60 years since the March on Washington

To build a better future for workers, we must recognize the racist and blood-stained history of U.S. labor and the shortcomings of the labor movement’s past.

From this place of understanding and healing, we can better push our movements for racial justice and workers’ rights foward. Labor movements are inextricably linked to climate justice, abolition, reproductive rights, immigration, housing and health care, and our political future in which all people have their basic needs met. The March Continues because it must, and we’re here to report on it.

The March Continues is a Prism project highlighting the legacy of the March on Washington and the inextricable relationship between labor and racial justice in the U.S. Prism looks at everything from prison labor, to Black women and their labor organizing in the South, to chattel slavery and its pervasive legacy and replacements.

Created by labor unionist A. Philip Randolph and activist Bayard Rustin, the March on Washington mobilized 250,000 people for Black Americans’ economic and civil rights. Black labor advocates, unions like the United Automobile Workers (UAW), organizers, civil rights groups like the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Black activists, and workers understood that their call to action, their fight, and their efforts were stronger together as a united front, even if there were differences in politics and strategy on a more granular level.

Hear from labor organizers about the continued legacy of the march and how we keep moving forward.

The march Continues

Education and affordability for all?

Student loan debt disproportionately affects communities of color, and Black women continue to carry the highest student loan debt burdens

by Chavis Jones

The anti-Indigenous use of commercial tobacco harms the planet and its people

The industrialization of tobacco in the U.S. encompasses colonization, slavery, and its latest victim: migrant farmworkers

by Ray Levy Uyeda

86 cents for a day of work is a reality for most incarcerated people

Incarcerated laborers are often left out of workers’ rights efforts, but they are vastly underpaid, underprotected, and unable to save for a life beyond bars

by Tina Vásquez and Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

racial justice x workers’ rights

Former Animal Legal Defense Fund staffers accuse organization of transphobia, union-busting, and more

Former employees at the Animal Legal Defense Fund allege union-busting and a toxic workplace environment at the animal rights law nonprofit

by Alexandra Martinez

Warehouse Worker Protection Act grants migrant workers in Minnesota landmark safety protections

The bill, which passed in May, ensures that corporations like Amazon cannot disregard workers’ safety and livelihoods

by Lisa Kwon

Illinois law mandates paid leave for workers—that they can take for any reason

Many workers don’t have any paid leave. Illinois has become the third state to require employers to provide paid leave that workers can use for any reason, not just sickness

by Allison Torres Burtka

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abolition x workers’ rights

Never eat the candy on your pillow: Friend or foe?

Loneliness can make people vulnerable to exploiters, and prisons are deeply lonely places

by Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

Never eat the candy on your pillow: The setup

Community is difficult to build in prison, especially when manipulation and pitfalls abound

by Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

Never eat the candy on your pillow: Truth inside the fences

“There’s a reason some animals gnaw off their own limbs to escape a trap. That’s what jail and prison are: a trap”

by Derek R. Trumbo, Sr.

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climate x Workers’ rights

There’s a lot we don’t know about farmworker deaths

At least two farmworkers died from heat stress this summer in North Carolina, and rumors of other deaths swirled, sparking questions about what happens when migrant workers die working in American fields

by Tina Vásquez