Wall St. Marchers: 62 Years After ‘I Have a Dream’ it’s Time to Wake Up!
Michelle Keller, NYCOPSR member and former head of the New York City Coalition of Labor Union Women, urges union leaders to turn away from profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance and fully support Traditional Medicare. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
Sixty-two years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I have dream speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On Thursday’s more modest March on Wall Street in NYC, the message on the streets was, “We better wake up.”
“We better make sure this is the moment,” Michelle Keller, community outreach and organizing coordinator for the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees told Work-Bites as marchers assembled in Foley Square on Thursday morning. “Hopefully, it’s a reminder that what hurts one of us hurts all of us. It also reminds folks that you have to take care of your elders. Folks are not taking care of their elders.”
Donald Trump already signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 into law last month absolutely gutting both Medicare and Medicaid. Now, the administration is getting ready to strip Supplemental Social Security [SSI] from hundreds of thousands of low-income older adults and people with disabilities.
Thursday’s March on Wall Street was born out of a coalition between the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network [NAN] and several labor unions including SEIU, AFSCME, AFGE, AFT, CSEA, and others that formed in response to those cuts, as well as the Trump administration’s all out assault on the fundamental bargaining rights of workers everywhere.
Loretta, a retired hospital administrator from Coop City in the Bronx, said she’s fearful about the kind of future she’s leaving to her grandkids.
Renee, a 67-year-old retired trade unionist with the Department of Education said she felt good about attending the March on Wall Street because of “all these crazy changes that are being put into effect by that man in the White House.” But she also said the labor movement is not doing enough to confront the Trumpian assault.
“I’m hopeful that after all that has gone on in just these last 100 days people will wake up and see that this not good for the American people across the board,” she said. “Taking rights away from people of color, and taking rights away from older people, taking away their money—it’s just ridiculous. I don’t want to see my Social Security taken away because I put money into that. It’s not like that money was given to me—I worked for that money. I dont want to see that taken away, I don’t want to see anything taken away from the young people who are just starting out.”
Loretta, a retired hospital administrator from Coop City in the Bronx said that she worries about what kind of future she’s leaving to her grandkids.
“I never thought in all my life that I would be intimidated in hearing the mess that’s coming out of Washington,” she told Work-Bites. “It’s absolutely unacceptable and we have to make a noise, we have to let them know that we will not stand for it. We will not go back. We have to say no, we’re not going back. That’s what this march is all about.”
CSEA Local 010’s Lanielle Roach is hoping people opposed to the Trump agenda “wake up” and finally say, “enough is enough.”
Earlier this year, Trump fired both National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox and Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris in a bid to assert his dominance over worker rights. At the same time, former Trump advisor Elon Musk continues to spearhead a legal fight challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB itself.
“I think it’s very important to see all of these different organizations coming together under one umbrella, Danielle Roach, local president, CSEA Local 010, told Work-Bites. “Hopefully, what we get out of it is awareness and for people to wake up and realize that we all need to raise our voices and say enough is enough. We’re not going to stand by and watch them take away our rights, take away all the things that we fought for all of these years. That we’re not just going to stand by and let it happen.”
Marchers begin to assemble in Foley Square ahead of Thursday’s March on Wall Street.
Sharpton, himself, kicked off Thursday’s march saying that 62 years after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom the “dream is not dead—it’s the dreamers in many cases that have reversed and tried to turn it into a nightmare.”
“And those on Wall Street are the ones benefitting from it,” he told the marchers gathered in Foley Square. “They’re the ones getting tax cuts at the expensive of Medicaid, at the expense of SNAP. So, we’ve come to Wall Street rather than Washington this year to let them know you can try to turn back the clock, but you can’t turn back time.”
Anna Berry was a member of the District Council Retirees Association’s executive board before AFSCME took over and put the organization into recievership last year. At the time, AFSCME President Lee Saunders said the takeover was necessary to clean up the Retirees Association’s tax filings. Members knew, however, the real reason for the takeover was an attempt by leadership to squash the Retiree Association’s opposition to DC37 Executive Director Henry Garrido’s campaign to push New York City municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.
At Thursday’s March on Wall Street, Berry reminded leaders that retirees are the “backbone” of the union and that they demand respect. The point of the street action, Berry added, was to show that labor is “still here, still alive” and “going to continue to fight because we know when we fight we always win.”
“We’ve come a long way, but there are a lot of things that we’ve become lackadaisical about,” Berry told Work-Bites. “We need to stay focused, stay informed, and be out here for the people in the labor movement. This is awesome to see so many people out here—especially so many retirees. We cannot forget our retirees…the labor we’ve done and the years of being out here and being involved. I’m still out here. I’m still involved—I have to be. When I get up every morning I say, ‘Here we go, another day—another day to fight.’”