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.

MDP Convention energizes base

DETROIT – Reverend Wendell Anthony, the President of the Detroit Branch of the NAACP, fired up the crowd at Detroit’s Cobo Hall on Saturday at the Michigan Democratic Party Convention, giving the party faithful the zeal they will need to take back the country and the state in 2012.

“We are letting Glenn Beck steal the dream of Martin Luther King and turning it into a nightmare,” he said.

Thousands of people turned out fore the winter convention, and they spent the day in constituency and district caucuses, and they heard from Democratic leaders, both state and national. Party faithful had to get over their disappointment in November, and they talked about defending vital programs for the middle class and the poor and look to 2012 to re-elect President Obama and take back the Michigan and U.S. House.

“I say I’m the leader of the Senate Democrats not the minority leader because we are not the minority party in Michigan,” said Sen. Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing. “We don’t go from been an overwhelmingly blue state in 2008 to being the minority.”

Democrats simply did not turn out in 2010, and we have to do a better job energizing our base. The fact remains, when more people vote, Democrats tend to win.

“My opponent (in November) got four more votes; four votes more than the college kid who ran against me two years ago; I got 5,000 votes less this time,” said Rep. Mark Meadows,” D-East Lansing. “Now, that may be my fault, but there were 5,000 Democrats that did not come out to vote.”

Thursday will be, to quote extremist Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Calley, like an atomic bomb was dropped in Lansing when Gov. Rick Snyder unveils his Top Secret budget recommendation. He has never said what will be cut, not during the campaign and not after elected, but pundits expect the cuts to be deep and extreme. His opponent in November, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, thanked people for supporting him, but he also said we must fight the cuts that mortgage Michigan’s future for some short term cuts.

“We are not going to let this crew come in and dismantle Michigan,” he said. “They say they are going to take back Michigan; they mean they are going to take it back to before the New Deal.”

Whitmer said the first goal is to defend against the elimination of the popular and effective Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), what former Republican President Ronald Reagan called “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”

They have established a web site to protect the tax credit Snyder wants to kill that helps reward 800,000 people who go to work everyday and helps families make ends meet by keeping more of their paycheck.

“He says it’s a handout, but it helps people who work 40 hours a week put food on the table,” Whitmer said. “He wants to take that and give it to his rich friends.”

The situation is not much different on the national level where Republicans want deep, damaging cuts after giving tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent that will deepen the budget deficit.

“Our Congress is in the mode of a reverse Robin Hood; they want to take from the poor to give to the rich,” said U.S. Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Flint.

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, said the situation is not much different in the Senate, but the good news is it is controlled by the Democrats.

“The party of nope has been happy just to stop progress; now, they want to turn back progress,” he said.

Levin also said Republicans are more interested in grabbing more power than solving the country’s problems.

“The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has said his top priority is to make Barack Obama a one-term president,” he said. “The top priority of Senate Democrats are jobs.”

Democratic candidates are ready to keep us moving out of the Bush recession ditch

DETROIT- It was a great weekend at the Michigan Democratic Party Convention this weekend, and the party faithful left energized and ready to elect the people that will help the state and country continue the move forward out of the Bush ditch.

Like at all conventions, all of the various constituency caucuses heard from the candidates, and there were so many great quotes and speeches that I eventually put my notebook down and just cheered with everybody else. We heard from many of the candidates at the Environmental and Energy Caucus, like Natalie Mosher, running in the 11th District against “Mad” Thad McCotter. He only won with 51 percent of the vote in 2008, but he outspent his opponent 33-1.

“My opponent, Thad McCotter, has an absolutely abysmal record on the environment,” she said.

Saturday also marked the anniversary Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic Washington, D.C. speech of August 28, 1963 that became famous as his "I have a dream speech." Many, myself included, took part in the massive commemorate march to celebrate the historic Walk to Freedom March that took place in Detroit in 1963 and to advocate for a number of progressive causes, like jobs, health care and worker’s dignity. Dr. Fred Johnson, a former Marine Corps office and candidate for the 2nd Congressional District, took offense at Glen Beck’s teabagger rally on that day.

“We have Glenn Beck in Washington, D.C. thumbing his nose, basically, at Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream speech’,” he said. “They have lies and fear; we have ideas and hope.”

Since it was the energy caucus, one man had a good theory on why Michigan is always the first state to feel a recession and the last to come out of it. He said in 2000 gas was $1.39 a gallon and 13.5 million domestic autos were sold. In 2008 gas was $4 a gallon and only 9.5 million cars were sold. Michigan imports 100 percent of its oil and coal and a majority of the natural gas.

