Of all the commemorations of the March on Washington,
the one that will best capture its spirit isn’t really a commemoration
at all. Thursday, one day after the 50th anniversary of the great march,
fast-food and retail workers in as many as 35 cities will stage a one-day strike demanding higher wages.
Sadly, the connection between the epochal demonstration of 1963 and a fast-food strike in 2013 couldn’t be more direct.
The march 50 years ago was, after all, a march “For Jobs and Freedom,”
and its focus was every bit as economic as it was juridical and social.
Even more directly, one of the demands highlighted by the march’s
leaders and organizers was to raise the federal minimum wage — then $1.15 an hour — to $2. According to Sylvia Allegretto and Steven Pitts of the Economic Policy Institute, that comes out to $13.39 today. [Read more]
