Thousands march in remembrance of March on Washington revisit battle for minority voting rights

Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. To Speak At 50th Anniversary March On Washington

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. will speak at the 50th Anniversary March on Washington, commemorating the 1963 March when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to hundreds of thousands of civil rights activists on the national mall about his dreams for equality and economic justice. Busloads of AFGE leaders and members from across the country will attend the 50th Anniversary March.

Cox will address the rally, noting that although much progress on civil rights has occurred in the five decades since King exhorted the nation to end legal discrimination, the economic justice that King sought to bring about by joining the struggle for democracy at the ballot box to democracy at the workplace has not been realized.

“The same forces that fought so bitterly and violently against civil rights are behind today’s efforts to deny collective bargaining rights and to suppress voting in state after state,” Cox will say. “We will not let them succeed. Failure is not an option. We must organize so that our movements are too big to fail. Too big to ignore and too big for anyone to even consider taking on.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 670,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia.

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SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees

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Crowds swell Washington to mark ‘I have a dream’ march

AFP – Tens of thousands gathered on Saturday to mark 50 years since the March on Washington, the civil rights watershed where Martin Luther King Jr famously declared: “I have a dream.” Under blue skies, the predominantly – but by no means exclusively.

A new generation takes up Martin Luther King Jr.’s torch

The Christian Science Monitor

A close-up of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., is seen in this photograph. This is the cover story in the Aug. 19-26 double issue of The Christian Science Monitor.(AP) Rosanna Rizo clutches her iPhone, searching Florida Gov. Organizers of an event commemorating 1963’s civil rights march expected about 100,000 people on Washington’s National Mall.