In the Michigan Legislature, former State Rep. Kathleen Law, D-Gibraltar, is running a very active campaign for the Senate in the 7th District against a teabagger.

“It’s a big district, but I’m ready,” Law said. “We bought out all of the stamps at the Rockwood Post office; it’s a small post office, but I’m still proud of that.”

Like most teabggers, her opponent has some extreme views that are out of the mainstream, such as ending Medicare and Social Security.

“I don’t know what’s more frightening,” Law said. “That he wants to end those popular programs, or that he doesn’t know the Michigan Senate does not vote on it.”

Pam Jackson is also running for the Senate in the 15th District, and she is running against a candidate who also has some extreme ideas that will stall the hard fought gains Michigan has gained in recent months.

“We have to take back the Senate; his idea is he wants no tax incentives for new business,” Jackson said. “That would mean that the Ford Wixom plant would not be converted to a new use.”

Sen. Deb Cherry, D-Burton, who is term-limited, knows first hand how much good policy the Senate Republicans block, and even though she can’t run for reelection, she felt it was important to speak because the environment is so important.

“If we want to protect the Great lakes and make sure there is no drilling, we need to elect Democrats,” she said.

Amen.

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.

The Henry Ford Museum helps celebrate MLK Day

DEARBORN -- I celebrated Martin Luther King Day the way many people in southeast Michigan did, celebrating the King legacy at the Henry Ford Museum.

The “With Liberty and Justice for All” display has an excellent history of the Civil Rights movement that is King’s real legacy, and the Henry Ford is a true Michigan gem. The actual Montgomery City bus that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white rider that brought King to prominence is at the museum. The good folks at Target made admission free, and it is becoming a tradition for me; attending the last two years.

What has also become a tradition is the lie that King was a Republican. The National Black Republican Association first floated that lie in 2006, and those that knew King debunked the lie. However, that has not stopped Republicans from trying it every MLK Day, and even this year at least two Michigan rightwing bloggers have tried it.

They point to the fact that southern Democrats - known as “Dixicrats” - supported segregation in the early 1960’s, but they fled to the Republican Party following the passage of President Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964. King’s father, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., was once a registered Republican, but King, Jr. never was.

The senior King was also a Baptist minister like his son, and he was the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church for four decades. He initially supported Richard Nixon in 1960 over President John F. Kennedy, but that changed shortly before Kennedy was elected.

In 1960, King, Jr. was arrested for trespassing during a sit-in and held in Georgia's Reidsville prison. Fearing for his son's life, according to the Washington Post, King Sr. appealed to then presidential candidate JFK to secure his release. When King was freed, his father vowed to deliver 10 million votes to the Democrats. That was the last time African-Americans ever voted for the GOP.

King Sr. also played a notable role in the nomination of Jimmy Carter as the Democratic candidate for President in the 1976 election. King Sr. pointed to Carter's leadership in ending the era of segregation in Georgia, and helping to repeal laws ending voting restrictions that especially disenfranchised African Americans.

King, Jr. voted for Kennedy, and he actively campaigned for Johnson four years later. In that election, King publicly denounced the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, who was actually a real conservative.

King was also a strong support of labor unions and working men and women, and he saw a decent wage and working conditions as a civil right. The civil rights leader was in Memphis on April 4, 1968, to lead a march of city sanitation workers protesting against low wages and poor working conditions when he was murdered.

Local inaugural events also honor community service and MLK

The excitement is growing for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, and there is plenty to do locally to mark the historic occasion for those not lucky enough to be one of the millions who will make it to Washington, D.C. next Tuesday.

The Livingston County Democratic Party is sponsoring its own inauguration party from 7-11 p.m. Friday at the VFW/American Legion Spirit Center, 10590 Grand River Road, in Brighton for just $30.

The Blue Tiger Committee of the Livingston County Democratic Party is also answering the President-Elect's call to observe a day of service prior to his inauguration, and they have planned a potluck at 4 p.m. Sunday at party headquarters, 10321 E. Grand River, Suite 600 of the Fonda Place office park, in Green Oak Township, to mark Martin Luther King Day and to help out Livingston County United Way.

In addition to attendees bringing a dish to share and the beverage of choice, they are also asked to bring an item from the United Way's wish list. The extensive list is on the party's blog, LivingBlue, but it includes everything from board games to yellow legal pads.

I have been to some of the potlucks thrown by the party, and the food is unbelievable. In addition to some of the best food in the county, there will also be a showing of a film of King's famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, as well as a short film starring James Earl Jones called "Martin Luther King, Jr. – Legacy of a Dream."

For more information, please call the office at (810) 229-4212.

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.