Michael Kelly says he felt good about Martin Luther King's March on Washington, in August of 1963, when he was six years old, because he was helping his own mother handing out cups of lemonade to the marchers on their street. I hope my son Ben, now not quite six, feels the same way about this spring's march to the Cleveland Clinic. Because his own father was there, holding his hand all the way from Wade Park to Carnegie and snapping pictures with the free hand. We're overwhelmed by governments and institutions. Kindergarten is not too early to start on this lifetime pursuit.
Most people never master it.
Many never even start. Decades of negotiation and confrontation have yielded slow progress towards living wages, together with reasonable working hours. These unions help to fund, train, and support organizers who can devote more time and energy to causes that matter to working people and the poor. Although fair-minded people will have minor or major differences with any union's political program, it's critical that those interests be represented. At their worst, the unions can be narrow-minded, selfish, and organized corruptly against their own members.