BARRE GRANITE ASSOCIATION TO PROMOTE “KING IS OURS” PROTEST MOVEMENT AT 2008 MIDATLANTIC MONUMENT CONVENTION
JANUARY 13, 2008 IN BALTIMORE

JANUARY 13, 2008
BALTIMORE/ATLANTA
The Barre Granite Association will present Clint Button, stone carver and liaison to the “King Is Ours” (KIO) protest movement, during the finale of the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Monument Convention at the Marriott Waterfront Hotel this evening beginning at 7:30 p.m.

“King is Ours” is a growing international protest against decisions made by the MLK Memorial Project Foundation to outsource U.S. labor and manufacturing for the $100 million memorial to Dr. King to the People’s Republic of China.

Button will present a Resolution recently ratified by the California State NAACP in support of KIO which called for a Congressional investigation into the no-bid process that allowed granite for the monument to be quarried in China, even though $10 million in Federal Funds was allocated to the project. 
Button is representing civil rights activist Gilbert Young, co-founder of KIO, who launched the protest against the King Monument Project Foundation in February 2007.               

Button and Young are building on the success of a November press conference in Vermont supported by the Executive Director of the Barre Granite Association, John Castaldo, members of the Barre Granite Association and members of both the Granite Cutters Association and Steelworkers Unions. In Vermont, Barre Granite Manufacturers and Labor Unions strongly condemned the decision to allow the monument to be created using stone quarried and carved in China by laborers working in deadly conditions, considered by human rights activists to be akin to slave labor, for wages that amount to less than $2 per day.
 
“When the Foundation promoted the memorial  they said ‘...a fitting memorial to Dr. King would be one that gives clearest expression to (the) ideal of human dignity.’” Said Young, “Yet the decisions they made are an affront to human dignity and in direct opposition to Dr. King's philosophy of positive social change throughout the world.”
 
Additional Information: Lea Winfrey Young
                        Winfrey Young Public Relations
                        678-933-2691, youngartone@aol.com