POP Unites with Labor, Community Groups to Honor Dr. King's Real Legacy

The New Jersey-based People's Organization for Progress will this year once again observe the April 4th anniversary of the death of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. together with the New Jersey (and national) labor movement and dozens of other community-based and progressive organizations.

When an assassin's bullet felled Dr. King forty-three years ago this coming Monday, the murderous intent of the rulers of this country went far beyond eliminating a single troublesome leader.

They aimed to murder a movement.

During the previous year, Dr. King had spoken out against the War in Vietnam, begun developing plans for the Poor People's Campaign (a multi-ethnic, multi-national march that would place one-million homeless and poor people on the Mall in Washington DC), preached that "every bomb dropped over Vietnam explodes on a poor community in the US" (developing the war-at-home/war-abroad analysis), and marched with striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee demanding both dignity and a living wage.

During his last year, Dr. King was helping hundreds of thousands of activists grasp the imperialist character of the racists who rule this country, and the movement he was building was becoming implicitly and throughly revolutionary.

This is why they wanted to kill the movement, even more than see Martin himself dead.

Honoring Dr. King's legacy while remembering his assassination has become the banner of numerous events in early April. For nearly 30 years, POP's friends in Black Workers for Justice in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina have held an annual "Martin Luther King Salute to Labor Banquet" and it's happening again this weekend.

This year, the People's Organization for Progress is again joining this tradition while uniting with the AFL-CIO's call for April 4th labor support actions.

On Monday, April 4, 2011 POP will join with Communication Workers of America - District 1, CWA Local 1037, the NJ State N.A.A.C.P., the International Longshoremen's Association Local 1233, New Jersey Black Issues Convention, NJ Immigration and Workers Rights Coalition, the New Black Panther Party, Veterans for Peace-Chapter 21, Essex County Women of Color and Allies NOW Chapter, Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, Black Telephone Workers for Justice, Postal Workers Against the War, Sierra Club, CODEPINK, New Jersey Tenants Association, the Enough is Enough Coalition, the NJ Industrial Union Council, and the Union County A. Philip Randolph Institute (among many, many others)…

Assemble at the corners of Broad & Market Streets in Newark, New Jersey at 5:30 P.M.