I'll hopefully have time to post on why allowing the U.S. auto industry to die without help would be a catastrophic mistake, but let me note a more basic political issue for progressives, of helping the UAW save their members jobs. The United Auto Workers has been a stalwart ally of progressives for going on seventy-plus years, from helping build the New Deal to supporting progressive government for years (thanks for Michigan, guys!) Without going through the longer list, let me just remind folks of the central role of the UAW in the civil rights movement. No organization gave more financial and political support to Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement.

* Few remember, but before the famous March on Washington in 1963, there was a precursor march in Detroit, backed by the UAW, where 200,000 folks marched down Woodward Avenue led by King and Walter Reuther, head of the UAW.

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