Yesterday, January 16th, in the First Baptist Congregational Church - where both Dr. King and Rev. Frederick Douglas had preached - elected officials, labor, and faith leaders join in rally for Full citizenship and Full Employment for Full Equality.

The large diverse crowd consisted of over 1000 members of the African American, Latino, Labor, and faith communities gathered to demand Full Citizenship and Full Employment For Full Equality. The rally honored the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr.'s struggle for racial and economic justice by calling on Congress to fix the broken immigration system and by committing to work together in securing jobs for all.

Speakers included: U.S. Representatives Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL); Rev. Jesse Jackson; Rev. Albert Tyson, pastor of St. Stephens AME Church and President of Clergy Speaks Interdenominational (CSI); Bishop John R. Manz, Auxiliary Bishop Archdiocese of Chicago; Tom Balanoff, president, SEIU Illinois Council; Ron Powell, president, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881; Laura Garza, vice president, SEIU Local 1; Alie Kabba, executive director of United African Organization and board vice president of ICRR.

With unemployment at 10% across the country, native and immigrant workers alike are hurting. Our country needs policies that will create jobs and stop the race to the bottom that the current broken immigration system promotes.  Immigration reform will stop bad employers who pay lower wages, avoid taxes, drive down working conditions, and violate the law.

On January 7th the Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center released a joint report, "Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform," which shows that legalizing the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants through comprehensive immigration reform as well as making future flows more flexible would grow the economy by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

Now is the time to continue Dr. King's dream and rebuild our nations economy, fix the broken immigration system, and closing the trap door on our economy.

We need to pass compressive immigration reform in 2010. Tell your US Congressman and Senators to support immigration reform ASAP by clicking here.

Read more about the rally on the Chicago SunTimes website

Photos of the rally below: