Keith Ellison: “Labor rights are human rights. I think it is important to know that Martin Luther King, who lost his life in Memphis…”

“Labor rights are human rights. I think it is important to know that Martin Luther King, who lost his life in Memphis, Tennessee, April 4, 1968, was actually helping sanitation workers gain their rights in an effort to unionize and have collective bargaining. That union, which was mostly African American membership, received help from their main-stream headquarters union, which was in New York, but got a lot of help that way. It is important to remember that when Martin Luther King lost his life that the union drive and the strike did not end. It continued on, and the strike was successful. It is important to know that the right of human dignity, human rights and labor rights, are inextricably linked together. One of the first things that my father and mother would tell me as a child is that Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, is a place where Walter Reuther of the UAW and Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference walked down the street arm in arm with Reverend C.L. Franklin demanding labor rights, human rights, civil rights. It is all one thing, and that is what we have all got to be about.”