Today, we remember the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated 40 years ago in Memphis, Tenn., where he was helping striking sanitation workers form a union.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) went to the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis today to speak about the anniversary of King’s death, and AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker offers a powerful response to McCain’s speech. McCain’s words just “didn’t ring true,” she says, noting that McCain is largely silent about the crises of poverty and economic injustice that were the focus of King’s mission.
Dr. King led the fight against starvation wages, yet, just a year ago, Sen. McCain voted against an increase in the minimum wage and even moved to abolish it completely. Dr. King said injustice in health care is “the most shocking and inhumane” of all inequalities, yet Sen. McCain has shown no interest in providing health care for the 47 million Americans without coverage. Dr. King strongly supported unions as a means to lift our nation’s workers out of poverty and give them the opportunity for a better life. Sen. McCain has voted against workers’ freedom to form unions and collective bargaining rights for our nation’s first responders.
Indeed, King made fighting for workers’ rights an integral part of his lifetime quest for social justice. He always believed that civil rights and workers’ rights were inseparable. AFSCME, the union with which King fought his last campaign, has a great collection of quotes from King on the dignity of labor and the need for workers to organize. As Dr. King said in 1961:
Our needs are identical with labor’s needs—decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.
McCain acknowledged his mistake in opposing a holiday honoring Dr. King, but he apparently has yet to learn the real lessons of King’s lifetime quest. He’s opposed workers’ voices on the job and supported policies that make it harder for working families to achieve the dignity and fairness they deserve. His voting record has undermined good wages, collective bargaining rights, overtime pay, family and medical leave and retirement security.
Holt Baker calls on McCain to pay attention to King’s real legacy and to listen to the voices of workers seeking an economy that works for everyone.
AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney says that King’s example must guide us as we fight for dignity and fairness for all.
The movement Dr. King led with unparalleled strength and commitment was much larger than any one man, as he well understood. Inspired by his words and example, that movement lives on, gaining more and more momentum, generation after generation, in the souls of millions of people who seek to make real his dream of social and economic justice. We see it every time people join together to stand up to injustice, speak out for equality or sit down for fairness. We see it in those who demand a government that will make our economy work for all, not for the few. It’s alive in all of us who insist that in America no one should go without health care. And we see it every time working men and women engage in the struggle to improve their lives by forming unions. Each of us has a responsibility—not just on this day, but every day—to honor Dr. King’s legacy in our actions.