Public Employee Press

America honors 50th anniversary of the March on Washington

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Busloads of DC 37 members joined more than 100,000 peaceful demonstrators to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Aug. 24 on the National Mall.

"The promise of democracy" is still unrealized for too many Americans, AFSCME President Lee Saunders told the huge throng "The promise is not real for people who work hard and play by the rules every single day, yet struggle to pay the bills. The promise is not real for retirees who worked hard all their lives but don't know how they'll make it day to day. The promise is not real for students who graduate under so much debt, they wonder if they'll ever climb out of it. And if the promise is not real for all of us, it is not real for any of us."

Fifty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his renowned "I Have a Dream" oration at the historic march to quake America's conscience, the social advancements and legal protections African Americans gained from their 30-year civil revolution against Jim Crow and racism are broad, sweeping and well documented.

Mobilizing for change

Still, the same issues that galvanized those 20th century freedom fighters mobilized crowds on Aug. 24, 2013: decent jobs, economic opportunity and living wages; protection of voting rights; an end to racial segregation and profiling; and access to decent health care, schools and housing.

And just as the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was lynched in Mississippi, became a catalyst in the civil rights movement, the national call for justice for murdered Trayvon Martin, 17, sparked people of many races and ages to go to Washington to stand their ground for justice, freedom and equality.

The message the march sent is that the struggle for democracy and equal rights for all continues.

The 50th anniversary celebration featured the only surviving speaker of the 1963 march, U.S. Congress member John Lewis of Georgia, who said, "I got arrested 40 times during the '60s, beaten, left bloody and unconscious. But I'm not tired. I'm not weary. I'm not prepared to sit down and give up. I am ready to fight and continue the fight, and you must fight."

Speakers at the anniversary march included Martin Luther King III, Attorney General Eric Holder, Murlie Evers Williams, the widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Saunders, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Sybrina Fulton, National Urban League President Mark Morial, NAACP head Benjamin Jealous and other political, labor and civil rights leaders who have kept watch and fought valiantly, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did before his assassination in 1968.

Historic victories

DC 37 members came to share in the celebration and support their union. "We need jobs. There are still too many unemployed people. We have to protect the jobs we have," said Sharon Braxton, a Jr. Public Health Nurse in Local 436, who brought her son Andrew, 12. He said, "This is an historic event. We came to see what it would be like 50 years later. It's an amazing sight."

The audience stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial. "I came to commemorate what Martin Luther King said here 50 years ago," said Claudette Allison, a Resident Nurse in Local 436. "But we still need to make changes."

The '63 march is the largest public protest in the nation's history and drew more than 250,000 people, African Americans joined by whites fighting together for equality, an unprecedented feat for the times. Labor unions and activists worked tirelessly to organize that event.

The National Action Network and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, of which DC 37 is an affiliate, coordinated the 2013 mass demonstration.

After the songs and speeches, tears and cheers, the people marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, past the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the only monument to a private citizen that sits among presidents.