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Macomb, IL – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died for the right of all Americans to be in unions. He really did. This past Monday, April 4th, marked the 43rd anniversary of his murder in Memphis, where he was marching with sanitation workers that is, public sector workers demanding the right to be in a union.
The campaign's slogan, "I am a man," says all there needs to be said about a human's right to be in a union that is, to not have to kowtow to every single little thing that a boss tells a worker to do.
Workers rights, including the right to be in a union and bargain collectively, have been understood by Americans to be essential for a viable democracy, including Republicans from Robert La Follette of Wisconsin to Dwight D. Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan who defended the right of Polish workers to unionize as essential to freedom and, even after firing air traffic controllers in America, never sought to end the right of federal workers to be in unions.
Today, organized labor is on its back and everyone knows it. Part of its decline is its own fault, but most is due to the growing influence of corporations in American politics. In the private sector, unions have been hammered to the point of near extinction, with fewer than 8% of workers organized.
Where are unions still strong? You guessed it, the public sector. Why? Well, for one reason, we can't ship public schools and police departments to China. Now, the pro-business wing of the Republican Party, cynically taking advantage of state budget crises, has sought to destroy the remaining bastion of unionism: the public sector.
But, then, a funny and totally unexpected thing happened: hundreds of thousands of Americans rose up in Madison, Wisconsin and said: "NO!"
As for Dr. King, after years of fighting, he came to understand that a citizen's political rights are meaningless if also poor. Does any American think, for a second, that she has as much political influence as, say, Bill Gates?
Time and again, Americans indicate that they want fewer poor people and fewer incredibly rich ones and that most believe in workers', including government workers, right to be in unions.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to appreciate that a large middle class is essential to a truly democratic society. And unions uplift workers into the middle class like no other force.
However, corporations care about profits and they have successfully eroded workers' power in the past forty years to the point where unions really, the only organized group that can check corporate power largely have disappeared.
Many Americans appreciate this fact, which explains the tremendous support for public sector workers in Wisconsin. They fight for themselves but make no mistake they are fighting for all of us in the middle and working classes.
This Saturday afternoon, April 9th, unionists and allies will gather to defend these rights and democracy itself with a massive rally in Chicago's Loop. The theme is simple: We Are One
All citizens should join this rally to defend workers' rights. Doing so is to stand for the people, the bedrock of any democracy. Dr. King gave his life for unions and, no doubt, would be present for such an important moment in our nation's history.
What will you do?
Peter Cole is an Associate Professor of US History at Western Illinois University. His book, "Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia," was published in 2007. The opinions expressed in his commentary are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio.