As we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King’s life and struggle, we learn that we must re-fight some of the same struggle in Pennsylvania.
Dr. King lived and died for social and racial justice, equality and freedom, voting rights, and economic rights including the right to organize unions.
It is no accident that Dr. King was assassinated while helping to lead a strike of sanitation workers who were public employees in Memphis.
That strike was for the right to have a union, the right to negotiate with the city, and the right to have union dues deduction.
We have learned that we must re-fight the same struggle in Pennsylvania. Gov. Corbett, who may be the most unpopular governor in the history of the Commonwealth, has hitched his dying term and re-election effort to the most dangerous, powerful, rich, and undemocratic forces in America, the fantastically rich and awfully evil Koch Brothers.
As we gather to honor Dr. King and pledge ourselves to continue his struggle, Corbett and the Koch boys meet to drag his legacy through the mud by trying to destroy the right of Pennsylvania’s public workers to have a union. Today I’m on a bus with my fellow 1199 union members to the state capitol, where we’re fighting the governor’s proposed new law.
This struggle we face in Pennsylvania is a test for all of us. Do we honor Dr. King by continuing his struggle, or do we just pay lip service? It is a crucial question for us all to answer.
The corporations and mainstream media try desperately to wipe the ministry and legacy and struggle of Dr. King from our collective memory and from history. They are spending millions and millions of dollars telling us Dr. King was but a dreamer.
That is a damn lie!
Dr. King was a nonviolent warrior chief for love, justice, equality, freedom, economic justice, workers rights, and unions.
While we have made progress since that awful April 4, 1968 in Memphis, we still have a long way to go to purge America of the evils Dr. King gave his life and death for.
We can see the distance we have to go when we see the disrespect, hatred and vitriol flung at President Obama and the widening gap between the rich and the rest of us.
We see this distance we have to go when we feel the heel of the richest and most powerful in America on our necks and backs.
But now is not the time to grow weary in well-doing. Now is the time to renew our commitment to the memory and the struggle of Dr. King. Now is the time to shake off the chains of complacency and the bondage of our comfort zones, stand up, lead, and struggle for a Pennsylvania and an America that is worthy of the life and death and sacrifice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Photo source: Richard Hurd on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)