23 Arrested in Tampa Fight for $15 Protest

TAMPA, FL — A peaceful protest in Ybor City to lobby for a $15 minimum wage in Florida ended in the arrest of 23 people Tuesday night after they allegedly blocked a roadway and refused to move.

According to the Tampa Police Department, Fight for $15’s rally at Centennial Park began around 5 p.m. Nov. 29. Protesters left the park and began marching down 22nd Street. All was going well with police working to minimize traffic snarls until the march turned west onto 21st Street, an email from the police department said.

“It was there that many sat down, blocking the road,” the email said.

Officers reportedly told rally organizers that they could not continue to block the roadway near Interstate 4. At 6 p.m., officers issued “the first of three notifications in English and Spanish that they should clear the roadway,” the email said.

It seems not everyone heeded the warning. Twenty-three people were arrested. All 23, the police department said, “stood. None resisted. There was no violence.”

Shortly after the arrests, the demonstration returned to Centennial Park. There, police said, “some demonstrators thanked officers for keeping them safe and offered officers bottles of water.”

Tuesday’s Ybor City protest was just one of many staged across the United States as part of Fight for $15’s planned National Day of Disruption. Fight for $15 is a national campaign that was launched by the Service Employees International Union. Protests also took place in Boston, Chicago and elsewhere across the country. A Tuesday morning protest was also staged outside a McDonald's on Tampa's East Hillsborough Avenue.

Fight for 15 Florida took to Twitter to share stories of the day’s events in the Tampa Bay area.

“Fast food, childcare workers, adjuncts and clergy just took arrests in Tampa to stand up for a better future for all of us,” the group tweeted shortly after the 23 arrests were made.

“For too long, McDonald’s and low-wage employers have made billions of dollars in profit and pushed off costs onto taxpayers, while leaving people like us – the people who do the real work – to struggle to survive,” the national group’s website says. “That is why we strike. We can’t feed our families, pay our bills or even keep a roof over our heads on minimum wage page.”

Florida’s minimum wage is $8.05 an hour, a rate protesters say makes paying for necessities nearly impossible.

“Right now workers have to burn the candle at both ends to make enough to pay the bills, and still find time to spend with their families,” Florida Fight for $15 explains on its website.

The push a $15 an hour minimum wage began several years ago. Since then, protesters have been successful in seeing legislation pass to raise pay in such areas as New York State, California and Seattle, among others. Florida, however, is only on track to increase its minimum by 5 cents – to $8.10 an hour – in 2017.

To find out more about the Fight for $15, visit the group’s website.

Tampa Police have not released the names of the 23 protesters arrested. They said all had been issued a notice to appear in court and were released on their own recognizance.

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