Swimming in Rosa Parks' Footsteps: Workers for the Wealthiest Still Struggle for Dignity

Posted by Eliseo Medina, AlterNet at 6:32 AM on December 2, 2007.

Today marks the 52nd anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to move.

On Thursday, December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks put in a full day at her department store job in Montgomery, Ala. After work she got on the bus, paid her fare, got back off and re-boarded through the bus’s back door (as was required of black passengers at the time), and took a seat in the “colored” seating section…

On Friday, August 31st, 2007, security officer Wisly Jonatas clocked out of work at 11 p.m. after his evening shift on Fisher Island, an exclusive, private island off the coast of Miami, Fla. Like all Fisher Island service workers, Wisly took the ferry to and from the island for work every day. Tired from a long day at work, Wisly walked onto the ferry and sat down in the ferry’s segregated employee lounge…

The white section of the bus soon filled to capacity and Mrs. Parks was asked to move farther back so a boarding white passenger could take her seat. She did not move. Her insubordination led to her swift arrest…

Wisly had just taken his seat in the ferry’s segregated employee lounge when the ferry captain summoned and reprimanded him for not following a newly-instituted rule that prohibits workers from walking past island residents’ parked cars on the ferry to get to the employee lounge. For his insubordination, Wisly was forced to get off the ferry and wait for the next one. Five days later, he was fired from his job on the island…

For 381 days, Rosa Parks and the black community of Montgomery walked in protest of a senseless and racist system…

Wisly Jonatas and his supporters couldn’t walk to protest his injustice – after all, the private ferry is the only way to get to Fisher Island if you don’t have a helicopter or a yacht. So they were forced to get creative. Two weeks ago, he and dozens of community activists swam (yes, swam) to Fisher Island’s public beach in protest of dehumanizing policies designed to wall off the residents of America’s wealthiest zip code from the Haitian, Latino, and African-American service workers who make their luxury possible. [See the workers tell their stories in the video window on the upper right corner of this page.]

Today libraries, town halls and community centers across the country will celebrate Rosa Parks’ legacy. Also today, hundreds of brown and black workers will board the ferry for Fisher Island and will live the legacy of Jim Crow as they head to the segregated employee lounge—but only if they get on before the Bentleys, Mercedes, and other ultra-luxury cars.

During the days of the Montgomery bus boycott, an up-and-coming young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. observed “a mighty struggle to conquer the reign of an evil monster called segregation and its inseparable twin called discrimination.” Fisher Island, with its imported-sand beaches, bird sanctuaries, and segregated ferry, reminds us today that we’re not-quite-yet done slaying the monster of “separate, but equal.”

Wisly Jonatas and 18 of his former co-workers filed a lawsuit (PDF) last month challenging the racist policies of the Fisher Island ferry. Read more about the workers of Fisher Island and their struggle for justice at OneMiamiNow.org.

Tagged as: workplace, civil rights, rosa parks, workers' rights

Eliseo Medina is an executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).