By Kendra Fox-Davis and Fred Azcarate On April 4, 1968 Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He
is recognized as the greatest civil rights leader in our nation’s
history, but on that day, Dr. King was in the midst of a different
type of fight. For sure, it was a fight for civil rights, but it
wasn’t what we typically are told or taught about Dr. King.
He was in Memphis fighting alongside students, churches and
community leaders for the rights of Memphis sanitation workers, who
were on strike. The Memphis sanitation workers were forced to work
in some of the most unsafe, grotesque conditions imaginable for
very little pay. Workers would go home at night covered in maggots,
forcing them to strip off their clothes before they entered their
houses.
They worked outside with no cover from the heavy rains that hit
Tennessee in the summer, so workers would sit in the back of the
dump trucks for shelter from the rain. Despite numerous requests,
no cover was provided for them.
When two workers were crushed to death when the compactor was
activated while they were sitting in the back of a dump truck
during a rainstorm, the workers, students and community members
decided enough was enough. On the anniversary of King’s death
students paid tribute by doing exactly what Dr. King was doing that
day in Memphis.
Students are standing up against injustice and in favor of the
rights, dignity and respect of workers around the world.
Students have always played a role in the struggle for economic
and social justice. It has been the students’ role to question, and
to angrily point out to the rest of the country the existence of
injustice and exploitation. It has been the
students’ role to fight on the frontlines and take risks to stop
injustice and exploitation. And right now, students see a world
where corporations will stop at nothing to maximize profits at the
expense of people in the United States and all over the world.
Students see clothing stores sell $50 pairs of pants that were
made for $5 by 15-year-old women in Latin America. All the while,
the women are paid 15 cents an hour. Students see workers in the
United States lose their jobs because plants and factories are
moved to countries where workers are paid in pennies, unions are
illegal, and environmental protection laws don’t exist.
They see corporations take over service after service on their
campuses while refusing to provide workers with living wages,
benefits and the right to organize.
Students see a country where the No. 1 employer is a temp
agency. They see a world where workers, families and children are
subjected to brutal exploitation in order to increase profit
margins. Well, students have seen enough.
Starting Tuesday, in the spirit of the Memphis sanitation
workers, students, workers, faith-based organizations and community
groups began actions and organizing local events across the country
in support of workers’ rights. And like the civil rights movement,
and all of the other social movements of the 20th century, students
and youth will be taking the lead.
It often goes virtually unnoticed that Dr. King was only 32 when
he was killed. Some of his closest advisors, Rev. Jesse Jackson,
Bill Lucey and Ralph Abernathey, were all in their 20s at the time.
Students and young people are in a unique position to push the rest
of society to stand up for what is right.
By paying tuition, achieving academic excellence and becoming
positive contributors to society, students legitimize our
institutions of higher education. So, students are in a position to
demand that these institutions promote economic and social
justice.
That is why students are demanding that their campuses end
contracts with corporations that use sweatshop labor; demanding
that the workers in their cafeterias receive a living wage and are
granted their right to form a union; demanding that their college
communities require that workers are paid a living wage; demanding
that the curriculum they are taught is free from the influence of
corporations.
Students, like in the women’s suffrage movement, the civil
rights movement, the anti-war movement and the anti- apartheid
movement, are asking the rest of us to join them and stand up
against injustice – to stand up for people over profits, and the
basic human right to be paid a living wage. The students are once
again taking the lead. Will the rest of us follow?