Rev. William J. Barber, II and Sen. Sherrod Brown write:

For far too long, we have failed to recognize that work’s purpose is to support and nurture our families and communities and civil society – not Wall Street.

But under the Trump administration, Wall Street has been running the country. The current president’s cabinet looks like a big bank executive retreat.

The halls of Congress teem with corporate lobbyists. And those lobbyists take their cues from Wall Street, which rewards companies that cut costs by any means necessary, and view workers as a cost to be minimized, rather than sisters and brothers.

It’s little wonder that workers become an afterthought – or no thought at all.

In this critical moment, we join our voices because we know civil rights and workers’ rights have always been inexorably linked.

Not long before he was martyred in Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr. told AFSCME sanitation workers, “One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity.”

As American workers head to voting booths and mail-in ballots in numbers so large they cannot be ignored, they send a clear message to political leaders: we are the backbone of this country, our work has dignity, and you cannot continue to exploit us. [Continue reading…]