Today is the Strike For Black Lives, and organizers say tens of thousands of people will stop working in more than two dozen cities in the United States to protest against systemic racism and economic inequality.
Unions, along with social and racial justice organizations from New York City to Los Angeles, will participate in a series of planned actions. Where work stoppages are not possible for a full day, participants will picket during lunch or observe moments of silence to honor the lives of blacks 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 he told Aaron L. Morrison for 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,” said Henderson, who is an organizer of the Movement for Black Lives.
Strikers will include essential workers: nursing home employees, janitors, and delivery men. Fast food, carpool and airport workers are also expected to participate in planned events.
On Monday at noon in every United States time zone, workers are expected to kneel for about eight minutes, the amount of time prosecutors say the white police officer Derek Chauvin he held his knee George FloydThe neck before Floyd died.
Strikers demand radical action by corporations and 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 salary worthy.
Specifically, they call on corporate leaders and elected government 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 child care support.
In Manhattan, essential workers will gather outside the Trump International Hotel to demand the Senate and President Donald Trump approve and sign the HEROES Law.
Legislation passed by the House of Representatives provides 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 organizers said New York Senator Chuck Schumer They are expected to meet with the workers.
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