For Tal Frieden, raising New York state’s minimum wage – and indexing it to inflation – is an essential component of a larger crusade against American capitalist inequity. Building momentum toward a $21.25 hourly minimum wage has been “a transformative experience, bringing together the country’s biggest labor unions behind a transformational policy,” says Frieden, the campaign manager for ALIGN’s Raise Up New York coalition.
Just 26, Frieden, who uses they/them pronouns, is one of the most prominent faces in New York state’s minimum wage movement. Growing up in Syracuse, Frieden witnessed the economic fallout of a local plant closure and became active with the Young Democrats. Then, the Occupy movement cemented their activist path.
“It gave me a framework to understand what was going on in Syracuse,” Frieden says, “and gave language to a frustration with that millionaire class, profiting while everyone else suffers.”
Frieden got into political organizing while studying political science at Brown University, working on local campaigns to fight budget cuts, tax Rhode Island’s wealthy and create a statewide public housing developer. In New York, Frieden is currently excited about a Tompkins County proposal to raise the minimum wage above the state mandate. They recently staged a speakout at the Dunkin’ in the state Capitol, putting hundreds of low-wage workers in the morning path of Albany’s caffeinating political class.
“Bringing folks who so rarely interface with so-called leaders right to the nexus of New York state,” Frieden says, “was really moving and powerful.”
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