SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) - Local fast food workers on Monday joined a nationwide push for higher minimum wages.
A "Fight for 15" rally was held in Oak Park outside the McDonald's during lunch hour on Euclid Avenue.
Workers announced they'll participate in six weeks of action, and non-violent civil disobedience starting on Mother's Day.
San Diego workers will fight for workers in the Mid-South who striked Monday, as well, for a $15 an hour wage and union rights.
The rally united two of the nation's most powerful social movements in a common fight for strong unions to lift people of all races out of poverty.
The rally coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Memphis sanitation strike, where hundreds fought for better pay, and union rights, which became a rallying cry of the 1968 Poor People's Campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hundreds of African American men went on strike for recognition of their union and demanded a raise to $2 an hour - the equivalent of $15.73 today after inflation.
Strikers marched daily from Clayborn Temple to Memphis City Hall holding signs declaring, "I AM A MAN." Protesters will take to the streets in Memphis Monday and March that same route as workers did 50 years ago.
The Fight for $15 has caught on throughout our nation and around the world and won big wage increases from coast to coast including California's landmark 2015 victory which will raise the wage to $15 by 2022.