MLK: "Our Struggle is for Genuine Equality, Which Means Economic Equality" The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. left many legacies: as a crusader for civil rights, voting rights, religious harmony, peace and economic justice. As America honors the eighty-fifth anniversary of King's birth, it is right to remember all of those legacies. But at a moment when the national debate has finally begun to refocus on the issue of income inequality that so motivated Dr. King, it is that economic-justice commitment that merits particular attention. Fifty years ago, when Dr. King marched on Washington for jobs and freedom, the federal minimum wage was $1.25 an hour. So low-wage workers are more than $2 behind where they were when Dr. King declared: "We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minn., well noted last year at a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington that "workers are falling behind." "Income inequality threatens our democracy as Jim Crow segregation did in 1963," explained Ellison, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. King recognized that wage issues were civil rights issues. "Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality," he told a rally of AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968, barely two weeks before his death. For we know now 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? And what is the worker who prepares and serves that hamburger being paid? That's a question that has been asked frequently over the past year, as thousands of fast-food workers and their supporters have struck, marched and rallied to demand better pay, benefits and workplace protections. But organizing for better pay for fast-food and retail workers does not just benefit those workers and their families. Indeed, argues Congressman George Miller, the senior Democratic member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, "Low pay...holds back our recovery from the Great Recession." With Iowa's Tom Harkin in the Senate, Miller is the House author of the Fair Minimum Wage Act (HR 1010), which would increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. Ultimately, increases must go higher to achieve a living-wage standard. That's the point made by Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant, who was elected on a pledge to fight for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and who has gotten officials in that city to begin to explore such a move. Seattle could vote on the issue this year, and Los Angeles and other cities nationwide are beginning to talk about going big in the fight against income inequality. Local and state initiatives are vital, as is the federal fight. At every level, the struggle for meaningful increases in the minimum wage respects a basic premise that extends from Martin Luther King Jr."s time to ours: helping those who are disenfranchised, politically and economically, helps all of society. As Congressman Miller, who carries forward the King legacy of linking jobs and freedom, explains it: "Better pay will put more money into local businesses and spur economic growth. Of all the celebrations of Dr. King's legacy, few are more appropriate than the struggle - expanding every day, going from strength to strength at the local, state and federal levels - to address income inequality by raising the basic wage for working Americans. Dr. King put it best, just weeks before his death, when he declared: "Now the problem isn't only unemployment. Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working everyday? They are making wages so low that they can not 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.