Lydia Stewart makes $10.50 a hour working at a Great Clips in Columbia.

The job comes with no paid time off, no maternity leave and no sick leave. The 23-year-old lives with a parent, she said, because she can’t afford rent on her own.

“They treat us like a pair of hands,” she said at a rally in Charleston on June 3 held by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was garnering support for legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour.

Stewart, an organizer with the Union for Southern Service Workers, called for: “higher pay, a seat at the table, just some respect and a little bit of dignity.”

Sanders, along with the Rev. William Barber, an activist and the founding director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, have held similar rallies in North Carolina and Tennessee since June 1.

Both men emphasized that advocating for a livable wage was not a partisan issue — or a “far left” or “radical” ideal, as they suggested some opponents might put it — but a moral one.

“A job in this country should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it,” said the senator from Vermont.

Barber said that the Bible touches more than 2,000 times on the subject of poverty, helping the poor and how to treat “the least of these.” But it has little to say on abortion, sexuality, or prayer in school, he said of the common conservative talking points.

Thirteen states have set a minimum wage of $15 per hour, more than double the federal minimum of $7.25,...

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