When I was a teenager growing up in Peoria, I worked at McDonald's.
I was saving up for college. For a kid like me — immigrant family, hard-to-pronounce last name, no connections — having a job that let me work toward something better meant everything.
That job was more than a paycheck. It was a way forward.
But right now, that same job pays just $7.25 an hour in 20 different states across America.
That’s the exact same federal minimum wage that's been on the books since 2009.
Seventeen years while corporate profits have shattered records and the gap between what workers make and what their bosses take home has grown into a chasm most people can't even fathom.
No one supports a family on $7.25 an hour. No one saves for college on $7.25 an hour. No one builds anything on $7.25 an hour.
And yet here we are.
The people who work those jobs — the ones who show up every single day, clock in, and keep this country running — deserve better than a wage that hasn't budged in nearly two decades. They deserve leaders who will walk into office and fight to change it. Not someday. Not eventually. Now.
That's the fight Equal Opportunity Now was built for.
Will you chip in $25 or $50 today to help us elect leaders who believe that hard work should still lead somewhere?
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