Atlanta: Teamsters take the streets for MLK day

Atlanta, GA – On Monday, January 20, the streets of downtown Atlanta were filled with activists, community and youth groups, and a number of labor unions who all marched to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Among the unions present were Teamsters Locals 728 and 396, as well as the IBEW, CWA, SEIU and Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council.

For UPS Teamsters this is the second year in history that MLK day is a paid holiday, following the “Deliver on the Dream” campaign in 2023 that saw the holiday added to the Teamsters contract. King was a staunch ally of organized labor; he spoke to labor unions across the country about the need to fight racist discrimination and led marches demanding improved rights for workers.

The demands of organized labor are especially dire this MLK day, as it coincided with the inauguration of Donald Trump to the presidency. Teamsters led chants against union busting and workplace abuses. Trump used hollow rhetoric in an attempt to appeal to the working class during the 2024 election, calling out the rising costs of living and exorbitant spending on foreign wars. In the same breath, Trump incites xenophobic and anti-Black racism. From Trump’s promise to deport a record number of immigrants to his support for a national right-to-work law, there can be no doubt that he will be an enemy of labor while in office.

Martin Luther King Jr himself drew the connection between the rights of labor and the fight against racism in a 1961 address to the AFL-CIO convention, stating, “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs – decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”

Amazon Teamster Hunter Richau from Local 728 spoke on King’s legacy regarding labor, saying, “As much as his image gets whitewashed, MLK was fighting for the working class. The fight we wage on his birthday every year from here on out will be a fight for the working people here in Atlanta. The working class is already here, and we need to stick together. If MLK were here today he would champion nothing less.”

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