Economic Equality for All, the Unfinished Dream

image001The young minister paused and looked out at the crowd of thousands, then looked back at his notes stacked neatly before him on the podium. He was searching for just the right words – words that would speak to the indignity of poverty and racial inequality; words that would inspire hope in an hour of despair.

He raised his head, focusing his gaze forward. After a long moment of silence, out from the side of the stage rises the bolstering voice of Mahalia Jackson: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!” she urges.

The air is electric with anticipation. He draws in a long, deep breath and in a slow, somber voice continues speaking:

“I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream.  It’s a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream,” speech has become the historic icon of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The freedom demands of the March on Washington are well known, because many were later instituted – the right to vote, integration of schools, access to public accommodations, a ban on housing discrimination and civil rights protections in the workplace.

However, less remembered are the calls for economic civil rights, such as a minimum wage that approximates a living wage, federal programs to train and place unemployed workers in meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages, and the extension of the Fair Labor Standards Act to excluded workers.

Fifty years later, poverty-wage workers still find themselves holding signs that read, “I Am a Man,” and demanding a living wage.  In August, fast food workers walked off the job in 50 U.S. cities, demanding a raise to $15 an hour. The strikes touched off a national debate about raising wage floors.

According to the 2013 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, African-American women remain at the very bottom of the wage floor; combine this with the rise of Black women at the top of single parent households and you find a cocktail of conditions leading to generational poverty.  In his “I have a Dream” speech, Dr. King described this condition as living on a “lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

The Alliance for a Just Society holds fast to the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as we push forward to make the dream of economic equality an American reality.

Our recently released report, America’s Changing Economy: Searching for Work that Pays in the New Low-Wage Job Market – 2013 Job Gap Study, (December 2013) calculates what it costs to make ends meet by analyzing state-level data on the components of a basic, no-frills household budget – including food, housing, utilities, child care, health care, and transportation.

Our Job Gap Study uses these household budgets to calculate living wage levels in 10 states, including lower-cost states like Idaho and higher-cost states like Connecticut, and also New York City. It calculates living wages for five different household structures, from a single individual to two working parents with two kids.

So what is a living wage? For a single individual ranges from $13.92 an hour in Montana to $22.66 an hour in New York City. For two working parents with two kids, the living wage ranges from $17.69 per parent in Idaho to $24.52 per parent in New York City. For a single parent with one child, it ranges from $19.36 in Montana to $30.02 in New York City.

A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), To Work With Dignity: The Unfinished March Towards a Decent Minimum Wage, (August 2013) reports that even small business owners support an increase.

Sixty-five percent of business owners polled in April 2013 reported that a higher minimum wage would help to increase demand for their products and help to alleviate pressure on taxpayer-funded government assistance programs needed to supplement low-wage workers’ earnings.

EPI’s report shows that despite support from the public and business owners, the last federal action on minimum-wage policy was in 2009. Periods of federal inaction over the last five decades combined with the public support for higher minimum wages have spurred action at the state and local level.

Recently, our affiliate partner, Washington CAN! took part in a successful initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour at a local level for the City of SeaTac.  Efforts are now in place to replicate that success in the city of Seattle.

Momentum for a true living wage is growing throughout the country. Last spring, voters in San Jose, Calif. approved increasing minimum wage there by $2 an hour, from $8 to $10.  A little over a year ago, voters also gave hotel workers in Long Beach, Calif,, a $4 raise to $13 an hour.

As America celebrates the life and legacy of a man who left an unforgettable mark on our hearts, let us recommit to serving the mission of his work.   On that hot summer day long ago, he challenged us with his dream belted out on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:

When we allow freedom to ring—when we let it ring from every city and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.”

Now, it’s up to us to give his dream the wings to soar.

Dr. Sheley Secrest is a policy analyst with the Alliance for a Just Society.