I’m so thankful to have been asked to speak here today. I am especially honored to speak about organized labor.

The trajectory of my own life has been made possible by unions and the power of collective bargaining.

My father pulled our family into the middle class through a union apprenticeship and a career as an inside wireman, as a member of IBEW Local 545. During my second summer in law school, another building trades union, the Painters, gave me a chance, gave me my first job after law school, and I’m still advocating for unions and their member’s hard earned pension benefits today.

The battle for civil rights through good trouble has long been tied to organized labor.

Labor rights are civil rights and civil rights are labor rights. The struggle for dignity has always been one of both fulfilling sacred rights of civic participation and meeting practical economic need.

In 1963, the March on Washington’s full title was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In the meetings at the White House negotiating the details of the March, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis were joined by Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers.

A. Philip Randolph, who first envisioned a march on Washington in 1941, who was instrumental in organizing the march in 1963, founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Black and white, young and old, labor joined with activists in that time and that place.

Later, by then a seasoned statesman, Representative John Lewis, advocated for legislation that would provide similar legal protections in federal court for organizing workers as the protections enshrined in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But the history of organized labor cannot be fully conveyed without acknowledging where it has fallen short. Like so many gains for working people that came in the first half of the 20th century, for many tradesmen, the right to join a union was too often denied on the basis of a workers’ race.

Change and growth and justice has moved ahead, with sometimes uneven, but steady progress. While I was working as a law student, the General President and highest union official at the Painters Union was a man named Ken Rigmaiden, the first black General President of a building trades union in American history. The work to build a more inclusive labor movement continues, much as that work continues in our larger society. Institutions comprised of imperfect people are themselves admittedly, imperfect.

But I have seen the power of working people standing up together across divisions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and national origin and that power is what is going to see us through these dark times.

During my time with the Painters, I had the privilege of witnessing and assisting in some good trouble, and there is a sign and a chant lifted up at a rally in the midst of a labor dispute involving migrant painters that has stuck with me. As those workers fought against exploitation, against employers who threatened deportation if they did not quietly accept poverty wages, grueling hours, and unsafe working conditions, they made this simple demand –

Accept my labor, protect my rights.

I think this is a moral imperative and simple request to follow. But how many officials in this administration advocated for and are executing a policy of mass deportation, while living under roofs built by migrant workers?

How many in the halls of power who celebrate this administration’s lawless cruelty are celebrating birthdays and anniversaries in rooms painted by immigrants?

How many entrusted with authority in government today have themselves entrusted immigrants with the work of caring not only within and around their homes, but with caring for their young children and their aging parents?

And today, those same migrant workers get dragged into unmarked vans, torn from the fabrics of their communities with violence reminiscent of the actions of Bull Connor, confined, and shipped off, many for no other crime than trying to make a better life for themselves.

But while I breathe, I hope and still believe that our mistaken brothers and sisters who elevated this administration to power can once again hear and obey the command of the Lord, written in Leviticus, “that the foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”

There is hope in the Word of the Lord and there is hope in the action of others.

On May 16th of this year, a workplace of mostly Hispanic workers, tired of their poor treatment from a painting contractor in Kansas City, voted to unionize by a 2-1 margin in a worker-led organizing campaign. This kind of courage, in this kind of environment, recalls another moment in American history, when brave men and women asserted their rights against injustice, moving out from the 16th Street Baptist Church to face the evils of their time, just as we must face evil in ours.

And it is only through bravery, solidarity, and hope that we can face the evil of white nationalism in our time, and echoing the words of John Lewis, I’m confident that we will shatter the hold that white nationalism has on our nation and our community and rebuild in the image of God and Democracy.