Tag Archives: Martin Luther King

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Another thought on MLK

I wanted to follow up on MLK’s assassination. I know Dave touched briefly on it, but as I was listening to NPR today, I heard this report about Nina Simone’s performance a few days later.  Forturnately, somebody put the song up on YouTube a while ago, so we can all hear the song. The performance where this was recorded was just a few days after King’s death, and the emotion is visibly raw.

Simone was one of the most talented singers of her age, and the musical talent comes through in the song that she learned in a day. But what comes through more clearly is how personal and powerful this moment was for her.

We are headed for the brink

What’s going to happen?

Now that the King of Love is Dead?

King struggled with many of the same issues that we deal with today. He was publicly anti-war when it was hugely unpopular. And to this day we still fight with inequalities in American society. The struggle for equality is not a fight that has an end. It is still far from clear what is going to happen now that the King of Love is dead.  

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Early Morning, April 4

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(While it’s not state-based, I thought I’d cross-post this from my site and Hullabaloo due to the importance of this day.  Also, Dr. King was shot at 6:01pm on April 4, so blame Bono and U2 for the technical error…

– promoted by David Dayen)

…shot rings out, in a Memphis sky,

free at last, they took your life

but they could not take your pride…

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

Just to contextualize, Martin Luther King was in Memphis working with striking sanitation workers who wanted a fair contract from the city.  He was a civil rights leader but understood civil rights as an economic justice issue, as an issue of equality, not just of humanity but opportunity.  The workers were threatened and attacked and kept on marching for their rights.  King’s fight was for freedom of assembly, for equal protection, for justice in all its forms.  To me, this was actually the most powerful portion of that speech:

Now the other thing we’ll have to do is this: Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America. We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively — that means all of us together — collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world, with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States, and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That’s power right there, if we know how to pool it.

We don’t have to argue with anybody. We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles. We don’t need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores, and to these massive industries in our country, and say, “God sent us by here, to say to you that you’re not treating his children right. And we’ve come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God’s children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.”

And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy — what is the other bread? — Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on town — downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right.

The power of collective action.  The power of bottom-up organizing.  The power of seeing a world where everyone is in it together, where everyone has a stake in one another.  The power of fighting for justice and fairness and right, and moving mountains just by walking together.  We get cynical in this medium a lot, and maybe we have a right to; after all, forty years ago they shot Dr. King for leading such a movement.  But the legacy lives on, and I believe in his aphorism that “the long arc of history bends toward justice.”  This movement, this place where we’ve all gravitated, is but a small kernel of that legacy.  But it’s growing, and regardless of the President or the Congress or whoever it will continue to move forward.  And one day, we will get there.

…oh yeah, just so you know, and want to tell a friend, John McCain voted against making Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday in 1983.

Bay Area

Inter-Con Security Officers Striking for Justice

Striking for Justice

Today, security officers who protect Kaiser Permanente facilities in California are striking against their employer-Inter-Con Security Systems–which has met every union organizing effort with fierce opposition, jobsite harassment, and continued intimidation and coercion. The post below is written by Rochelle Duran, an Inter-Con security officer in Fremont, California, who is striking with 80 fellow security officers to make her voice heard.

Forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life organizing sanitation workers in Memphis, my colleagues and I are still fighting for justice in the workplace.

Today, security officers who protect Kaiser Permanente facilities in California are striking against our employer-Inter-Con Security Systems-which refuses to give us basic rights and has met every step we have taken to form a union with fierce opposition and jobsite.

We’ve been struggling with Inter-Con for more than two years now.  Instead of honoring the wishes of its employees, Inter-Con responded by unlawfully intimidating and coercing its officers.

At Kaiser, security officers are among the only group of workers who are being denied the right to form a union. Almost all other direct employees or subcontracted workers are protected under Kaiser’s Labor Management Partnership. As a result, you can really see the stark differences in job quality, compensation, and overall staff morale.

I work the graveyard shift from 12:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. A nurse I work with was recently shocked to discover that I don’t receive differential pay for my late-night hours. I told her, “How could we possibly expect differential pay when we don’t even get a paid sick day or a basic annual wage increase?”

Forty years ago, Dr. King died while standing up for the dignity and human rights of workers.  Today my co-workers and I will share that struggle. We’ll be outside with signs in hand, using the only tools we have to make our voices heard. I pray this time it will pay off. It’s time for Inter-Con to give us a break. And if we can’t convince them to treat us like human beings, it’s time for Kaiser to give us the support we need so we can do our jobs well and be treated with the dignity we have already earned.

For more information on Rochelle’s struggle, go to www.StandforInterConWorkers.org

I work the graveyard shift from 12:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. A nurse I work with was recently shocked to discover that I don’t receive differential pay for my late-night hours. I told her, “How could we possibly expect differential pay when we don’t even get a paid sick day or a basic annual wage increase?”

Inter-Con won’t even provide security officers with a single paid sick day, which is just crazy in a hospital setting. We’re forced to come to our hospital sites sick-potentially infecting vulnerable patients-because we don’t have any other options. If we don’t show up, it’s not just that we’ll get docked pay-we also risk getting fired. I highly doubt that a measly five days of paid sick leave would break the Inter-Con bank; but I’m more than sure it would improve the services we provide and build loyalty among the staff.

Unfortunately, Inter-Con doesn’t share my sense of pragmatism. In fact, when I went on maternity leave six months ago, they harassed me into returning two weeks before the six weeks of family leave I am legally entitled to was used up. I’d been working at the job for nearly three years, and there was no doubt that I was coming back. But Inter-Con just kept threatening to give away my position, and I was scared. A lost job was the last thing I needed to deal with while juggling the responsibilities of being a mother for the first time.  Of course it wasn’t surprising coming from a company who had told me months before that “they didn’t have positions for pregnant women.”

It still shocks me that as honest workers, we have to fight this hard to get a break and Inter-Con’s only response is to violate our rights. I guess that’s just the way the world is these days. Job security is something you can’t take for granted when you work for a contractor like Inter-Con.

Back when I was out on maternity leave, Inter-Con fired one of my colleagues who had been active in trying to organize a union. Inter-Con said they fired him for his poor language skills- although those skills worked just fine for the three years he had already put in there! He was lucky. Because we’d started working with SEIU, we saw the kind of justice unions can provide. After negotiation and some legal proceedings, my colleague was able to come back to work for Inter-Con in an even higher position than the one they’d fired him from for his “lacking language skills.”

We need more of that kind of justice.

Even though my salary hasn’t budged since I started working at Inter-Con, my life’s changed a lot. I have a six-month old and my family needs me. I suppose I’m just like every other worker in America: I want a job that values my contributions and pays me a livable wage. In the wealthiest country on earth, I just don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Forty years ago, Dr. King died while standing up for the dignity and human rights of workers.  Today my co-workers and I will share that struggle. We’ll be outside with signs in hand, using the only tools we have to make our voices heard. I pray this time it will pay off. It’s time for Inter-Con to give us a break. And if we can’t convince them to treat us like human beings, it’s time for Kaiser to give us the support we need so we can do our jobs well and be treated with the dignity we have already earned.

– Rochelle Duran

For more information on Rochelle’s struggle, go to www.StandforInterConWorkers.org

Rochelle Duran has worked as a security officer at Kaiser Permanente in Fremont, California, for nearly three years. At the same time she fights for justice for her fellow Inter-Con security officers, Rochelle is a full-time student studying to become a probation officer. Outside of work, Rochelle enjoys spending time with her six-month old baby.