WASHINGTON—Speakers and marchers at the anniversary commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous March on Washington linked voting rights and economic justice, just as he did back on Aug. 28, 1963.
Busloads of marchers came from all over the nation to the event, on a sweltering day in downtown D.C. There were 10 busloads full of marchers from Houston alone, 153 United Auto Workers members from Local 863 of Cincinnati, other UAW members from Detroit, and AFSCME marchers from D.C. and up the East Coast, among others.
Precise turnout is still being calculated, but there are concerns that the numbers may have been depressed, as activists and participating organizations are looking into situations across the country where people were left standing on scheduled buses that never showed.
Nevertheless, organizers from the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network reported tens of thousands jammed onto the National Mall in D.C, while others took shady shelter under nearby trees.
“We have watched our history be erased, our votes threatened, our bodies politicized, our brilliance exploited, and our humanity questioned—and still, my sisters, we rise; still we vote; still we organize; and still we lead,” said Jotaka Eaddy, founder of WIN with Black Women.
“But there comes a moment in time when patience becomes permission and silence becomes betrayal, and that moment is now. So today, as Black women, I stand here to declare independence from systems that profit from pain, from politics that want our votes but not our voices, from corporations that celebrate our diversity and culture but abandon our communities.”
Recalling the original march, Sharpton said, “In ’63 when they came to this spot, they came because there was segregation. They came because there was denial of human equality. They came because we could not vote.” Afterward, he said, “We went back to the South, we went back in the Northern areas, and we organized.”
The same thing must be done today, he told the crowd.
“We must turn this country upside down for those elected officials who are taking from us the right to vote. We will not let them turn back the hand of time…. If we go and organize after we go home like they did on Aug. 28, 1963, and organize, we can put a handicap on the most biased, bigoted presidency that we’ve seen in a long time.”
Participants came not only to commemorate Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, but to rededicate themselves to achieving the goals he set that day. Speakers said those goals are under enormous attack from President Donald Trump’s administration, his MAGA supporters, his congressional accomplices in the Republican Party, his Supreme Court majority, and the billionaire titans who corrupt U.S. elections and finance repression.
There were repeated demands for voting rights, voting reform, and curbing the role of cash in politics.
Indeed, signs and speeches were about equally divided between defending, expanding, and protecting the right to vote on one hand and demanding economic justice—including a higher minimum wage, the right to organize, and universal health care among other causes—on the other.
“ICE Trump” read one handmade sign, referring to Trump’s violent ICE agents who, at his command, engage in massive sweeps of people—citizens or not—nationwide. “Voter fraud: Another Trump hoax,” a second read.
The march “is part of our core values to make life better for everyone, not just ourselves,” Ben Brady, chairman of the Greater Cincinnati UAW political action committee, told People’s World. “This is for every working person who puts their life on the line.”
“Bottom line: Donald Trump is an authoritarian who is deliberately trying to destroy faith in American democracy, create confusion, and sow mistrust in our elections and make it harder for Americans to vote,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., one of the three keynote speakers at the end of the program in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
“We have to get out the vote and vote in such massive numbers that the results are clear and convincing and so that no one can steal [the election] from us,” declared American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.
Some individual marchers went beyond the speakers’ denunciations. They raised the issue of fascism and the need now to fight an openly fascist regime in the White House.
Two people held one banner declaring: “Impeach. Indict. Convict. Imprison.” Others printed on a bedsheet “End the nightmare,” with “nightmare” in red and a picture of Trump alongside. Below it was “Embrace the Dream,” flanked by a picture of Dr. King in 1963.
“They don’t want to take us back to before 1963,” just-retired AFSCME President Lee Saunders told the crowd. “They want to take us back to before 1863” and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
Added Lenora Thomas of Service Employees Local 512 in Virginia, speaking for her union, “There is no worker power in this country when there is no voter power.”
“Trump is carving up voting rights and carrying out a counter-revolution,” said Joe Sims, co-chair of the Communist Party USA. More than two dozen party members, mostly from the D.C. area, but also including many northeasterners and Organization Secretary Anita Waters from Columbus, Ohio, came to march.
“Voting rights, abortion rights, labor rights are all on the chopping block” of the Trump administration, Sims added. “Affirmative action has been outlawed, reality has been outlawed. Women, African-Americans, LGBTQ people, and immigrants have been targets of federal and local law enforcement.
“But we got to do whatever we can to push back on the MAGA attack,” he said. “We have to defeat them in November and then lay the basis for defeating them in 2028.”
Also speaking was American Federation of Government Employees President Everett Kelley.
Trump has labeled his own government’s workers in general and AFGE in particular as “the deep state” and “enemies,” respectively. Kelley told the crowd that’s because when Trump tried to take away the union rights for a million federal workers—and have trillionaire Elon Musk fire 300,000 of them—AFGE stepped up to sue him repeatedly “and because we said ‘no’ to Elon and his chainsaw.”
The fate of federal workers is particularly important for African-Americans. Federal, state, and local government jobs have long been favored routes for African-Americans to achieve better incomes, due to less racism than in the private sector and better job security. Under Trump, both are vanishing.
Kelley also said Trump, his MAGA legions, and the 1% that back them are scared that the mass of the U.S. people will realize what the ruling class is doing to them—and vote accordingly. He urged the crowd to make that prophecy come true.
“If your vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be working so hard to take it away from you,” he said. And “when they can’t win elections, they change the rules and rig the system,” he declared. “They think the voters will stay in line, but they’re wrong.”
Other speakers included Yusuf Jackson, a son of the late Rev. Jesse Jackson, Marc Morial of the Urban League, and several of Dr. King’s children. The Drum Major Institute, a non-profit his family runs, co-sponsored the march.
Besides Sen. Sanders, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Yvette Clarke, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, all D-N.Y., spoke, as did Gov. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va. The crowd repeatedly interrupted Sanders with applause and did the same for AOC, who had to cut her speech short. There were also many speakers from African-American fraternities, sororities, and civic groups.
Video of the speeches, which ran for more than five hours, and a subsequent short march to the Martin Luther King Memorial, is available on YouTube.
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