Connecticut Working Families

By Reverend Scott Marks and Kennard Ray

Every January we take a Monday off to celebrate the advocacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for racial and economic equality. We all recognize Dr. King for his speech “I Have a Dream,” in which he laid out a vision for a fair and equal America. He described a democracy in which all people and their families had access to opportunity and dignity.

Dr. King’s dream has not been realized. Today, we live in a world tragically similar to the one he dedicated his life to improving. A recent study released by The Working Poor Families Project illustrated that the richest 20% of families in the United States own about half the wealth, and the poorest 20% own only 5%.

Inequality in Connecticut is particularly bad. Our state is one of the ten that saw its share of low-income working families jump by at least 5% since the last census. The number of families categorized as ‘working poor’ in the state is increasing at a particularly alarming rate, jumping more than 30 percent over the last few years. As bankers and CEOs continue to profit, average families fall farther and farther behind with stagnant wages and an economy shifting to part-time, low-wage work.

Dr. King fought for equality at the ballot box and the lunch counter, but he also fought for equality in the workplace and in our paychecks. Many forget that Doctor King’s last days were spent in Memphis, standing with and fighting for the rights of public sanitation workers who were on strike. He stood for higher wages, family-sustaining benefits, and workers’ rights to organize. In 2013, we’ve made tragically poor progress on these principals in the past few decades.

In his 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Reverend King writes, “the curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization… The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”  In Connecticut, we have the opportunity, and the imperative, to tackle poverty and build a society more like the one Dr. King envisioned. We must support legislation to raise the minimum wage, and pay workers fairly for their labor. We must pass a fair budget that does not punish those who can least afford it, or take away vital services from those who need them most. We must give workers the freedom to negotiate together for fair treatment and dignity.

But to celebrate the legacy of Dr. King while opposing policies that make our economy more just is an abuse of history. If you don’t support raising the minimum wage, taxing the rich to protect services for the poor, or empowering average workers then don’t take today off. We cannot applaud the work of a leader for justice such as Doctor King without continuing to demand these very real solutions to the injustice that he fought.