2019 MLK Day Address — Mayor Derek Dobies
Hello and thank you to Jackson College for inviting me here today. I want to also recognize some of my colleagues from the City of Jackson that are here tonight:
- Vice Mayor Arlene Robinson
- City Councilwoman Colleen Sullivan
- City Councilman Freddie Dancy
Please join me in giving them some thanks to these public servants.
We wish to extend our heartfelt congratulations to Harold White, Jr. on his honor here this evening. There’s no one more deserving, Jock.
Now, many may be surprised to learn that being an elected official for the city is a part time job. We all have day jobs.
In addition to being Mayor, I have the privilege of serving as the Chief of Staff to the Michigan AFL-CIO — we’re a federation of trades unions. A union of unions.
We fight for equal rights, safer working conditions, better benefits, and economic justice for working families. We’re champions of democracy in the workplace.
Since I spoke here last year, I’ve read more on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — his speeches, sermons, and writings.
Here’s what I believe: if Martin Luther King Jr. still lived, he’d probably tell people to join unions.
Dr. King’s final speech in Memphis was actually delivered standing in solidarity with striking African American sanitation workers of AFSCME. In an address to the Illinois AFL-CIO Convention three years prior, King said:
“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and above all new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life.”
King supported the labor movement and the promise of lifting the conditions of all working people, and understood that goals of the civil rights movement and the labor movement are intertwined.
You see, King understood racial equality was inextricably linked to economic justice.
He once simply and elegantly posited, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?”
We see that disparate impact persist in our time.
Today, the wealth of the average white family is nearly 20 times that of a black one.
In Jackson, our hardest hit census tract surrounds the Martin Luther King Center. It’s 65% African American. It’s also where average per capita income is a mere $9,000 per year, and 57% of the residents and 74% of the children live in poverty.
It’s clear our city has more work to do on the intersectionality of race and poverty; between discrimination and disadvantage.
Today, the labor movement continues to advance those goals, built on the core belief that “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
We understand that our power is in our numbers and that we cannot allow ourselves to be divided along the lines of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. We know that when negotiate the contract, we do so on behalf of all workers and that we must defend all workers equally.
King said “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
So today, and everyday, as we reflect on the lessons we learned from Dr. King, let us apply them to the battles that still lie ahead.
When you hear politicians attack people that look different; that come here from different nations. When you hear politicians that support building walls instead of bridges.
When you hear them generalize and marginalize people based on their economic condition. When they pass policies that keep more money in the pockets of the few, rather than the paychecks of the many.
When you hear them attack unions, and erode the rights of people like us to organize and fight for better working conditions and benefits for us and our families.
Remember: an attack on one is an attack on us all.
We must stand together in union to lift up all working families.
We must stare down discrimination in the face of adversity — in the mold of Harold White Sr.
And we must pass down that responsibility to future generations — like Harold White, Sr. did to Jock here, and like Jock has for so many across our city.
Congratulations again, Jock, and thank you ALL for letting me stand here today with you in solidarity.
