[Proposed]

The Richmond Resolution
Resolved, by the working people of the Fight for $15
movement, in Richmond, Virginia on August 13, 2016



We are the men and women of the Fight for $15 movement.
Each day, we serve food and operate restaurants for some of the world’s largest fast
food corporations. We provide in-home support for senior citizens and people with
disabilities. We care for and teach pre-school aged children. We drive trucks and
make cars. We help customers and maintain inventories in retail stores. We assist
passengers in our country’s airports. We instruct students in the higher education
system and work as graduate student employees. Across the service, care,
manufacturing and education sectors, we do the work.
The work we do generates billions of dollars in profits and makes our country
stronger. But we are paid so little that far too many of us are living on the edge and
cannot afford our basic needs, trapping us in poverty.
Nearly four years ago, several hundred of us who are cooks and cashiers at fast
food-restaurants in New York City walked off our jobs. We called for a $15 wage
floor for our work and for the right to form unions without retaliation.
That strike launched a movement that has gained in numbers and strength. By
sticking together, we are making astonishing gains that not long ago seemed
impossible. We are being heard and taken seriously. Nearly 20 million of us have
won raises since the Fight for $15 began in November 2012.
But too many of us are still underpaid and on the verge of being left out of the
American Dream. There are 64 million of us who are paid less than $15 per hour.
Decades of attacks on workers who organized into unions mean many jobs that
traditionally provided a path to a good life no longer do. The success of our
movement proves that we not only need a living wage, but also an organization that
will empower us to stand together and fight for dignity on the job and in our
communities.
Black, Latino, and other working families of color still face barriers of
structural racism each day that make it harder for us to get ahead and
build a secure future. Preemption laws promulgated by majority white

 legislators have blocked raises for underpaid workers, who are disproportionately
people of color.
If one of us tries to speak up by ourselves, he or she will be ignored. We know that
the only way that working people are heard is when we join together in unions to
stand up and fight together.
Therefore, we are ready to take the next steps forward for our movement.
Therefore, we will stand with each other to:
● Push the candidates for President, Senate, and other elected offices of power
in this pivotal election to make raising pay and tearing down barriers to
opportunity a central priority.
● Link arms with the Moral Revival Movement for a National Day of Action on
the steps of state capitol buildings around the country on September 12,
2016. We will stand against decisions and policies that harm families that
can’t make ends meet, people who are ill, children, new American
immigrants, communities of color, and religious minorities.
● Take direct actions and organize demonstrations when and where the
candidates for President and Vice-President meet to debate before the
election on November 8.
● Support legislative action to raise minimum wage floors across cities and
states that were once part of the Confederacy. We will challenge wealthy and
powerful political interests that claim to care for ordinary families but nullify
any attempt to raise our wages.

● Win the right for all working people to unite in unions without fear of
retaliation, and reverse the tide of anti-union attacks by corporate interests.
With our action and unity, we will balance the power that the richest Americans
have in our government and the influence they have with our elected
representatives.
We stand united, stronger together in our fight for a better world, where every
person can find work that sustains us and allows us to lift up our families, where we
can all give our children more opportunities, where we can work together to create
inclusive prosperity for everyone, no matter what our class, gender, belief, sexual
orientation or race.