IAM Local Lodge 731 consist of members from British Airways (Flytele/BA), Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and U.S. Airways and is part of Districts 141 and 142 of the Transportation Territory of the IAM and is a member in good-standing of the North Florida Central Labor Council and the Florida AFL-CIO.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Assault on Unions Is an Attack on Basic Civil Rights
Rev. Jesse Jackson
Civil rights activist
Posted: February 22, 2011 06:15 PM
It looks like "Cairo has moved to Madison," said conservative Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, as 50,000 citizens took over the state's Capitol building. He got the spirit right, but the location wrong. In Madison, folks wearing Packers jerseys stand together with folks wearing Bears colors. Madison is this generation's Selma, the epicenter for the modern battle for basic human rights.
In 1965, the drive for basic voting rights was stalled in the U.S. Senate. President Johnson pushed Martin Luther King to stop demonstrating. Instead, Dr. King went to Selma. Selma was not a big city, but it held a mirror to the nation. There, on Bloody Sunday, peaceful demonstrators were met with dogs, clubs and hoses, and touched the conscience of a nation. Two days later, Johnson, invoking the famous words, "We shall overcome," introduced the Voting Rights Act. Five months later it was signed into law.