Gutting the union Dr. King died to establish

    With the City of Memphis facing a large budget deficit, City Council members are considering all kinds of proposals to generate more revenue or cut expenses.
    One proposal that is sending chills down the backs of workers rights and civil rights activists comes from Councilman Kemp Conrad. In recent budget hearings, he has repeatedly brought up the idea of privatizing the City's entire sanitation department.

    These are the same workers who spent three months on strike in 1968 to win the right to a union - the workers who Dr. King died supporting.
    It isn't even clear if privatization would save the City money, since contractors would need to make a profit. What is clear is that long-time sanitation workers would be jobless. The companies that replace them will likely oppose workers having a union, pay low wages, and offer workers few benefits.
    Please join the hard-working people who keep our City running in rallying to stop privatization and severe job cuts:

Rally with City workers to stop privatization and cuts

Tuesday, June 7th

2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
CORRECTION: Rally starts at 3:00 p.m.

in front of City Hall, 125 N. Main St.

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King's Words About Labor Ring True Today

    As we approach Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, I know I'll be hearing a lot of quotes and excerpts of his magnificant speeches. We'll probably also see a lot of stories where various reporters ask people whether they think we have moved closer to achieving Dr. King's dream.

    But most of the news stories and events this weekend will focus only on Dr. King's work to end segregation, while giving little attention to his major emphasis on economic justice, and peace. (One big exception will be the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center's anniversary celebration, which will feature green jobs leader Van Jones. They still have a few tickets left for Saturday night's dinner and program - get them now!)

    Maybe we tend to focus on Dr. King's work on integration more than economic justice because it seems like we can point to more signs of progress in the breaking down of racial barriers. But Dr. King's goals for racial justice were broader than a mere end to segregation, and he understood that racial and economic justice are intertwined. I think he would point to the continuing racial disparity in unemployment rates as an issue of both racial and economic oppression.

   It's up to us to remind our community that Dr. King came to Memphis to support a labor struggle. If we want to continue Dr. King's legacy, we must listen not only to the "I Have a Dream" speech, but also speeches like the one he gave in Memphis on March 18, 1968 to the sanitation workers. (Unfortunately there aren't copies of this speech online, but you can read it in the new book All Labor Has Dignity).

   A few memorable lines from this Memphis speech that have relevance for us today:

• "You are reminding, not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages."
• "Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income."
• "We can all get more together than we can apart; we can get more organized together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to effect change. And we need power."
• "Never forget that freedom is not something that is voluntarily given by the oppressor. It is something that must be demanded by the oppressed."

   Dr. King laid out our work for us. Let's just make sure we remember the breadth and depth of his work when we talk about how to continue his legacy.

Lessons from the Sanitation Strike - 42 Years Later

April 4th marks the 42nd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's assasination in Memphis while supporting the Memphis sanitation workers' strike. The incredible sacrifice that Dr. King made with his life, that workers made with their livelihoods, and that community supporters made with their money, time, and reputations offer us many lessons today in the fight for social justice:

1) Workers who have been pushed to the limit will eventually push back. Some might have thought that the sanitation workers were so oppressed and had so few options for work that they wouldn't dare to form a union. In fact, strike leader T.O. Jones had tried unsuccessfully several times to organize his co-workers before the 1968 strike. But the deaths of workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker, crushed to death by compactors in their sanitation truck on February 1st, caused 1300 sanitation workers to walk off the job ten days later. Workers had had enough, and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) were soon scrambling to follow the workers' lead, as were community supporters. The sanitation workers remind us that we should never write off a group of workers as too afraid, too poor, or too oppressed to stand up for their rights.

2) Workers must take the lead, but they can't do it alone. Without the thousands of Black clergy and laity, civil rights activists both local and national, and the small numbers of white people of faith who supported the strike, workers would have been hard pressed to win the strike. Faith and community leaders organized collections that kept sanitation workers from losing their homes while surviving on strike pay, and that filled pickets lines and mass marches that forced the City to eventually recognize the union. Listen to these individual stories from NPR's StoryCorps to get a picture of how the African-American community came together to support the sanitation workers. Workers today make often heroic struggles to win union representation, fair wages, and decent treatment. Having allies in the community who will stand with them often means the difference between a victory or a loss in these struggles.

3) In the words of Dr. King, "Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice." Many of his close allies urged Dr. King not to get involved with the Memphis strike, considering it a distraction from more traditional civil rights work. Workers faced tremendous pressure to go back on the job as the strike dragged on for more than two months. Courageous civil rights leaders, clergy, and community leaders who spoke out were mocked and threatened by sources ranging from the media to the Mayor. Yet without the sacrifice of all these people, the sanitation strke wouldn't have been won. Today, all city and county workers who have union representation in Memphis can thank the sanitation workers and those who stood with them.

Watch the beginning of At the River I Stand, a documentary of the sanitation workers' strike.