MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY WORKSHOP SLIDESHOW

For the workshop outline that accompanies this slideshow, visit www.domesticworkers.org/mlk.

A DEFINITION OF RACISM:

Individual and social beliefs, attitudes and actions that claim white people are superior to other people. In the US, white supremacy describes the organization of society based on white people having authority and power over culture, society, economy and government.

“There are just laws and there are unjust laws...One has not only a legal but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."...One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly...and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

anti-black racism today

• Black unemployment is 12%, while the national average is 6.7%

• 1 in 4 black families live in poverty

• Every 28 hours a black man is killed by police or vigilantes

• Black people are disproportionately targets of police, and make up the majority of the prison population despite being a minority of the overall U.S. population

Ferguson Action vision for a New America

• We want an end to all forms of discrimination and the full recognition of our human rights.

• We want an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of black, brown and all oppressed people.

• We want full employment for our people.

• We want decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings.

• We want an end to the school to prison pipeline and quality education for all.

• We want freedom from mass incarceration and an end to the prison industrial complex.