To the Editor:
You’re invited to the Real Majority Project’s 13th Annual Mid-Hudson Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. March for Social and Economic Justice on Monday, Jan. 21, hosted by the Rev. H. Dwight Bolton at the Smith Street Metropolitan A.M.E. Zion Church at 124 Smith St. in Poughkeepsie.
Gathering and speeches will begin at 11 a.m. inside the church; the march itself will start at noon and end at our County Office Building at 22 Market St.; refreshments and discussion will follow at the Holy Light Pentecostal Church at 33 Clover St.
Speakers will include Fifth Ward Councilwoman Penny Lewis, Seventh Ward Councilwoman Gwen Johnson, the Rev. Gail Burger of the Dutchess Interfaith Council, and long-time community activists Mae Parker-Harris and Ann Perry.
Four decades ago Martin Luther King told us that “there is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American whether he is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer; a living wage should be the right of all working Americans.”
Six decades ago Dutchess County’s own Eleanor Roosevelt told us in her Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration,” and FDR told us that “we cannot be content if some fraction of our people-whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth-is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.”
Even Rep. Maurice Hinchey calls for an increase in the minimum wage to $10 an hour in Robert Kuttner’s new book “The Squandering of America,” and San Francisco now has a citywide minimum wage of $9.36 an hour.
It’s time to make Martin Luther King’s vision real here- join us Monday, sign on to PetitionOnline.com/MLKToday, and call 876-2488 for more information.
Joel Tyner
County Legislator
Clinton/Rhinebeck