Organizers of Strike For Black Lives said tens of thousands of Americans would stop working in more than two dozen cities at noon on Monday to protest systemic racism and economic inequality.
At noon in each time zone, workers were expected to kneel for just under nine minutes, the amount of time prosecutors say white police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on George Floyd’s neck before Floyd died in Minneapolis on May 25.
Unions and social and racial justice organizations from New York to Los Angeles participated. Where work stoppages were not possible for a full day, participants had to picket during lunch or observe moments of silence to honor black lives lost to police violence, organizers said.
“We are … building a country where black lives matter in all aspects of society, including in the workplace,” Ash-Lee Henderson, organizer of the Movement for Black Lives, told the Associated Press.
“The Strike for Black Lives is a time of reckoning for corporations that have long ignored the concerns of their black workforce and denied them better working conditions, decent wages and medical care.”
Strikers will include essential workers, including nursing home employees, janitors, and delivery men. Fast food, carpooling and airport workers are also expected to participate.
Strikers are demanding radical action by corporations and the government to tackle systemic racism and economic inequality that limits the mobility and career advancement of many black and Hispanic workers, who constitute a disproportionate number of those who earn less than a living wage.
Specifically, they call on corporate leaders and elected officials to use the executive and legislative branches to ensure that people of all races can prosper. That demand includes raising wages and allowing workers to unionize to negotiate better health care, sick leave, and childcare support.
In Manhattan, essential workers will gather outside the Trump International Hotel to demand that the Senate and Donald Trump pass and sign the Heroes Act.
Legislation passed by the House of Representatives would provide protective equipment, essential pay and extended unemployment benefits to workers who have not had the option of working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. The Republican Senate has not taken it and is negotiating its own stimulus measures.
Organizers said New York Senator Chuck Schumer is expected to meet with the workers.
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