What would MLK, Jr. say?

From the Let Justice Roll campaign (full press release here):

Forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers making poverty wages, he would be shocked to see millions of Americans making poverty wages today.

[. . . ]

Dr. King told striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968, "It is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis at a full-time job getting part-time income… We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life." Dr. King said, "Now is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all of God's children… Now is the time for justice to roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

In 1968, Memphis sanitation workers at the bottom of the pay scale earned $10 an hour, adjusted for inflation.

In 1968, workers earning the federal minimum wage made an inflation-adjusted $9.70.

In 2008, forty years later, the federal minimum wage is 40 percent less, at $5.85.

"Talking about values is no substitute for valuing hardworking men and women who need a higher minimum wage," said Rev. Jennifer Kottler, Executive Director of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign. "Workers should not have to choose between paying the rent and buying food for their children. A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it."