Arlene Holt Baker Quotes

United States, Activist
1951

Arlene Holt Baker is an African American trade union activist and labor leader. A staff assistant with the AFL-CIO since 1995, she was appointed Executive Vice-President of the labor federation by the AFL-CIO Executive Council in 2007 and won re-election in 2009. She became the first African American in the federation's history to serve as an officer.

“With all of the talk about polling and demographics, I think too many people have lost touch with the human and moral crisis of deportations. Every day, roughly 1,000 people are deported because the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is denying the majority of the US Congress a chance to vote on citizenship. I will be arrested today because the labor movement stands with the families tragically ripped apart by John Boehner and the House Republicans’ embrace of a broken immigration system.”

Arlene Holt Baker
"These are collective issues of social and economic justice for all…when we include everybody, we're going to be a much more powerful movement."

Arlene Holt Baker