AFSCME Marching Saturday for Jobs and Justice at MLK Event

by Clyde Weiss  |  October 14, 2011

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial (Photo by Luis Gomez)

AFSCME members from the Washington area and across the country will join thousands of others from the labor, civil rights and faith communities tomorrow on the National Mall. Activists will celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy as a civil rights leader, and assess America’s progress – or lack of it – since his assassination in 1968.

AFSCME Sec.-Treas. Lee Saunders,  Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, and American Federation of Teachers Pres. Randi Weingarten will lead the event, which comes one day before Dr. King’s National Memorial will be officially unveiled. (The march was originally planned for Aug. 27, but was postponed due to weather.)

The march not only will be an occasion to reflect on this great leader’s accomplishments, but also to re-dedicate ourselves to the work that still remains to fulfill his dream of a nation united in equality.

King’s last campaign for justice was in support of 1,300 striking sanitation workers, represented by AFSCME Local 1733, in Memphis, Tenn. He was assassinated there before the strike ended, but even in death he inspired the workers to press on, and they ultimately won their fight for dignity and respect on the job. Similar fights for worker justice continue today in places like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Saturday’s event, which AFSCME co-chairs, begins at 11 a.m. at the National Sylvan Theater. Participants will later congregate at the King Memorial site on Ohio Drive SW and West Basin Drive SW.

Read more about King’s ties to AFSCME here, and check out this column by AFSCME Sec.-Treas. Saunders on Firedoglake.com.