The fast-food industry is notorious for employing millions of Americans at poverty wages.

When families can afford the basics, they can reinvest in their communities, and higher wages means a broader consumer base for businesses.

Income inequality and wage stagnation finally took their place among the principal moral issues of our time.

Today, the gap between productivity and compensation for the typical worker is larger than at any time since World War II.

The vast majority (over 80 percent) of fast-food and similar low wage service jobs (<$9.24/hr) are held by adults. A quarter are adults over 40. Another quarter are moms raising kids.

People decide what markets should do - they are not a force of nature.

The free market hasn't done a very good job "figuring out" how to pay workers enough. If it was solely up to the market, the people with the least power would be paid pennies ... or less.

We've created more wealth in the past 30 years than the rest of human of human history combined. But half of Americans make less than $17 an hour.

Fast food also has a uniquely difficult business structure for workers to achieve better wages and working conditions.

Annual earnings in the fast-food industry are well below the income needed for self-sufficiency, and fast-food industry jobs are also much less likely than other jobs to provide health benefits.

A September 2015 poll found that, by a 3-1 margin, voters are more likely to support political candidates who favor raising the minimum wage.

Don't ever apologize for being a little rough with me!

The blessings and grace of God is my greatest wealth.

Activists are generally doers - rather than watching television and thinking about the world they will put there energies into doing something 'active' to change the (political) situation.

Those that think my clothes are androgynous also still believe that women should look like Barbie dolls. That's precisely the problem, the deep-rooted assumptions about what is feminine.

Before we can be cured, we must want to be cured.

The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds.

He who confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.

Caught Beauty , held to light, now apes A good, now evil, thing the shifting sign And spectrum of archaic, psychic shapes.

Being from Staten Island and Brooklyn, I'm used to eating pasta and meatballs every single day.

I can dine at the White House, but I can still hang at the 'hood.