She was making $8.50 an hour. This Kansas City woman fights for a living wage for all

It’s been nearly eight years since Fran Marion joined the fight for fair wages and better conditions for workers in Kansas City.

In that time, the single mother has been homeless and then housed. She’s watched her two children grow into young adults. For nearly two years she’s worked at the Taco Bell near 82nd Street and Wornall Road, now as a manager.

And she’s continued a movement that started long before she was born.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Americans across the country are encouraged to honor the late civil rights leader by spending the day in service to others.

But for Marion, every day is an act of service. A fight for her community. An homage to King.

She stood recently in the office of her advocacy group, Stand Up KC, surrounded by posters of activists who led revolutions to make life better for those who had to fight hardest for happiness: Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks, King.

Her own job won’t be finished until every worker is given paid sick days, paid parental leave, a living wage and health care. Given a voice.

“We’re fighting to survive, so we’ve never really gotten the chance to live,” Marion said. “I want to know what that feels like before I’m called home.”

‘A day on, not a day off’: Honor MLK Day at one of these 16 KC celebration, service events

Joining the movement

In 2015, Marion was working at Popeyes, making $8.50 an hour.

There were days where, after serving hundreds of hungry customers, she came home unable to feed her own children. With an empty pantry and the electricity shut off in her home, the only sound she could hear was her son’s stomach growling.

On April 15 that year, a sea of red shirts flooded the Popeyes while Marion was working. At first she thought it was the Chiefs; she started planning how to get an autograph or two. But she soon realized it was a strike group.

She watched as her boss laughed at the strikers, as if they were a joke. In a pivotal moment, Marion left her post behind the service counter and joined the Fight for $15.

Within a couple years, she was asked to be among its leaders.

Since then, when defending the fight for a living wage, she’s echoed a similar refrain: “I may not be a doctor or a lawyer, but I still put my pants on one leg at a time like they do.”

Fight for $15 continues

This past Labor Day, Marion helped organize a strike at the Taco Bell where she works. When the store shut down, she was the one who locked the doors and displayed a sign in the window: “Closed due to strike! We need a living wage, respect, safe working conditions and a union!”

“We have to deal with short staffing, poverty wages, disrespect from upper management, lack of structure, lack of support, no paid sick days, no health care, even racial abuse from customers,” she said then, before a crowd of more than 100 people.

On some days, Marion is tempted to sit down. To rest. To quit. But in the most difficult of times, there’s always a reminder that her job isn’t finished.

In a Stand Up KC leadership meeting a few months ago, a mirror was passed around. Affixed to it was a photo of King.

As she held the mirror, Marion said, “I see me looking at Dr. King and Dr. King looking at me and he’s telling me that the fight must go on. I started it, but you’ve got to be the one to finish it.”

Last week, she amended her statement: “We’ll continue it. I don’t know if I’m going to be the one to finish it,” she said with a small laugh. She sees progress, but it’s taking time.

Her two children, her endless motivation, have joined her in the fight; she knows they’ll keep fighting after she can’t. At the Labor Day strike, Marion’s son, who also works in fast food, amazed her when he stood up and gave an interview to the media.

Marion has long fought the idea by some that service workers are beneath the rest of society.

It’s why she loves this King quote:

“Even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures. Sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well,” King said.

“It isn’t by size that you win or you fail. Be the best of whatever you are.”