Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Charles Steele at Freedom Village, Today Wednesday

National Civil Rights Leader to Come to Freedom City to Support Civil Rights Campaign by Janitors at the University of Miami

One of the nation’s foremost civil rights leaders, Charles Steele, Jr., national president and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), will be in Miami today to support janitors and students at the University of Miami who are in their second week of a hunger strike to protest civil rights violations against janitors at the University of Miami.

Founded on February 14, 1957, SCLC was created to ensure economic justice and civil rights in the areas of discrimination and affirmative action and to eradicate environmental classism and racism.

He will also meet with Reverend James Bush III—a Miami-based member of SCLC and the lead organizer of a community-wide fast in support of the janitors—who is on his third day of a hunger strike to support students’ and janitors’ efforts to stop the civil rights abuses on campus.

University of Miami president Donna Shalala has come under increasing scrutiny from national civil rights groups for shielding and protecting the company she hired to clean the university, UNICCO Services of Boston, despite their multi-state record of violating the rights of workers.

WHAT: News Conference
WHEN: 4:00 p.m.
WHERE: Freedom City, corner of Ponce de Leon and Stanford Dr.

Note: Charles Steele will be at Freedom City beginning at 2:00 p.m. and will be available for one-on-one interviews about the civil rights problems at the University of Miami.

No comments: