OneNation 10.2.10: March on Washington for education, jobs, and unity

Photo - Cara Metz

With less than five weeks to go before the Oct. 2 Washington, D.C. OneNation march and rally for jobs, justice and education for all, UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined union leaders, elected officials and community, ethnic and religious groups at a Sept. 1 kick-off news conference on Wall Street at the steps of Federal Hall.

The march organizers, which include the national AFL-CIO, the NAACP as well as the AFT and some 170 other sponsoring community, religious, labor and ethnic organizations, are working together to bring hundreds of thousands of working people — employed and unemployed, immigrants and native born — to support legislative and social policies that benefit all Americans, not just the few.

Mulgrew said he shuddered to think what Dr. Martin Luther King would say if he were alive today to see the greater-than-ever distance between the rich and the poor.

“Repelling attacks on a shrinking middle class and fighting for economic justice is a fight for us all,” Mulgrew said. “On Oct. 2, we are going to Washington, D.C. to tell the country that it’s not about hating each other and dividing each other, but about working together.”

Other speakers at the Sept. 1 Wall Street rally included Rep. Charles Rangel, the NAACP’s Hazel Dukes, the Working Families Party’s Dan Cantor and representatives from the New York Immigrants Rights Coalition, the Urban League, United for Peace and Justice, and the AFL-CIO.