The arrests of striking fast food workers that
began early Thursday have continued, with workers taking civil disobedience arrests in
Hartford,
Little Rock,
Chicago, and
Indianapolis; one of the arrestees was an
81-year-old McDonald's worker. Where is this determination and fight coming from? Writing at Salon, a Kansas City McDonald's worker named Andrew McConnell explains.
McConnell has an inspiring story: He's a former teacher who had to leave teaching to take care of a sister with mental health issues, a father of five who sells baked goods, cuts hair, and sells Legal Shield and Avon products to help ends meet. What is the fight about for McConnell, who first went on strike on May 15?
This fight is for my children and younger sister, and the countless families of fast-food workers. It’s for my parents and grandparents, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s for my uncle Melvin, a former sanitation worker who Dr. King was supporting when killed in Memphis in 1968, who understood that justice wouldn’t come easily, but through perseverance and even personal risk.
It’s for my coworkers, those who have almost fainted after working in kitchen temperatures nearing 95 degrees – or 105 near the stove – and those who regularly have their hours docked and wages stolen. It’s for fast-food managers and franchisee owners like mine, who face relentless pressure and frequent visits from corporate to keep labor costs down and profits up.
That’s what fast-food companies like McDonald’s don’t understand. They think they can ignore us; that we’ll get discouraged; that our movement will fizzle out; that somehow the challenges we face will simply go away. They deflect responsibility for an outdated business model, and refuse to accept that we aren’t high schoolers looking for extra money but mothers and fathers trying to put our children through high school.
But they don’t realize that this is a fight for all of us, for all Americans. And they certainly don’t think that we have what it takes to stick it out and win.
Those are powerful reasons to fight. It's not just about the bills these workers can't pay, month to month, not just about one or two bad days on the job. It's about their lives, and their kids' lives. It's about fighting to move forward rather than getting dragged backward. It's about solidarity. It's not an easy fight, but
not fighting takes its own toll, and in pictures of striking workers, you can see the joy and pride at having stood up and taken to the streets.