The AFL-CIO today announced a far-reaching, multi-partner campaign to register voters, ensure they can cast their ballots without intimidation and follow through to make sure those votes are counted. Speaking at a press conference here in Washington, D.C., AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said this campaign represents the union movement’s most aggressive push ever because:

the attacks we are seeing on the right to vote are unprecedented.

William (Bill) Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), is stepping down from the post he has held since he co-founded the CBTU in 1972. He says:

It’s time for a new leader to step into these shoes and connect with young workers who need to see their generation out front in more leadership roles, trying new approaches to empower black trade unionists and achieve social justice at home and abroad.

A new book, Hands on the Freedom Plow, tells the stories of 52 women who joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s to combat the blatant and pervasive racism and injustice that infected the South. Three of those women told their stories today in an AFL-CIO forum in Washington, D.C.   

Union and civil rights activists said they were “encouraged” today when German automaker Daimler—one of Alabama’s major employers with its Tuscaloosa County Mercedes-Benz plant—acknowledged it had engaged other businesses and state and federal lawmakers in discussions about Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law, H.B. 56.

On April 4, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s tragic assassination, labor and civil rights group representatives will be in Berlin, Germany, at the Daimler shareholder meeting, calling on the automaker to back the repeal of Alabama’s recently enacted H.B. 56. The harsh anti-immigrant law legitimizes racial and ethnic profiling and has drawn criticism nationally and globally.

This past week, I had the privilege of joining with thousands of people from Alabama and around the country who walked from Selma to Montgomery to commemorate the historic march 47 years ago that forced Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act and that changed our country forever. Hundreds of leaders from the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), the immigrant rights coalition convened by the Center for Community Change (CCC), came to Alabama from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, Kansas and Colorado.  We joined with thousands of members and leaders from civil rights organizations, immigrant rights organizations and AFL-CIO unions and other unions in a powerful, diverse show of strength and unity that transformed the hearts and minds of everyone who was a part of it. I believe that this week’s events will go down in history as a turning point in our efforts to build a broad-based coalition to advance progressive change. 

Rev. Al Sharpton’s statement fired up a crowd of thousands standing in front of the steps of the Alabama State Capitol building in downtown Montgomery early Friday afternoon: "These laws in Alabama aren't immigration laws. They're Jim Crow laws."

Mrs. Gardner still has a firm grip when she shakes your hand. She stood at the edge of the property she and her husband, Robert, had opened up to participants in the Selma to Montgomery, Ala., marches back in 1965, as a new generation recognized her contributions while drawing attention to new injustices.

It’s very interesting how 40 years later, we’re fighting for some of the same rights that were originally fought for—fighting for workers' rights, fighting for the 99 percent, fighting for everybody to do their equal share, against corporate greed.

More than 1,000 participants in the five-day Selma to Montgomery, Ala., march are carrying on their journey today, focusing on the renewed threat to workers’ rights and voting rights around the nation. The crowd began their march at the Viola Liuzzo memorial, some 24 miles outside Selma.