Commentaries

Time for new march: For jobs, peace, hope

By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr.

On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King led the March on Washington, with the vital support of United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther. This year, on Aug. 28, the RainbowPush Coalition will join UAW President Bob King and congressional, civil rights and union leaders to lead a March in Detroit for Jobs, Justice and Peace.

In 1963, Dr. King gave his famous "I have a dream" address. His theme was that we had come to Washington to redeem a check, a promise that had been returned stamped "insufficient funds." The promise of equal rights and equal opportunity had yet to be redeemed.

This year, we will march in Detroit under the banner of "Rebuild America." Working people have borne the brunt of the Great Recession.

More than 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. In urban areas, teenage unemployment reaches more than 40 percent. American manufacturing suffered a 10-year recession before the Great Recession began. The auto industry, which once employed 1.5 million workers, now is reduced to 400,000. In Appalachia and the Gulf states, corporate greed and the gutting of government oversight and regulation has led to needless death and devastation in the coal and oil fields. Financial gambling with other people's money blew up the housing bubble until it exploded. Now the bankers have been bailed out, but home and church foreclosures continue to rise. Teachers, police, transport workers -- all those who do hands on work to make our cities run -- have been among the first to suffer the consequences. Workers have suffered layoffs, furloughs, pay squeezes, benefit cuts. Poverty is up. And our basic infrastructure that we rely on -- water systems, roads, bridges, mass transit -- is crumbling beneath us. The economy, we're told, is recovering, but working families are not.

So we march to rebuild America and put workers back to work. In Washington, we see gridlock, with conservatives in both parties calling on sustaining tax breaks to the very wealthy even as they delay extending unemployment insurance for those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Billions are spent on endless wars on the other side of the world. The U.S. is building schools in Afghanistan, while many of our own schools are in dangerous disrepair.

We come together to unite across racial and ethnic battlegrounds to find economic common ground. We need policies that put people to work by rebuilding the foundation vital to our economy and by reviving American manufacturing. That can begin by moving to clean energy and weatherizing apartment buildings and homes to save electricity. It will require a fair trade policy that balances our trade and ensures that we make things here in America once again.

We need justice to accompany those jobs -- to protect the right of workers to organize so they can gain a fair share of the profits that they help produce, to ensure equal rights to all, to provide a healthy start for every child, to promise a world-class education for all of our children, to offer all of us affordable health care and dignity in retirement. These are not luxuries for the few; they should be the rights of all who work.

We march for peace, for ending the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for redirecting that money to rebuild America. We should be an active participant in the international community, but we cannot afford to police the world. It is time to rebuild America.

In 1963, the March on Washington was preceded and accompanied by marches across the country. This year, the March in Detroit will be accompanied and followed by marches across the country, culminating on Oct. 2 when we will gather once more as one nation in Washington, D.C.

For too long, special interests have stood in the way of the general good. In these past months, the voices of those who would divide us have been louder than those who would bring us together. Those peddling fear have gained more attention than those peddling hope. We cannot afford to turn on one another. In Detroit, on Aug. 28, the anniversary of Dr. King's famous march, we will join once more to make America better.

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