Honor MLK. Support a $15 minimum wage!

“Don’t call me a saint,” Dorothy Day said, “I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” Martin Luther King Jr. certainly deserves to be as famous as he is, but it seems all too often that, as he becomes something like a national saint, his name and two or three phrases from the “I Have a Dream” speech get bandied about way, way out of context.

March on Washington snippet

This is from 1963. Haven’t done in-depth research, but I’m pretty sure the Poor People’s Campaign didn’t demand *less* government intervention…

People who know way more than I do, such as Vincent Harding, have written about this, but I’d just like to point out that one official demand of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a minimum wage that is the equivalent of $15 an hour in today’s dollars (see snippet of press release at left).

To see the rest of the March’s demands, surf on over to the library of Congress and see p. 29 and 30 of this document collection.

Sorry to go off topic! I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.

All blog content copyright © 2012-2014 E. Palmberg. Guaranteed 100% brave and freaking noble.