Stick Together As People
Celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. at Joliet’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church
January 18, 2010
By JOE HOSEY, The Joliet Herald-News
JOLIET–Martin Luther King Jr. was killed when he went to Memphis, to support striking sanitation workers. At the ecumenical celebration of King’s birth on Sunday, pastors and activists called attention to a present day labor struggle.
“We can’t really celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King if there are injustices occurring less than five miles away from us,” said Abraham Mwaura, a representative of Warehouse Workers for Justice.
Mwaura spoke during the celebration held at Mt. Zion Baptist Church and told of the conditions warehouse workers are subjected, including those right here in Joliet.
Mwaura imparted the story of a pregnant worker whose job in a frozen pizza warehouse had her bending over a conveyor belt for the duration of her shift. Her doctor told her she had to make an adjustment for the sake of her unborn baby, Mwaura said, but management “refused to move her, refused to give her a stool, refused to do anything to make her work lighter.”
Management stood fast even in the face of an organized protest by the workers, he said, and the woman ultimately lost her baby.
“What is that frozen pizza worth to us now?” Mwaura asked. “What is that economic development worth to us now?”
He also introduced a former warehouse worker identified only as Cindy, who was fired from the Bissell facility in Elwood after she and 69 of her co-workers protested such practices as mistreating the pregnant and paying below the minimum wage.
The Warehouse Workers for Justice are meeting at Sacred Heart Church on Ottawa Street today and will call for a boycott of Bissell products, Mwaura said.
The Rev. Isaac Singleton also addressed the crowd in Mt. Zion Baptist Church and spoke of the progress made by the black community, and of the struggle ahead.
“I remember when we couldn’t go downtown and buy nothing,” Singleton said. He also recalled “sitting on the back of the bus in Joliet.”
“I think about how far God brought us,” Singleton said, later adding,” We are really not that much better off than we were years ago.
“We’re not where we ought to be, and we’re not where we should be,” the reverend said. “But you have come along way.”
Most importantly, Singleton said, men and women of all races need to “stick together as people.”
“As people of the United States of America,” he said, “and more specifically, Joliet, Illinois, because we can make a difference.”