An injustice worth fighting

In the months prior to his premature death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. worked tirelessly planning a public campaign that he hoped would bring attention to the problem of growing poverty in America.

He later reflected on the economic injustice suffered by millions of Americans during his speech "The Other America," on March 14, 1968. "...They receive wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the main stream of the economic life of our nation," he said. "Most of the poverty stricken people of America are persons who are working every day and they end up getting part-time wages for full-time work."

And on the day of his death in April 1968, Dr. King had traveled to Memphis to march with sanitation workers who were demanding fair wages and union representation.

Fast-forward nearly 50 years, and the poverty rate remains stubbornly high and wages painfully stagnant, with Maryland's current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour garnering less purchasing power, when adjusted for inflation, than it did in 1968. That means that in Maryland, a full-time worker earning minimum wage would find it impossible to afford a basic two-bedroom apartment, according to RaisetheMinimumWage.com.

Maryland is moving toward fixing this injustice with the recent introduction of legislation in the General Assembly that would increase the state's minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.

If you support raising the state's minimum wage to ensure hard-working Marylanders have every opportunity to provide a decent living for their families, please contact your state representatives and ask them to support an increase to $10.10. You can find your elected officials by visiting http://mdelect.net/