Time for a Raise in the Minimum Wage

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is rapidly approaching, commemorating the historic Aug. 28, 1963, March on Washington.

But 45 years ago, 1968, the year of his assassination, King was waging the Poor People’s Campaign to eradicate poverty. He addressed the congregation at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., saying: “We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia.”

That was March 31, 1968, four days before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., where he had gone to march in solidarity with striking sanitation workers.

The minimum wage that year was at its historic high, in terms of real purchasing power. It was first established in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said “Our nation so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied working men and women a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.”

Forty-five years after King launched his Poor People’s Campaign, poverty is again at crisis levels. That all-important bulwark against poverty, the minimum wage, is now $7.25 per hour, a result of a bill signed into law by President George W. Bush. President Barack Obama, when he was first elected, promised a minimum wage of $9.50 by 2011. In his 2013 State of the Union address, having failed to make that goal, he said: “Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead.”

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader is not impressed by the president’s rhetoric.

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