Labor Comes Together to Celebrate MLK Day 2023

With over 1,000 of their closest friends, including IBEW 11 leadership, LA Labor celebrated MLK Day with it’s annual MLK Day Breakfast on Jan. 14 at the union Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. It was a chance for the labor and civil rights movements to join together in lockstep to honor a civil right icon. This year was a reunion of sorts, marking the return of the annual bash after a two-year hiatus during the pandemic.

Labor’s friends were all in the house, including LA’s new Mayor Karen Bass, Senator Alex Padilla, State Senator Maria Elena Durazo, International AFSCME President Lee Saunders, and the star of the show, the LA Fed’s new President Yvonne Wheeler.

The group came together to be inspired, and get ready to do the hard work of organizing in 2023 and beyond. Mayor Bass, a long-time friend of labor, talked about homelessness being her number one priority in office, and looked to the unions to help build affordable housing. “How do you stay off the streets in LA? A good paying union job,” she said.

LA Fed Wheeler closed out the program talking about the “urgency of now” – on homelessness, childcare, bankruptcy racism and more. “It’s a new day at the LA Fed, and we all have to work together to lift us all up.”