Published 29 Mar, 2011
This April 4, TWU Locals, other unions and our community allies will be standing together at workplace and community events all across the country in a huge coordinated show of solidarity. There will be job site pickets, wearing of solidarity colors, buttons or armbands, “walk-ins,” community vigils, public rallies, demonstrations, teach-ins, and many more events. Through the strength of our unity, we will show the Tea Party billionaires and their political hired guns that Workers’ Rights are Human Rights, and that we will win the battle for the American Dream.
April 4 is the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. He was shot in Memphis while supporting a recognition strike by public sector sanitation workers, a struggle that was illegal under Tennessee law at the time. Those workers carried signs that read, “I am a Man.” Dr. King was advised by many not to go to Memphis because many didn’t see this labor struggle as a civil rights struggle. But Dr. King knew that these struggles were connected. He knew that labor rights and civil rights were Human Rights and belonged together.
Now, enemies of workers’ human rights across the country are engaged in a coordinated assault on the rights Dr. King died fighting for—not just on workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, but on the American Dream of a decent life for all. But across the nation, from Wisconsin to Ohio to Texas to Florida to Pennsylvania to New York, workers and our allies are fighting back. Like Dr. King, we know “We Are One.”
April 4 will be the first in a series of national and local actions we are planning as part of our Workers’ Rights= Human Rights campaign.
Find an April 4 event near you!