Herbert Parson, Alvin Turner and Joe Warren, were part of the 1968 AFSCME sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed April 1968 while helping the workers fight for justice.

The nation is “facing a frontal assault on the American way of life, and the prime target is the hard-working American family,” write AFSCME President Gerald McEntee and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.)  in a column in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Their column marking the 43rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Across the nation and around the world today–and throughout the week–working people are saying, We Are One with workers whose rights and middle-class jobs are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere by Republican governors and legislators. They are also honoring the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. He was gunned down fighting for the same rights for Memphis, Tenn., sanitation workers.

Around the nation today and this week union members, civil rights, community and faith activists are saying, “We are One” with working people in Wisconsin and dozens of other states where well-funded, right-wing corporate politicians are trying to take away workers’ right. As Domestic Workers United founder Ai-Jen Poo says in this new video:

If we don’t have a strong labor movement we don’t have a voice for justice.

The nation’s greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on workers. There’s no trickle down. It’s the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class for decades.

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita contributed to this report.

Today, on what would have been César Chávez’s 84th birthday, students, workers and immigrants joined together to pay tribute to the legacy of Chávez.

Monday, April 4 marks the 43rd anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was assassinated while helping Memphis, Tenn., sanitation workers fight for the same workers’ rights that governors and state legislators in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states are now trying to eliminate. These assaults have sparked energy and built a solidarity movement to defend workers’ rights and middle-class job

On and around April 4 in hundreds of large and small events nationwide, working people will gather to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., and stand in solidarity with workers across the country who are facing unprecedented attacks on their rights and their jobs.

AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow Jennifer Angarita joins Chris Hicks, Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) coordinator, to discuss the parallels between campus and community organizing.

Founded in 1999 as a joint initiative between Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) engages student activists with economic justice campaigns in their communities and campuses.