of March, local high school and college students, nearly a quarter of them white, were participating alongside garbage workers in daily marches; and over one hundred people, including several ministers, had been arrested.

King arrived in Memphis on April 3, 1968 to support the workers, and he was persuaded to speak by a crowd of dedicated sanitation workers who had braved another storm to hear him. A weary King preached about his own mortality with the speech that has become famous, telling the group, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life--longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now… I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

The following evening, as King was getting ready for dinner, he was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. The struggle did not end with the murder of King, and on April 16 a deal was reached that allowed the City Council to recognize the union and guaranteeing a better wage.

Go to the official “We are One” web site, and you can just type in your zip code to find an event near you.

Commemorate the historic Walk to Freedom on Saturday and march for justice

Saturday will be a great day for those who love freedom and equality, and there will be at least two ways to demonstrate it.

The Michigan Democratic Party is holding its nominating convention on Saturday and Sunday in Detroit’s Cobo Hall, but many delegates, myself included, are going to take a break from the informative caucus meetings to join Rev. Jessie Jackson and a coalition of organizations and union, community, religious and political leaders to march to demand real change for working families and all of America and to commemorate the historic Walk to Freedom led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Detroit in 1963.

The march will step off at 10:30 a.m. at the UAW-Ford National Programs Center, next to Hart Plaza, 151 W. Jefferson Ave., and it ends at Grand Circus Park.

Dr. King was a long and strong supporter of organized labor, and he saw the rights of workers as part of the fight for Civil Rights.

According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) archivist Bob Garrett, the Detroit march took place when Dr. King was then in the midst of a tour that began that spring of 1963 from California to New York. His Detroit stop proved the tour's biggest success. Police estimated the Freedom Walk crowd at 125,000. The day after the event, The Detroit Free Press labeled it "the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation's history." The walk began at Woodward and Adelaide and continued down Woodward to Cobo Hall. It lasted about an hour and a half, as marchers carried signs and sang songs, such "We Shall Overcome" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

The Detroit Council for Human Rights organized the Walk. The Council's director, Benjamin McFall, and its Chairman, Rev. Clarence L. Franklin, marched in a line with King and former Gov. John B. Swainson. That line also included Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh, United Auto Workers President Walter P. Reuther and State Auditor General Billie S. Farnum.

At the walk's conclusion, King gave a speech at Cobo Hall. According to the Free Press, approximately 25,000 people attended the speech. They listened as King spoke of non-violence and an end to racial segregation. The June 24, 1963 Free Press report notes that King "ended his speech by telling of a dream." According to the Free Press, King described his dream of whites and blacks "walking together hand in hand, free at last."

In his book King: A Biography, David Levering Lewis states that King repeated the phrase "I have a dream" several times during that Cobo Hall speech. Lewis notes that when King addressed a crowd in Washington, D.C. two months later, he "kept the refrain from the Detroit speech: I have a dream."

Saturday will also mark the day of King's historic Washington speech of August 28, 1963 that became famous as his "I have a dream speech." It was a defining moment in the American civil rights movement. In one sense, however, the seeds of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream were planted in Michigan - in Detroit's Cobo Hall.

See you there.

Slain civil rights leader's words inspire organized labor

LANSING -- "In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as 'right to work.' It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights."

Those words might have been spoken by a current labor leader as right to work laws are being pushed all over the country, including in Michigan. Instead, they were spoken by perhaps the most respected civil rights leader in the world, Dr. Martin Luther King, in 1961.

April marked the 40th anniversary of the assassination of King in Memphis, Tenn., and organized labor has never forgotten that the revered civil rights leader was in Memphis April 4, 1968, to lead a march of city sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions. King not only worked tirelessly for an end to racial discrimination, segregation and Jim Crow laws, but he also worked to improve the lot of workers and to end poverty.

The Young Democrats of America Labor Caucus, Lansing Democratic Future and Michigan Young Democrats hosted a community tribute last week to honor both King and the public employee unions.

"Dr. King shared organized labor's vision," said Michael Parker, the secretary/treasurer of Teamsters Local 580 in Lansing. "The things he fought for are the things we are fighting for today.

"He fought from a basis of love and not hate. We need to remember the person on the other side of the table is a person."

Philip Schloop, the business manager and international vice president of the International Union of Operating Engineers and a retired Detroit public school teacher, was the guest speaker. Schloop's parents were missionaries, and he said it was King's message that got him involved in the civil rights movement and organizing.

"The reality was he really understood the intersection between labor, civil rights and worker's rights," Schloop said.

He said King's words in 1961 are still relevant in 2008 as the assault on labor unions continues with so-called right to work (RTW) laws. Schloop said King called RTW a way to destroy unions and collective bargaining, and King called RTW a fraud.

"Here we are in Michigan today fighting a right to work assault," he said. "Dr. King realized way back in 1961 this was an assault on worker's rights."

Schloop said it was also telling that King was trying to help municipal workers on that fateful day in 1968. Schloop said state workers in Michigan were unfairly used as scapegoats in the state budget impasse last October.

"The Republicans are attacking public employees as the enemy," he said. "Who do you think teaches your children, who ensures you have clean drinking water and who protects the people?"

40th anniversary of assassination of civil rights leader marked with tribute to labor

It was a warm spring day in Michigan in 1968 when TV and radio programming was interrupted with special bulletins to inform viewers and listeners that civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King had been assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.

This Friday, April 4, will mark the 40th anniversary of the day the respected and revered civil rights leader who preached non-violence and civil disobedience to further civil rights was gunned down on a motel balcony, shot in the neck as he was preparing to lead a march of sanitation workers in that southern city protesting against low wages and poor working conditions. King would die from his wounds a short time later in a Memphis hospital.

After King's assassination, Michigan Governor George Romney declared an official period of mourning in Michigan, and he ordered all flags in the state to be flown at half-staff. King's assassination led to riots in more than 120 US cities, but luckily, Detroit was spared. Detroit had just witnessed the worst riot in state history the year before, and 43 people had been killed and scores more injured in the race riot that set portions of the city ablaze in 1967.

Just a month after King's assassination the country would further be rocked on June 5, 1968, when U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated as he celebrated a win in the California Democratic Presidential Primary.

To mark the fact that King’s last act before he was murdered was to help organized municipal employees, the Young Democrats of America Labor Caucus, Lansing Democratic Future and Michigan Young Democrats are hosting a community tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King and the public employee unions at 6 p.m. April 8 at the Teamsters Local 580 hall, 5800 Executive Dr. in Lansing. A donation is requested.