Watch this opening from today's All-In With Chris Hayes. Seriously, you might even tear up like I did.
I'm talking about his opening monologue about the Thursday fast-food strike in NY, and what this means. At about 1 minute into this clip he talks about why this event is remarkable, and what he says is remarkable.
Go here until I can get the video working http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/51435760
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Chris talks about how people are terrified of losing their job, but here they are having had enough of it to just rick everything by organizing like this. It's a miracle.
Chris' words:
"All successful social movements are built - and all social progress is built out out of multitudes of tiny miracles just like the one we saw today in New York City. A single person, an accretion of people, a union of thousands or millions who decide against the odds, against great rick, with no protection, to do something courageous. To speak up for their dignity. To proclaim themselves fully human. That is what the striking fast-food workers did today."
There was some coverage of today's action:
LA Times, Fast-food workers again protest for higher wages
NY Times, Fast-Food Workers Plan Second Strike for More Pay
The Guardian, Hundreds of New York fast food workers go on strike over pay,
Hundreds of fast food industry workers in New York went on strike on Thursday in the largest such action to ever hit the notoriously low-wage industry.
Organisers behind the protest predict that about 400 workers were walking out or staying away from their jobs across the city in a move aimed at impacting at least 70 restaurants from big chains like McDonalds, Wendy's, KFC, Burger King and Domino's Pizza.
The workers were calling for wages of $15 an hour and the right to organise without the threat of retaliation or intimidation. It follows a previous protest in New York last November when 200 workers went on strike.
At a rally outside a Domino's Pizza in Brooklyn, a group of about 30 workers and supporters held signs saying "We deserve better pay" and chanted slogans saying the minimum wage level of $7.25 was not enough to live on. Gregory Reynoso, 26, stood in front of the restaurant – where he works – and said it was hard to make ends meet on such low pay.
"It is impossible. I have a child and I have a wife. For us, it is impossible to survive. We deserve more for working hard," he said.
Related: 40% Of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage
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