Hundreds of Union Activists Honor Dr. King As President Obama Takes Historic Oath of Office

The AFL-CIO’s annual commemoration of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took on added significance this year with the swearing-in a few days later of Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American President.

Despite the pull of being in Washington for the inauguration, more than 800 participants – including a contingent of TWU members — attended the annual King Day celebration in New Orleans. Traditionally marked by service to the community, the MLK weekend (January 15-19) dove-tailed with Obama’s call to honor King with community service. Visiting activists joined with hundreds of area union members to roll up their sleeves in more than 20 different community service projects in a city that continues to suffer three years later from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Over two days, the activists helped repair an African American museum, churches and homes in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish.

TWU made a donation to the Second Harvest Food Bank. Ali James, Community Director of the food bank, gave TWU members a tour of the facility and explained its operation. Sandra Burleson, Director of TWU Civil/Human Rights Department, said it was a good feeling to know that TWU was helping out so many families in New Orleans that were in need.

In remarks during the King conference,TWU International President James C. Little told attendees that Obama’s election opens the door for more progressive economic and social policies, but workers must be vigilant in keeping the Obama White House and the new Congress focused on workers’ issues. President Little noted that TWU was the first AFL-CIO international union to back Obama’s candidacy.

Other speakers noted that King’s legacy could be honored by passing the Employee Free Choice Act and enforcing the nation’s laws aimed at protecting workers. In his lifetime, Dr. King preached that wage theft was wrong in biblical times, wrong during slavery and wrong in Memphis for the sanitation workers he was fighting for when he died.

The conference theme, “Civil Rights, Labor Rights—Turning America Around,” says it all, according to Richard Womack, former assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

“We’re all about change, but change of a positive nature,” he said. “We can celebrate our victories, but we can’t forget that the battle goes on. Dr. King died to make this a better world for all of us and we can’t let that dream die.”

By electing a new president and Congress in November, working families helped restore the soul of the
nation and showed the world what it really means to be an American, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka said. He added that workers have a major role to play in resolving the nation’s economic crisis.

Trumka said even though union members did not cause this crisis, “we’re the people who are going to lead America out of it. Because there’s only one way to rebuild the middle class in this country—only one way to protect and create jobs for all workers white and black—and it’s not by bailing out banks. It’s through organizing, it’s through unionizing, and it’s through collective bargaining. That’s what helped lift America out of the last depression, and that’s the only thing that’s going to end this one.”

Trumka said President Obama’s election is “a milestone; but it’s not the finish line.” While “his election says a lot about how far America has come, it doesn’t mean that we still don’t have a long, long way to go.”

Trumka urged unionists to take a moment during the inauguration “to remember the real Dr. King. Because if we do, I think we’ll hear him tell us that Barack Obama’s election isn’t an achievement to rest on, but a victory to build on.”