James Parks, communications director at the D.C. Office of Interfaith Worker Justice, sends us this.

More than 500 people packed the Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., Jan. 16 for an Interfaith Service for Jobs. The service was sponsored by Faith Advocates for Jobs to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and to call on our nation’s government to make King’s dream of economic justice and good jobs a reality.

John Butler and Linda Evans, two unemployed Washington, D.C., workers, told the crowd that they were organizing, protesting and pushing for our national leadership to create good jobs. Butler said it was hard having to decide between paying his rent or buying needed medicines. “America, you can do much better than this,” he proclaimed.

Evans said she was concerned about the future of the “babies” who are just starting work. They were raised to believe that getting an education would lead to a good job. But that’s not the case anymore, she said.

Our leaders must act to make jobs a national priority, said the Rev. Paul Sherry, national coordinator of Faith Advocates for Jobs. Congress has a short time to extend benefits for millions of unemployed workers.

Good jobs can be created; it’s just a matter of will. We will walk the halls of Congress to demand that our representatives create good jobs so mothers and fathers can feed their children. We will walk the halls of Congress to demand that our leaders extend benefits to the unemployed.

Speakers repeatedly emphasized the links between faith and work.  Reading from King’s address to the 1961 AFL-CIO Convention, the Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, director of public witness for the Presbyterian Church USA, pointed out that the goals of the union movements and the civil rights movements are identical. Fifty years ago King told the convention:

Our needs are identical with labor’s needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare standards, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in their community.

Nelson said those needs are just as critical today and apply not only to African Americans but to the disabled, poor, immigrants and the unemployed.

An interfaith group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders led the crowd in a series of litanies  for worker justice, including those who are unemployed, underemployed and their families, for a faithful national budget, for victims of wage theft who are not paid what they are owed. Other litanies called for worker safety, an extension of unemployment benefits, more opportunities for young workers entering the workforce and for workers’ rights to join a union to be respected.  

Many people would be surprised to learn that access to jobs was a part of Dr. King’s dream, said the Rev. Dr. James Forbes in his sermon. He reminded the audience that the official title of the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, was “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

Any society, economic system or person who stifles a person’s fulfillment by denying them work is “ungodly,” said Forbes, the Harry Emerson Fosdick Distinguished Professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.