KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Saturday marked the landmark 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama. To honor and remember the historic civil rights event hundreds marched from a Kansas City, Missouri park to the I-70 Bridge on Prospect Avenue.
The symbolic route mirrored the journey those brutally beaten in Selma took as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge trying to vote.
“Hey, hey, ho, ho, these poverty wages got to go,” chanted marchers.
Fifty years ago thousands marched for voting rights in Selma. Saturday hundreds in the metro did the same for better pay on the job.
“It’s a civil rights issue then, it’s a civil rights issue now, and it’s also a moral issue because it’s immoral to have people working to make you such a large profit and they can’t even keep their lights on,” said Rev. Dr. Rodney Williams of Swope Parkway United Christian Church.
Fast food worker LaToya Caldwell has a lot of mouths to feed.
“It’s a struggle, I have five children,” she said.
Like so many others Caldwell says making $7.70 an hour after more than seven years on the same job just isn’t enough.
“It’s like choosing what bills to pay, do you pay your rent or do you pay your lights or gas sometimes you go without food because you’re making sure your children are eating,” she said.
Reverend Williams said the march in Selma was not done in vain, but said America can still do better.
“There’s a lot more work to be done when you look at the large amount of fast food workers, low income wage workers, many of them are minorities and therefore there is a racial disparity and that needs to be changed,” he said.
Those who marched Saturday are asking for what they call a living wage of $15 an hour and a union.
