State Battles Summit Ends with Commitment to Fight

by Clyde Weiss  |  June 08, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC – “We stand with you as you have stood with us,” Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told AFSCME activists during the third and final day of the union’s State Battles Summit. “When you are cut, we bleed. When you hurt, we feel the pain. We know that when you are attacked, we are all attacked.”

Henderson noted that the Civil Rights Movement exists partly “because of the efforts of the Labor Movement,” and that the two now stand together as a coalition to oppose right-wing threats to dismantle the Middle Class.

“We are now seeing a skilled group of political operatives, as well as elected officials, who have chosen to use America’s debt crisis and problems of a deficit as a pretext for a wholesale change in the American Dream,” Henderson said. As examples, he cited assaults on Medicaid and Medicare, plans to undermine Social Security and effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans of their voting rights in Wisconsin and other states through voter-ID restrictions.

“I’m pleased to say your troops at AFSCME are in the lead in fighting back on that,” added Henderson, who received a standing ovation after his speech from hundreds of AFSCME activists who have re-committed themselves this week to leading the battle to preserve the Middle Class.

For more about the Summit, see coverage of Monday’s and Tuesday’s sessions.