During the March on Washington in 1963, Dr Martin Luther King Jr spoke about “the fierce urgency of now”, underscoring the immediate and pressing need to take strong and immediate action to advance civil rights. It couldn’t wait. Today, communities across the country find themselves in a similar moment, fighting politicians who are hellbent on enacting Donald Trump’s noxious agenda of inequality and injustice.

The most recent incarnation: a supreme court case, Janus v AFSCME Council 31, intent on stripping away the rights of working people to join together in their unions, an attack on a basic American right.

The same politicians who have made healthcare less accessible, rolled back voting rights, defunded our schools, and polluted our air and water have brought this attack to our nation’s highest court to try to dismantle the organizing power of working people in unions.

Supreme court debates union case that could affect five million workers Read more

For decades, Republicans have chipped away at collective bargaining. This year, they are swinging with the axe, because they fear the voices of working people who speak the truth. Voices that are loud enough to be heard and put at risk their plan to twist our government to work against the people and in favor of the powerful. Voices that are loud enough to demand fairer terms not only for union members, but for all of us.



When that voice is silenced, we see life get better for only those at the top, at the expense of everyday Americans. We see it when some CEOs and politicians deny working people the ability to join together to have a say over their jobs and are forced to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. We see it when children in Flint don’t have clean drinking water, and when children in Texas can’t play outside. We see it when women can’t access necessary reproductive healthcare and are unable to make their own decisions about their economic futures and lives.

We are facing systemic underinvestment in the things that matter for America’s working families – education, public transportation and healthcare. And it is those same families who also pay the highest price for pollution, whether it’s lead in drinking water or dangerous chemicals in the air.

Oil and gas companies are still pushing through pipelines that poison groundwater and farms in communities that don’t have the resources to fight back. These companies and the politicians that do their bidding seem to think that some Americans are expendable – poor children, communities of color, immigrants, women and workers. Their message is clear: we want the money, you can take the health consequences.

As a nation, we cannot allow the injustice in our economy and in our political system that cheats average people and undermines any promise of a better and more dignified life. Our survival as a democratic nation depends on us – the only way to protect our democracy and resist the attacks on our people like the one facing us now at the supreme court is to form a unified progressive coalition and face down extremists at every turn.



That’s why NextGen America and other organizations joined with leaders from the women’s and civil rights movements, labor unions, religious leaders and working people for a massive nationwide day of action on 24 February – two days before the supreme court hears oral arguments on the Janus case.

We’re uniting in dozens of cities across the country for the Working People’s Day of Action to let big corporations and their friends in Washington know that they can’t rig the rules against us any more, to ensure that our children have a place to grow up safe, and to demand that we all have a fair shake at living a full and healthy life.

For climate activists, this tactic from big business and the politicians they bankroll is nothing new. These same forces have worked hard and long to block efforts to address our energy crisis, cut pollution and bring new renewable energy technology to market faster. Environmental justice depends on our ability to organize together for real action to address the climate crisis. We all have a right to stand together for a better future, and we won’t let corporate interests use the US supreme court as a pawn in their effort to take away that right.

Whether it’s trying to break up workers’ unions or entire progressive movements, the Republican party’s goal has always been to divide and conquer, because they know that when the people are united, the people win. They know that when the people stand strong together for progress, they can’t scale back environmental and worker protections or silence our voices at the ballot box.

It is time to recognize anew “the fierce urgency of now”, to stand united, and to raise our unified voice for a positive agenda that puts the American people ahead of corporate profits. Now is the time to rebuild a clean America – adopting a clean energy future that creates the well-paying, stable, union jobs of the 21st century. And now is the time to raise our unified voice for our deepest values, for what’s best for working people and our families, and for what’s going to preserve the promise of our democracy: a nation of equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all.