Glynn Wilson,Locust Fork News JournalApril 5th, 2011 |
Daryl Dewberry’s army of mine workers from District 20, covering most of the Southeast, packed the house with their signature camouflage T-shirts at the “We Are One” rally at Boutwell Auditorium, moved across the street from Linn Park due to the threat of afternoon thunderstorms.
“These colors don’t run,” Dewberry said to resounding cheers and applause. “A wrong to one is a wrong to all. We stand with you …. We’re ready to fight and we’ll fight with you.”
The mine workers were joined by the Communication Workers of America Local 3902, which hosted the rally, along with the AFL-CIO, the plumbers and pipefitters of UA Local 91, and all the other unions in the state, including the American Federation of Teachers and the Alabama Education Association.
It was a special day to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dewberry acknowledged, who was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, there on a trip to march with the striking public sanitation workers.
Dewberry quoted from King’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail.
“Moreover, I am cognizant of the (interrelatedness) of all communities and states. I cannot sit by … in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere,” he wrote. “We are caught in an inescapable network of brutality tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever effects one directly affects us all indirectly. Never again can with live with the narrow … outside agitator idea. Anyone who lives within the United States can never be considered an outsider.”
