MLK Day Living Wage Vigils at 15 Fast Food Restaurants - January 18, 2016

Local living wage activists will hold vigils simultaneously at fifteen (15) fast food restaurants throughout Tompkins County on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 18) from 3:30-4:30. Will you join us? The Tompkins County Workers’ Center (TCWC) is organizing the vigils with three (3) objectives: Ensure that all fast food workers in Tompkins County, along with their employers, are aware of the new $9.75 fast food minimum wage effective January 1, 2016; Continue building a groundswell demanding that Tompkins County pass a law ensuring a Living Wage for ALL workers in the county; Honor Martin Luther King Jr, and specifically his commitment to working people and to a living wage for all working people. No one who works all day and all week should find on the weekend that they don’t have enough in their pocket to support themselves and their families. A full time job should not be a route to poverty, but a path to opportunity. Let us know and we will assign you to a location where you will join a group of TCWC Living Wage supporters with informational picket signs provided (or bring your own). Locations will include the following: Ithaca Five Guys/Taco Bell, 222 Elmira Road, Ithaca Commons Plaza, Ithaca Jimmy Johns, corner of Seneca and Aurora Sts. Ithaca Chipotle, 740 S. Meadow Street, Ithaca Wendys, 326 Elmira Road, Ithaca Moe’s Southwest Grill, 324 Elmira Road, Ithaca Dunkin Donuts, corner of Green St. and Route 13, Ithaca Starbucks, corner of Seneca and Tioga Sts., Ithaca McDonald’s, 372 Elmira Road, Ithaca Burger King, East Hill Plaza, Ithaca Dominos Pizza, 311 E. Green Street, Ithaca Lansing McDonald’s, 2350 N. Triphammer Road, Lansing Auntie Anne’s and Subway@ Shops at Ithaca Mall (in front of Ramada Inn), Lansing Dryden McDonalds, 51 North Street (Route 13), Dryden Dunkin Donuts, 36 North Street (Route 13), Dryden Trumansburg Subway, 2078 NY-96, Trumansburg Dr. King would approve: “For we know now,” he once stated, “that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger?” “There is nothing but a lack of social vision,” he said another time, “to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American whether he [or she] is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer.” And a final quote: “Now the problem isn’t only unemployment. Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? They are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen. And it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income.”