Forty-three years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, his name was invoked Monday as I stood out in a downpour in solidarity with striking US Tsubaki workers in Sandusky, Ohio.
King died in Memphis in 1968 supporting striking garbage workers and while the circumstances were different, the fight for decent wages and working conditions is the same.
"Dr. King's dream is alive today and his mission is necessary today," speaker Jack Baker told the crowd of about 75 people. "This is not a black thing or a white thing or a global economy thing. This is an us thing. It's a right or wrong thing."
King has been mytholiged and sanitized over time. His non-violent movement was splintered by the time he was killed and the constant FBI harassment and death threats had taken a deep emotional toll on his psyche. His first march on behalf of the striker had ended in a riot and he had been urged by supporters not to return as author Hampton Sides documented in his recent book on the King assassination. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/books/22book.html
However, King felt obligated perhaps in part because the strike touched on both the racial and economic equality he had pushed for in the last years of his life. The Memphis strike was triggered by a garbage worker being mutilated after falling into an aging, unsafe truck. It was the last straw for the all black garbage workers who later became part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Conditions are not as harsh for Tsubaki workers, but that in no way makes their cause any less just. The workers - who make chains for conveyor belts and rollercoasters - are among the few Americans with decent manufacturing jobs in the 30 years since the deindustrialization of American began. After making wage concessions in the past, they refused to make huge healthcare concessions and struck in January with the company vowing to permanently replace them with strikebreakers.
The strike took courage. The deck is stacked against the workers with a lengthy complaint process with the National Labor Relations Board about whether replacing the workers is legal. And the Japanese-based company could eventually opt to close the plant.
But the workers, who weren't getting rich on wages of less than $20 an hour, have made a stand.
"I commend you for sticking together," Barbara Clark, a Tsubaki worker and local head of the Sandusky NAACP, told the workers. "It might get a little hard, but nothing worthwhile ever comes easy."
The Tsubaki worker's fight is our fight. As King wrote in a Letter From a Birmingham Jail, "an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. "
If we don't push back we're going to get rolled.Whether it's Ohio's new union busting law signed last week by Republican Gov. John Kasich which eviscerates collective bargaining rights http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/31/31-kasich-sign-sb5.html or the Republican's new federal budget proposal which shreds the social safety net and privatizes Medicare while cutting taxes for billionaires and millionaires http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12128/04-05-Ryan_Letter.pdf the middle class and the poor are under siege.
Like the Tsubaki strikers, we're the underdogs due to the enormous political clout of the corporations and superrich which severely undermines one person, one vote. But like the strikers, we can fight back.
Like the ballot initiative to overturn Ohio's union busting law. And local iniatives to recall politicans.
By confronting politicians in writing and in person - constructively challenging them with facts, not irrationally like the Tea Party - and letting them know that not only will we vote against them, but we'll support opponents. By getting our apathetic friends, family and neighbors to register to vote. And, if necessary, by getting arrested in non-violent protests like King.
"We'll be out here one day longer then they will be," Andy Campbell, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 54 assistant director, told the crowd.
Achieving economc and social justice is a neverending battle, but we can win if we're in it for the long haul. Together. One day longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment