Remarks of Bruce Popper, First Vice-President, Rochester Labor Council; Vice-President, 1199SEIU

(Rochester & Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation)
Remarks of Bruce Popper

28th Annual Celebration of the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. University of Rochester Medical Center January 15, 2009


        "Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform.  The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet
made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.   If there is
no struggle, there is no progress."

        Just a few hundred yards north of where we are gathered today lies Frederick Douglass who spoke these words in 1857 in Canandaigua, New York.
His words are a reminder of just how long this struggle has been.

        On the Friday before our last election, candidate Barack Obama urged us to not let up.  He said, "Power concedes nothing without a struggle.  We must work every hour, every minute, every second until this election is over."

        Obama spoke under a banner that said "Yes we can," the English translation of the motto of Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers of America "Si se puede."

        Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the two streams of the movement for liberty:  the struggle for social justice embodied by the civil rights movement and the struggle for economic justice embodied by the labor movement.  He gave his life while supporting a strike by union workers in Memphis some 40 years ago.

        Barack Obama's win is no less a coming together of the streams of
our movement.    

        I had given up hope that I would ever see a U.S. president, in my lifetime, who shared these values.  Next week, we will have one who not only quotes Frederick Douglass but who is a community organizer too.

        We have been given an opportunity, one that comes rarely more than once in a lifetime.  As we depart today, let us remind ourselves that the struggle is not over.  it is only beginning.  Let us pray that we are up to the task and that we use this moment in history to unite as never before  - to fulfill the dream of Frederick Douglass, of Cesar Chavez, and of Martin Luther King, Jr.