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Interfaith
Celebration to Continue Dr. King's
Work for Living Wages
Forty years
after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to support striking
sanitation
workers making poverty wages, faith leaders said that he
would be shocked to see millions
of Americans continuing to be paid poverty wages. Leaders from around the country gathered
in Memphis on
March 13th
to hold an Interfaith Celebration to Continue Dr. King’s Work for
Living
Wages. The event was held at Centenary United Methodist
Church, whose pastor in 1968,
the Rev. James Lawson, organized
major religious support for striking sanitation workers
who faced
poverty wages, racial discrimination, and highly dangerous
working conditions.
In large part because of faith and community
support, workers won a union contract after
being on strike for 65 days,
a few days after the assassination of Dr. King.
“We got tired,”
sanitation striker Taylor Rogers told those gathered in Memphis for the
celebration, “and so we stood up and said ‘I am a man.’ Without Dr. King
and the ministers
 who helped us, we never would have won that strike.”
The interfaith worship service was
co-sponsored by the
Let Justice Roll Living
Wage Campaign and Workers Interfaith Network.
The event kicked off a local fast for Memphis
workers who do not earn a
living wage, which
was used to press the Memphis City Council
to expand
its living wage ordinance to include
more workers. Speakers also pressed
national
leaders to make the minimum wage a living wage,
so that all
workers can earn enough to meet their
families’ basic needs.
 Rev. Jennifer Kottler of
Let Justice Roll pointed out
that minimum wage workers have actually
lost significant ground since Dr. King traveled to
Memphis to support
the sanitation workers.
In 1968, sanitation workers were making just
above
the federal minimum wage, which is $9.70 when adjusted
for
inflation. Today’s minimum wage is just $5.85, even
with the increase
Congress passed in the summer of
last year.
“Workers
should not have to choose between
paying the rent and buying food for
their children,” said Kottler.
“A job should keep you out of poverty,
not keep you in it."
Memphians
at the service celebrated the City Council’s passage of a living wage
ordinance in 2006 which
requires most workers performing work for the
City to be paid between $10 - $12 an hour. But in
undertaking a 24
hour period of fasting, prayer, and action, they also vowed to press
the Council to include
workers at the City’s public utility in
the ordinance. “May our bodies be instruments that help
us understand
the daily struggles of our sisters and brothers who
do not earn a living wage,” participants in the service prayed.
“May
our witness make visible the injustice workers in our city, our state,
and our nation face.”
More information on the living wage
campaigns of Workers Interfaith Network
Support the Living Wage Campaign:
Become a Workers Interfaith Network member
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