Selma to Montgomery March (2 items)

Thousands Kick Off Selma to Montgomery March

By John Wojcik
People's World
March 5 2012

http://www.peoplesworld.org/thousands-kick-off-selma-to-

montgomery-march/

Several thousand union members, civil rights activists,
community organizers, religious leaders, and others have
opened a five-day series of events tracing closely the
historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery, Ala. civil rights march.

The kickoff was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama
Mar. 4, the place where Bloody Sunday took place 47 years
ago. People marching for their constitutional right to vote
were brutally beaten that day by Alabama state troopers.

Organizers say that, more than a commemoration, the march
this week is a demonstration against modern day attacks, not
just on voting rights, but on immigrant rights and workers
rights.

The AFL-CIO is calling upon people who can't be at the march
to click here to sign a pledge of solidarity with the
marchers and join a virtual march.

Union activists at the march will share the tens of thousands
 of online comments they expect from across the country with
 those actually making the cross- country trek.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., an Alabama native and now a veteran
member of Congress, had his head cracked open by troopers on
the bridge in Selma 47 years ago.

Addressing a huge crowd Saturday in Montgomery, Lewis praised
the positioning of a historic marker at the bottom of the
steps of the state capital there. Because of the marker,
"generations yet unborn can understand what happened and how
it happened; people should embrace it," he declared.

The marker is just downhill from a giant statue of
Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Lewis said the
positioning illustrates how much times have changed.

"The distance we've come and the progress we've made is
evident here today," Lewis said, "The governor back then
(George Wallace) wouldn't let us come to the steps of the
Capitol."

When the marchers who had left Selma arrived in Montgomery on
March 25, 1965, they were joined by tens of thousands of
others who jammed the streets to hear the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. deliver one of his famous speeches.

The first full day of events began this morning with several
hundred marchers starting out from the famous bridge.
Determined to meet what they say are new challenges to civil
rights today, they were led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder
of the National Action Network, Ben Jealous, president of the
NAACP, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Arlene Holt Baker,
executive vice president of the AFL-CIO.

After leaving the bridge marchers headed east on Highway 80
 and expected to finish the first 12 miles of their journey
 by tonight. They expect to reach Montgomery by Friday where
 they will rally on the steps of the state capital.

Marchers say voting rights is again a major issue because
 voters in many states face obstacles from new laws
 originally drafted by the American Legislative Exchange
 Council, an outfit funded by Charles and David Koch and
 other billionaires.

The ALEC draft law inspired a slew of recently passed voter
 ID laws that, if allowed to stand, will weaken the electoral
 strength of minorities and youth in Texas, South Carolina,
 Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kansas, Maine, and other states.

In Texas, for example, a college ID is not an acceptable form
 of voter identification, while a hunting license is.

The marchers are focusing too on Alabama's HB 56, one of the
harshest immigration laws in the country.

William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade
 Unionists, travelled to Alabama last November to witness
 first hand the effects of the law.

"None of us expected to witness the humanitarian crisis we
experienced, a crisis that hearkens Alabama back to the
bleakest days of the state's racial history," Lucy said in
December. "The parallels to Jim Crow are all too real, and
the prejudice we heard about felt all too familiar."

Lucy was referring to parents who drop off their children for
 school saying they didn't know whether they'd be around to
 pick them up, to teachers being forced to act as immigration
 law enforcers rather than as educators, to employers worried
 their workers may be too afraid to show up on the job, and
 to a host of similar situations his team witnessed.

The march is yet another example of close coordination
between the civil rights and labor movements. Participants
see Republican attacks on the right to unionize and on
collective bargaining as an attack on the civil rights of
working people.

Elizabeth Bunn, AFL-CIO Organizing Director, said recently
about the attacks on voting rights and workers rights that
"at the end of the day, this is about corporate and CEO
control of the economy." She also says in almost all her
speeches on this topic, however, that workers, in or out of
unions, have the ability to fight back. Workers, she says,
are united when it comes to issues like basic fairness.

____________

200 Marchers Carry on Selma-Montgomery Journey

AFLCIO Now Editor
March 6, 2012

http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/In-The-States/200-Marchers-Carry-on-Selma-Montgomery-Journey

More than 200 marchers-including college students from as far
away as Idaho-yesterday carried on the Selma to Montgomery
march in Alabama, where activists in the labor, civil rights
and faith communities on Sunday began a five-day journey. The
weeklong series of events marks the 47th anniversary of the
historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery and is
focusing attention on new attacks on voting rights,
immigrants, workers' rights and education.

Monday's actions, which highlighted education and voting
rights, took on special meaning when five miles into their
12-mile walk, marchers were greeted by grade school children
from Selma's Craig Elementary School. Lined up along a fence,
the students held a giant, hand-painted sign: Thank You. AFL-
CIO Executive Vice President Selma Kids

Arlene Holt Baker, who is heading up our delegation there,
says:

When you look into the face of these children, whose future
 can be so bright if we can sufficiently fund and ensure that
 they have access to quality public education, this is why we
 march. We applaud the teachers, we applaud the students and
 the teachers who continue to teach them.

Holt Baker walked the entire 12-mile route, along with NAACP
Chairman Ben Jealous, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and
SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina.

When Sharpton, Jackson and others walked over to shake the
 hands of the Craig Elementary students, one remarked:

I'm not used to shaking famous people's hands.

If you can't be there in person, you can be there online.
Click here to sign a pledge of solidarity with the marchers
and tell us why you are joining the virtual march. Your
comments will be shared with the marchers on the ground so
they know there are tens of thousands standing with them.

http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=6280

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