What would be the bare minimum that a government that meant well could do?

We recently marked the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, the civil rights gathering at which people demanded a decent federal minimum wage, even though the minimum wage at the time, adjusted for inflation, was much higher than it is today ($11.45 vs. $7.25).

The New York Times recently told us that "hardly anyone" earns as little as the federal minimum wage anymore. So, why can't the U.S. government take the easy step of at least raising it to restore the value that's been lost to inflation?

Well, for one thing it isn't true that hardly anyone would be impacted by that. According to the Economic Policy Institute, slowly raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 now to $17 in 2028, and eliminating sub-minimum wages, would raise the wages of nearly 28 million people.

The Raise the Wage Act of 2023 would do that and add the remarkable step, carefully avoided by the U.S. Congress for nearly a century, of indexing the minimum wage to keep pace with the median hourly wage -- meaning we wouldn't have to spend our time demanding a better minimum wage for decades to come.

What's driving the debate on a federal minimum wage is action in the states, and we urge everyone to click here to email your state legislators.

Of course, that isn't quite the least that could be done, since we still need numerous states to ban slavery. If you live in Arkansas, California, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Wisconsin, or Washington DC, click here.

Or maybe there's something even less than that. What if our governments simply refrained from devoting their energies and our money to giant training grounds for militarized police, deadly prisons, and endless wars?

Tell Atlanta Mayor and City Council: Stop Cop City!

Tell the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to Reduce the Deadly Heat in Prisons!

Tell Presidents Biden, Putin, and Zelensky to End the War in Ukraine!

We encourage you to look at some of our recent successes and to create your own petitions. You know your local issues and the issues you work on best. RootsAction knows how to promote and use petitions. Together, we've been racking up the victories. Check out and support others' petitions, and create your own at DIY.RootsAction.org.