AFSCME Co-Chairs August March for Jobs and Justice

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.afscme.org/blog/afscme-co-chairs-august-march-for-jobs-and-justice

by Clyde Weiss | July 13, 2011

AFSCME will co-chair a massive rally and march in Washington, DC, on August 27, the day before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s National Memorial will be unveiled, the first on the National Mall honoring a non-president and a man of color.

The rally, led by civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, will shine a spotlight on Dr. King’s legacy as a civil rights leader, and assess America’s progress since his death. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 while supporting a strike by 1,300 sanitation workers represented by AFSCME Local 1733. The workers recently were enshrined in the U.S. Labor Department’s Labor Hall of Fame.

The rally will begin Aug. 27 at noon, starting at Constitution Ave. NW and 17th St. NW. The march follows at 1:30 p.m. along Independence Ave. SW. It will end at the King Memorial site on Ohio Drive SW and West Basin Drive SW.

Other co-chairs of the event are the Rev. Dr. Franklyn Richardson, senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church and chairman of the National Action Network; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. The National Director of the March is Pastor Willie F. Wilson of Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

For information on the dedication event being held on August 28, visit www.dedicatethedream.org.