April 4 Demands for Racial and Social Justice Honor Martin Luther King Jr.

Calls for equity and social justice in the spirit of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reverberated across the state on April 4^th at commemorations and actions marking 55 years since King's assassination during a sanitation workers strike in Memphis Tennessee.

Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, leader of the Poor People's Campaign launched the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at the Yale Divinity School of which he is founding director, with several public speeches.

In Hartford on April 4th, CSEA and Recovery for All called for public investment in child care at a rally at 8:30 am at Gov. Lamont's Mansion on Prospect Avenue.

“Fifty-five years after Dr. King was assassinated while supporting a strike of Black sanitation workers in Memphis, we're coming together to fight for childcare workers - disproportionately Black and brown - who are negotiating for health care coverage in their contract with the State,” said the union.

Two days earlier Rev Barber delivered the Palm Sunday sermon at New Haven's historic Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church of Christ, a leader for decades in the civil rights movement. He called on the 200 assembled congregants and community members to take a stand against the growing poverty in our country.

 

Rev. Barber decried the fact that during the pandemic service workers, re-named essential workers, were forced to put in long hours but left in poverty, while the richest became even wealthier 

 

“330,000 people died for lack of health care, and the rich got richer. What is wrong with the conscience of the nation!” he declared, saying that like Emmett Tills' mother, “we should not close another casket. Force the nation to deal with its conscience.”

 

Rev. Barber highlighted King's message that what white supremacists fear most is the unity of poor white and poor Black people coming together and voting to change the politics of the South. 

 

As leader of the Poor People's Campaign Barber has championed just such a fusion movement addressing the systemic crises of racism, economic exploitation, militarism and climate change.

 

On April 4^th Rev Barber delivered a moral call to action at Yale University, “It's Our Time: Every Generation is Called to Build a Movement.” He was named the 2023 Dwight Hall Jane and William E. Curran ’49 Distinguished Mentor.