Photo by Sarah Anne Hughes.

About 100 people gathered on Freedom Plaza near the Wilson Building this morning to express their support for paid sick days and a higher minimum wage.

Organized by the Paid Sick Days for All Coalition, the rally was held so workers who weren’t able to testify last week before Councilmember and mayoral candidate Vincent Orange (D-At Large) during his marathon minimum wage hearing could deliver their testimony in person to the Council. Naomi Iser from the Employment Justice Center said 81 people called Orange’s office yesterday to express their support for paid sick days and a minimum wage of $12.50 per hour. Over 300 letters were to be delivered today to his office.

Workers also shared their stories on Freedom Plaza, as a cold wind blew.

One restaurant employee, speaking in Spanish which was translated by another person into English, said she was fired after she asked her boss for the day off to deal with a root canal. Robert Day, a man who works at the Potbelly in Union Station, said he’s paid $9.75 an hour without benefits and can’t afford all of his bills. Day said he isn’t able to take care of his son when his child’s sick. He also can’t afford to go back to school.

Inocencio Quinones of jobs group Our D.C. said this is a universal issue. He told the crowd that companies use “economic profiling” to treat minimum wage workers anyway they please: “As long as I wake up in the morning, I’m going to make sure they know that’s not right.”

“We have to still apply to pressure,” he said. “We can’t be complacent.”

Quinones was the person who led Our D.C.’s interruption during last week’s Council committee hearing on the minimum wage, accusing some politicians of “shucking and jiving” on the issue right to their faces. The group also gathered outside Chef Geoff Tracy’s downtown restaurant for a protest. In response, Tracy wrote a letter to the Council, saying Our D.C. was an illegitimate group with paid protesters: “The disruptions to the committee hearings are planned, unnecessary, unacceptable, and not conducive to rational discourse.”

“For the record, these people aren’t paid anything,” Quinones said today. “They come out because they’re sick and tired of being taken advantage of.”

“And yes, this is America, we have freedom of speech. We can say what we want to say.”