Justice in a coffee cup: Bernie Sanders, Lumumba reflect on MLK's dream

Over 50 years ago, civil rights activists risked their lives to sit-in at white restaurant counters across the South.

Finally allowed to order, a larger obstacle emerged. How to pay?

Economic justice needed to be tied in with racial justice. Jobs and justice are inextricably linked, Martin Luther King Jr. said as he exposed societal ills in the 60s.

"It's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than to guarantee an income," King said.

Also, worker rights, income inequality and livable wages were staples of King's message when he helped to organize and support Memphis sanitation workers just before he was shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.

Fifty years later and to that end, progressive firebrand U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders joined Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba Wednesday night at Thalia Hall in downtown Jackson.

Sanders, earlier in the day, spoke at a rally in Memphis and joined labor advocates for their I Am 2018 march.

"I was in Memphis because Dr. King's work and life is my political inspiration," Sanders said early into a more than hourlong back and forth with the mayor.

Mayor Lumumba restated his vow to lead a "radical" grassroots administration in Jackson, where residents have a say in governmental decisions.

"Our idea is not to move people away but to move them up. I believe we are much smarter collectively than independently. You may not be an infrastructure expert but you are all experts in your own experience," Lumumba said.

The mayor also promised to continue through on an earlier pledge to give Jackson workers a living wage and again hinted at the development of community-owned cooperatives in the city.

Sanders often addressed the audience directly:

"You are not living in a poor nation. You are living in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. How do we have the highest rate of childhood poverty? How could it be that we don't guarantee health care to all people?"

"We need to develop public policy that helps struggling communities. You don't give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the richest people in America. You invest it in infrastructure," Sanders said to applause.

Later, he took a swipe at what he said was the Democratic Party's lack of voter mobilization in about "half the states in the country."

"The Democratic Party needs to be a 50-state party. You cannot be a serious national party when you forget about half the states in the country," Sanders said.

Asked to comment on the national stage, Mayor Lumumba instead looked locally. The mayor, using a reference from his father, said his goal was to make a connection from "pothole to pothole" and "community to community" so that residents begin to see the city from a "holistic" approach.

"We need to save ourselves...It starts with self-determination and more power of governance to the people," the mayor said.

More: Union effort intensifies at Nissan; Bernie Sanders joins fight

Wednesday night wasn't the first time Sanders and Lumumba have joined forces.

Sanders, a former candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, joined the mayor in August in the attempt to unionize workers at the Nissan Canton plant. That effort, also motivated by the two men's commitment to worker rights, failed but was a watershed moment for progressive forces in the union resistant south.

More: Inside the fight over unionizing at Nissan

Since Friday, the mayor's communication team have given voice to Jackson resident's thoughts on the importance of economic justice and where we stand today.

Ward 2 resident Jamil Johnson, a freshman economics major at Tougaloo College, tied economic justice to the city's infrastructure.

“I think that economic justice in Jackson requires fixing the city’s infrastructure, the roads, the water system, lighting, anything possible that is an extra burden and requires a capital expense to the citizens of Jackson," Johnson said.

He described the Sanders, Lumumba forum as a teachable moment.

"I think the conversation between Sen. Sanders and Mayor Lumumba is essential in teaching people – especially the people of Jackson - about what economic justice is so they can so they can demand more in the future,” he said.

Event moderator and resident of Ward 7, Arekia Bennett explained economic justice requires a careful watch over the least advantaged in society.

"I think about people who live within the margins of our society having access to economic opportunities, a job, not just education, but a quality education and quality and affordable healthcare," Bennett said.