My next campaign event will likely be this weekend’s OKC Pride celebration, where hopefully the Greens will have some kind of presence.

But as for today’s campaign activities, I was at the Raise Oklahoma Rally with a hundred or so other concerned Oklahomans.

I’ll post some pictures later, but the rally itself was very good with lots of speakers who argued why Oklahoma needs to raise the minimum wage beyond the federal level (one thing that got me was when we speaker said that a full-time minimum wage worker will only make $10,712 per year before taxes!)

After the rally most of us then went inside to talk to our legislators about the need to raise the minimum wage (I also dropped by Governor Henry’s office to leave him a note, asking him to amend the call for the special session to discuss raising the minimum wage).

Here are few quotes from the speeches (sentences below that are not in quotation marks are approximate paraphrases)…

From speaker from Mainstream Baptists of Oklahoma –

Our minimum wage laws say what we believe about “the value of working people in the eyes of God.”

“There will be a payday someday… what goes around comes around” (speaking of those who deny justice to the poor)

“Why must Oklahoma be an economic dustbowl for working people?”

From Rabbi Cohen –

Raising the minimum wage is one thing we can do for the “stranger in our midst”

From Shirley Cox, Director of Social Action for Catholic Charities (and my Immigration law prof from OCU)-

$10,712 = minimum wage full-time annual income. Most of can’t even make our mortgage payments with this.

60% of min. wage earners are women and the vast majority are adults over age 20.

From the Oklahoma Conference of Churches –

Arkansas Methodists just got through a inimum wage increase in their state. Surely we can do the same.

From a spokesperson from the Raise Oklahoma Campaign –

spoke about how poverty affects crime and rescividism