P.O.P. hosts march and rally in honor of MLK

NEWARK, NJ — The People’s Organization for Progress hosted a protest march and rally in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. in downtown Newark on the slain civil rights leader’s birthday, Sunday, Jan. 15, one day before the observance of the national holiday in his honor.

“His whole thing was about changing people’s minds; changing people’s hearts,” Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a 2017 gubernatorial candidate who served as U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 New Jersey campaign manager, said Sunday, Jan 15. “And he would be so profoundly disappointed at the direction we have gone as a society because, when he started, he was making progress and that progress today has seemed to be turned on its head. You know, he was the first person to talk about black live matter because, at that point in time, as we just heard, there were so many people that thought they didn’t matter.”

The only difference for King, Wisniewski said, was “Back then, he was worried about people getting access to quality health care, people not having enough food to eat.” He added that the more things have changed, the more they have unfortunately stayed the same in America.

“It’s sad to say that we’ve come forward 50 years and we’re no different today,” Wisniewski said. “And what’s troubling is, we live in a time where it seems that it’s OK for our leaders to make sport of people who have nobody else to stand up for them, to demean people, to use rude and coarse language, to offend people. He would not have stood for that. We don’t stand for that.”

And that’s why, Wisniewski said, he decided to “stand up” with Hamm and P.O.P. and the other grassroots organizations that participated in the protest march and rally in King’s honor.

“Every day, he fought the struggle; every day, we need to fight the struggle, because it’s a battle that can be won,” said Wisniewski. “As Larry (Hamm, president of the People’s Organization for Progress) said so eloquently: There is 1 percent out there that controls so much, but we are the 99 percent. Let’s make our voice heard.”

Wisniewski urged everyone at the rally to “go out and do the work.” Hamm said that call to action on behalf of the never-ending struggle for truth, justice, freedom, equality, legal and criminal justice reform, and socio-economic empowerment is what the Jan. 15 rally in King’s honor was all about.

“We need to build a multiracial and multinational movement to confront this system because this is the most powerful system in the world; that’s why it took 200 years to bring down slavery and it took another 100 years to bring down Jim Crow segregations,” said Hamm on Sunday, Jan. 15, to a crowd of more than 100 people. “So I thank you all for coming out today. You really made me happy today, because I was wondering what kind of turnout we were going to have, but we had a good turnout and it looked good going down Market Street today and coming back up. We did honor to Martin Luther King today.”

Former Assemblyman William Payne agreed with Hamm; however, he said “there should have been more people out here today.”

“I feel I really have let you down because, in 1998, I introduced this legislation that all children, black and white, should know about the history of African-Americans and I’ve been fighting for it all these years, but it’s still coming slowly, but I’m going to keep on fighting for it, so that these young people will know their history and I’m going to keep supporting P.O.P.,” Payne said at the event.

  Assemblyman John Wisniewski, Larry Hamm, Martin Luther King Jr., People’s Organization for Progress, William Payne