August 28th, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and we are celebrating this anniversary by continuing the struggle for equality and economic justice that more than a quarter of a million people raised their voices for at the Lincoln Memorial that day in 1963.
It was at the march that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech — a speech which helped to shape modern America and encouraged everyone who was dreaming of a better future to keep fighting for that dream. While the speech was directed at the racism and horrible injustices faced by blacks in America, it was a dream of equality shared by men and women of all races and faiths who came to march on Washington that day.
The march for Jobs and Freedom was focused on more than civil rights. It also gave light to the grievous economic injustice of the day. Marchers called for a public works program and job training for the unemployed, federal laws banning discrimination in hiring, a $2-an-hour national minimum wage (equivalent to over $15-an-hour today) and a broadened Fair Labor Standards Act.
While progress has been made, these issues of equality and economic justice are still being fought for today and our union is on the front lines of that fight. Marchers in 1963 were fighting for “dignified jobs at decent wages. It’s a fight we continue to wage today. Since the late 1970s income inequality between the average American and the wealthiest 1% has grown astronomically. This was no accident, this inequality was created by policies and tax regulations that favor the wealthiest among us and continue to funnel America’s wealth away from workers and into the hands of the super rich.
Today, we are at the forefront of the fight for dignified jobs at decent wages. We stand with those calling for a national minimum wage — a living wage for hardworking Americans. We fight against CEOs and management who continue to exploit their employees’ hard work for their own obscene financial gain. We fight against those lawmakers who would disenfranchise voters by enacting unreasonable Voter ID laws. We fight against the lies and misinformation that opponents of the Affordable Care Act spread in an effort to undermine making affordable, quality healthcare available to everyone. We fight against a state legislature that refuses to expand the Medicaid program, despite the millions of dollars it would bring, the tens of thousands of jobs it would create and the hundreds of thousands of uninsured Pennsylvanians it would cover. We fight for a commonsense path to citizenship for 11 million aspiring Americans who want to realize their own American Dream.
We fight together against the continued injustice that hard-working men and women still face today. We fight to realize our dreams.