PEP, March 2010: Each one, teach one

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

DC 37 celebrated Black History Month with the theme “Each one, Teach one,” a proverbial African American call for personal responsibility and action to overcome illiteracy and ignorance.

“Slaves, freed Blacks and sympathetic whites all understood the value of education,” said DC 37 Black History Committee Co-chair Deborah Pitts, who is president of Local 1113. “That we each have a duty to teach someone else resonates still.”

Initiating the month of activities and programs at the union, hundreds of members attended the Feb. 1 ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Last Drummers and the Salvation Café poets, whose message was against self-hatred and domestic violence. AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy, a founder and the president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, was the keynote speaker.

“It’s always exciting to be here for Black History Month to celebrate our contributions to life, humanity and this nation,” Lucy said. “America acknowledges that we are all created equal, but whether we are treated equally. . . it has fallen short. We reflect the rainbow of groups who have made their way in this country, facing disdain and rejection, and built this nation, its cities, its bridges and railways and fought its wars.”Building on the evening’s theme, guest speaker Darlene Mealy, a member of the City Council and former member of DC 37’s Local 1655, recalled how co-worker Rhonna Bonsu “invested in me unselfishly” with invitations to meetings that sparked Mealy’s political career. “It takes sacrifice and risk to bring about real change,” she said. “ ‘Each one, teach one’ says we all have something to give to others.”

Slaves were whipped or dismembered for the “crime” of learning to read and write. “For 400 years Blacks were enslaved in America, and 145 years after emancipation, we elected our first Black president,” said Committee Co-chair Robert Ajaye, who is president of Local 2627.

“Now the Supreme Court has taken action so there will never be another Barack Obama,” Lucy said about the Court’s decision to let corporations spend freely in elections. “It really is about us versus them.”

Newly re-elected DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts shed light on the city’s $9 billion in outside contracts that could be used to cut or eliminate the current deficit. “Ours is the struggle of the have-nots versus the haves. We are in a battle for our jobs and against contracting out. I need all of you with me as we let this mayor know we are not afraid,” she told members.

Roberts and Lucy were part of the nation’s historic civil rights struggle a half century ago. Lucy, a 57-year member of DC 37’s national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was an architect of the famous 1968 strike of the Memphis sanitation workers. He coined the “I am a man” slogan that appeared on thousands of their picket signs and crystallized the struggle of the striking Black workers, who worked harder than the city’s white sanitation workers but were paid less and denied equal treatment.

“While we must be careful that in our pride we do not demonize others, we have to celebrate our contributions and tell our own story ourselves,” Lucy said.