In past months, University of Washington Tacoma Professor and former Harry Bridges Endowed Chair (2000-2004) Michael Honey has been busy promoting the labor legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On April 4, 2018 commemorating 50 years since King gave his life in the Memphis sanitation strike, Honey participated with ILWU and AFSCME members in a mass march in Memphis, joined by the new Poor People's Campaign and "I AM 2018," AFSCME's voting rights national campaign. In the days following, the Pacific Northwest Labor Historical Association at its annual meeting in Seattle April 5-7 commemorated and rededicated itself to King's ideals of racial and economic justice. 

Honey also carried the message to Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, and to the Miami Book Fair, speaking on his new book, To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice (WW Norton, published April 3, 2018).

Lastly, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) distributed 40 copies of Honey's edited edition of King's labor speeches, All Labor Has Dignity, to Congress. Brown won re-election in Ohio and promises to turn red states to blue.