Public Employee Press

DC 37 honors Martin Luther King Jr.

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

In a candlelit meeting room filled with eyewitnesses to change, DC 37 celebrated the 80th anniversary of the birth of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Jan. 8.

“This is a very special celebration as we stand on the threshold of history,” said Political Action Committee Chair Lenny Allen, the president of Off-Track Betting Employees Local 2021. “Dr. King’s dream of the promised land of equal opportunity is being realized with the election of President Barack Obama. We should be proud that we had a share in bringing about that much-needed change. We are glad to see Bush go. All of us, Americans of every background, made it possible.”

The PAC sponsored the annual commemorative program, which this year featured as guest speaker state Assembly member Carl Heastie, newly elected Bronx Democratic chairman. Members, leaders and children from locals 299, 924, 957, 1113, 1306, 1549, 2054, and others participated in the event.

Dr. King was just 26 when he took on the fight for equal rights in Montgomery, Ala., leading the year-long bus boycott that won open seating on public transportation.

In 1963 King delivered his now famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where his oratorical genius jetted him — and the issues of civil rights, economic justice and racial equality — to the international stage. Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 helping AFSCME, DC 37’s parent union, win a sanitation workers’ strike. The national holiday honoring Dr. King’s Jan. 15th birth date is observed on the third Monday of January.

“We owe a tremendous debt to Dr. King and other leaders on whose shoulders we stand,” said Heastie. As chair of the New York State Redistricting Committee, he and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith are now responsible for redrawing district lines, the first time in recent years that this process will be in control of New York Democrats.

“They were in the struggle before us. They paved the way so that we could have a Barack Obama,” said Heastie. “Obama’s election lets our country live up to its claim as the greatest. His victory opens the door for all of us.”