Event: https://fb.me/e/8fir2I0B6

For Immediate Release
Public Notice and Media Advisory

Event: 20th Annual MLK Day Rally & March
Date & Time: Mon. Jan. 16, 2023, Noon
Location: Historic St. Matthew’s-St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, 8850 Woodward Ave. between King and Holbrook
Sponsor: Detroit MLK Committee
Contact: panafnewswire@yahoo.com
Phone: (313)-671-3715

20th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day March & Rally Will Honor Six Decades of Mass Movements in Detroit and Beyond

Schedule:
Rally & Cultural Presentations: Noon-1:30pm
March: 1:45–2:30
Meal: 2:30-3:00

Under the theme: “Six Decades of Mass Movements, The Struggle Continues”, the Detroit MLK Day Committee is calling for a citywide mobilization in honor of the 94th birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968).

This event will feature speakers and artists active in the movements for social justice, peace and self-determination. The speakers and cultural workers are from the social movements taking place in Michigan, nationally and around the globe.

Since 1986, the birthday of Dr. King has been celebrated as a federal holiday on the third Monday of January every year.

The Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) initiated the annual MLK Day March & Rally in 2004 amid the escalation of the Iraq war. Since 2004, the event has expanded with the formation of the Detroit MLK Committee chaired by veteran civil and human rights organizer Ms. Dorothy Dewberry Aldridge.

This year’s MLK Day will represent a return to a live rally, march, community meal and cultural program after two years of outstanding virtual events. We are asking all of those who plan to attend to wear masks, social distance and observe all other public health protocols.

2023 will represent the 60th anniversary of the tumultuous year of 1963. In that year, there were the mass campaigns including demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama and other cities against racial segregation and for jobs and income. It was the same year when Medgar Evers, the iconic African American leader who served as a field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi, was gunned in his driveway in Jackson.

Detroit was the center of the largest march for civil rights and social justice in the history of the United States. The hundreds of thousands who marched on June 23, 1963 down Woodward Avenue set the stage for the March on Washington two months later on Aug. 28.

Over the last six decades the struggles for quality housing, education, water rights, self-determination and political power continues. Many of the gains won through popular organizational efforts have been reversed as the people of Detroit face a constant threat to their very existence, well-being and social advancement.

We invite all progressive organizations and institutions to join with us in making this upcoming MLK Day the most historic of all. Our focus for 2023 will be:
-Winning full funding for the Right to Counsel Ordinance
-Ensuring that all Detroit residents have access to quality housing, water services,
good schools, environmentally sound communities and healthy food.
-Ending all forms of police brutality and misconduct
-Abolishing the Pentagon budget while demanding No More Funds to NATO and the end to the proxy war in Ukraine
-The complete elimination of poverty by guaranteeing a basic annual income for all people.

Anyone wishing to donate to this effort can send contributions to:
Detroit MLK Committee
5920 Second Avenue
Detroit, MI 48202

In Solidarity,
Abayomi Azikiwe, Media Outreach Coordinator

Event: https://fb.me/e/2533H5GMQ

We will gather near one of Ascension Wisconsin CEO Bernie Sherry’s homes and let him know loudly and clearly that we must save L&D at St. Francis!

Ascension chose to close the only labor and delivery service on the southside of Milwaukee just days before Christmas. Ascension acted without public input from patients, the community, or its unionized staff of healthcare workers. Closing the only L&D on the southside was a cruel Christmas gift to our community, and it is especially harmful for the Latinx and immigrant communities on the southside. We will provide this gift of feedback in the holiday spirit. Join us to save L&D and St. Francis Hospital!

National Debut of the “We Stand” mural in front of the White House and the Supreme Court in Washington DC. #westand #stopline5 #stopline3 #waterprotectors #waterislife #landback #indigenoussovereignty #thankstaking #decolonize #thanksgiving #everychildmatters #westandmural #defendthesacred #protecticwa #mmir #mmiw

(Editor’s Note: Chris Townsend is a life-long union activist with ATU and before that UE. He has spoken at RWU Conventions and is a Solidarity Member of RWU.)

The Biden regime’s shameful betrayal of the railroad workers unfolded in late November and early December as the possible railroad strike crisis slowly wound to its ending. The gang-up on the railroad workers and their desire to exercise the basic right to strike was practically all-encompassing. Politicians from both political parties – with only a handful of exceptions – all of the media, every single large corporation in the country, and even some liberals and so-called leftists all made the case why the strike must be stopped. Broken even before it had started. This chorus all echoed the same canard, that it was too important to allow a rail strike, no matter that it was in response to the refusal of the company barons to seriously negotiate in the first place. The lack of time off for the workers alone qualified as a serious human rights violation, but of course their human rights had to be sacrificed for the monstrous profits of the railroad companies. All those who supported this shameful act by Biden, all who try to minimize it or even support it, are to be blasted. Thoroughly blasted. This strike breaking is unforgivable. Period. To excuse or forgive or conveniently overlook it is to invite more of this conduct.

The struggle of the railroad workers will continue. It has to. They have no choice. Conditions have become intolerable for a majority of the workforce. The draconian attendance policies of the rail bosses that virtually ban time off for the large operating sections of the workforce, and the fact that most workers are sure to “fire themselves” under these outrageous personnel policies give them no choice to keep up the fight.

From these strikebreaking acts come down several lessons, among others. We need to learn them.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE …