NEWSLETTER: OPENING REMARCS - DRUM MAJORS FOR JUSTICE CELEBRATION, AUGUST 23, 2013

NEWSLETTER

Opening ReMARCs
                                                       

"Wake up everybody. No more sleeping in bed. No more backward thinking. Time for thinking ahead."


That was the call we issued as we kicked off the 2013 National Urban League Conference. But this call rang out beyond the 4000-plus registrants and attendees who joined us in Philadelphia.  This was a call to America.


In recent months, we have seen increasing efforts aimed at turning back the hands of progress in voting rights, civil rights, workers’ rights and criminal justice – including the United States Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act and its stripping of critical protections granted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as well as unequal justice perpetuated by unfair laws such as Stand Your Ground.


As we prepare to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, the challenge before us now is to create a new Civil Rights Movement – one that stands on the shoulders of progress in which a new generation of people from all walks of life work together to ensure that the promise of life, liberty and economic opportunity becomes real.   If 1963 was about Jobs and Freedom, 2013 must be expanded to Economic Empowerment and Justice.  We started it 50 years ago, and it’s time to finish our business. 


Join us in Washington, DC on August 23-24 as we honor the 1963 March by continuing its work and ushering in the change necessary for ongoing progress. Our Drum Majors for Justice Celebration: Redeem the Dream Summit will take place on Aug. 23, during which we will chart our course forward, and the Civil Rights Continuation March will be held on August 24, where multitudes will gather in the same spirit of 50 years ago.


If the desire for life, liberty, justice and equal opportunity is in your soul, whether you live in a red or blue state or simply believe in the red, white and blue of this nation – you, too, cannot ignore the call.

To Be Equal “The hour is late.  The gap is widening.  The rumbles of the drums of discontent resounding throughout this land are heard in all parts of the world.” Whitney M. Young, Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington

National Urban League to Mark 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington Fifty years ago, on August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered for the historic March on Washington to demand jobs and freedom.  The March was organized by a coalition of civil rights, social justice and labor movement leaders known as the “Big Six” – James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); John Lewis, of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins of the NAACP; and our own Whitney M. Young, Jr. as President of the National Urban League. While that day is most remembered for Dr. King’s landmark  “I Have a Dream” speech, Whitney Young and a host of other speakers took the podium to call for the passage of long overdue civil rights legislation and to demand jobs, a living wage, decent housing and quality education for all.  As America prepares to mark the anniversary of this watershed moment and in the same spirit of unity and collaboration that Whitney Young brought to the 1963 March, the National Urban League will again join with other leading civil rights organizations to mobilize citizens across the nation to gather in Washington, DC to continue to press for economic empowerment and justice.

To Be Equal