18:30

A few hundred low-wage workers gathered in Times Square Thursday afternoon to march across town to the Grand Hyatt hotel, where a GOP gala was to be held later in the evening.



Before the march, the crowd heard from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who recently signed a bill increasing New York’s state minimum wage to $15 by 2022, given inflation targets.



“Turn on the TV news, everybody says the same thing: ‘There’s a lot of angry people in America’,” said Cuomo. Middle-class Americans should be angry, he continued, because the American middle class has been moving backwards.



If those gathered were angry, it was at a politician whose name they refused to say out loud. Instead, as workers took turns coming up to the stage they said they were tired of politicians who used them as punching bags and politicians who wanted to build walls.



Could they have been speaking of Trump?

Jumal Tarver, 37, a McDonald’s worker, was at the rally and march.

“I definitely think that [Republicans] want the wages to stay the same as they are or be even lower,” Tarver said. “It’s hard for us to survive off of $8.75 or $10.50 an hour. On $15 an hour, we will be able to do what we need to do to support ourselves and our families.”

Tarver earns $10.50 an hour and is a father of two – a 13-month-old and a 7-year-old. Being paid $15 an hour will make it possible for him to take care of his family, he said.

What is the one thing he would like to tell Donald Trump?

“If you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything.”