“I typed all day long for T.O. Jones,” said Bonnie Blair, recalling the rainy day in 1968 when she wrote 33 letters from striking sanitation workers to Mayor Henry Loeb of Memphis, Tennessee.

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers' (BCTGM’s) campaign against the outsourcing of North American Nabisco jobs has generated widespread support. From U.S. congressional leaders, university students, union trade and justice activists to American veterans and consumers, the message carried by Nabisco workers across the nation has resonated loud and clear: Stop the global exploitation of workers that is devastating families and communities.

The effort to expand cynically named "right to work" laws says a lot about what is wrong with politics in our country. Disguised as protecting workers, the real goal is to silence workers’ voice, reduce our bargaining power and make our jobs more precarious. It’s about power—social, political and economic power.

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. joined the sanitation strikers in Memphis, Tennessee, who carried signs that boldly proclaimed "I Am a Man," at a time when many employers rejected that very notion. King and the working people of Memphis fought for the freedom to join together in unions and to be treated with dignity and respect on the job.

On Tuesday, working people claimed a landslide victory in a Kentucky special election. "I could not have done this without labor," said Democrat Linda Belcher in her victory speech. She’s the newly elected state representative for House District 49 in Bullitt County, just south of Louisville where then-presidential candidate Donald Trump carried 72% of the vote in 2016.