Reverend Barber is joining the Fight for $15 for a day of action on February 12:
The Fight for $15, the movement that has galvanized city campaigns to raise the pay of low-wage workers, is teaming up with the civil rights leader William Barber for a day of action in support of racial justice and voting rights.
The organization is calling on fast-food workers in two dozen southern cities to go on strike on 12 February, to mark the 50th anniversary of the famed Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, which began shortly before the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
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On 12 February, hundreds of fast-food workers from around the south and across the US will converge on Memphis to march in honor of the 1968 strikers and to throw Fight for $15’s support behind a renewed Poor People’s Campaign, the movement King championed.
“We’re fighting for the same things the sanitation workers fought for: respect and a decent wage,” said Ashley Cathey, a fast-food worker for 11 years who earns $7.53 an hour working for Church’s Chicken in Memphis. “When the sanitation workers had their strike, they inspired other people – they showed us how to fight for better things on the job.”
“There’s no separation between the moral battle for voting rights and participation in democracy and the moral battle against systemic poverty,” Barber said. “Those battles go together.”
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Terrence Wise, a McDonald’s worker in Kansas City who is one of the Fight for $15’s national leaders, supports Barber’s new effort. “For the Fight for $15 to join with the Poor People’s Campaign makes our network broader and more powerful,” Wise said. “We’re bringing not only workers who are poor, but we’re bringing more people into the campaign who are affected by racial and economic inequality. It’s always good to get bigger and bolder.”
Guardian
These battles do go together. This kind of activism is necessary and as important as elections. Both issue activism and electoral politics are necessary.
About the new Poor Peoples Campaign:
Led by Rev. William J. Barber II and Rev. Liz Theoharis, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is planning 40 days of coordinated action in the spring of 2018 at statehouses across the country. Like its predecessor, the modern Poor People’s Campaign is focused on what King described as the “triple evils” of racism, poverty and militarism — with the addition of ecological devastation, a global crisis that disproportionately affects people living in poverty.
WaPo: A new Poor People’s Campaign wants to change how society defines morality
You can sign up here to the Poor Peoples Campaign:
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is uniting tens of thousands of people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the nation’s distorted morality. We need you to step up and join our efforts.
Add your name now if you’re ready to join our movement to transform the political, economic and moral structures of our country.
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival