April 1, 2026

Mark Dorsey, a lifelong East Oakland resident, works two jobs to make ends meet. The 35-year-old Californian relies on manufacturing and service work through temp agencies and tries to work overtime or 10- to 12-hour shifts because “that’s the only way you can see a paycheck that’s worth something”.

Dorsey often makes minimum wage or close to it. The city of Oakland’s minimum wage is currently $17.34 an hour, higher than the minimum wage for the state of California, currently $16.90 an hour, but still not enough to support Dorsey.

Now, he is part of a campaign to almost double California’s minimum wage to $30. The drive comes as New York City has a bill tabled to increase its hourly minimum to $30 an hour, backed by Zohran Mamdani, the mayor.

 

 

Meet Mark Dorsey, the two-job marathon man of East Oakland, hustling through 12-hour shifts that barely buy him a slightly bigger cup of coffee than the federal minimum wage would allow—a stingy $7.25 since 2009, stuck in amber like a fly in policy amber. Oakland’s $17.34-an-hour minimum wage sounds fancy until you realize it’s still a fraction of a paycheck, forcing Mark and his comrades to rally behind a campaign aiming to double that to a mind-blowing $30 an hour by 2030—because, why not? Meanwhile, business moguls clutch their pearls, snarling at the audacity of workers daring to demand enough to keep roofs over heads in a state that’s otherwise busy throwing billion-dollar parties and passing the buck. And lest you think this is some local underdog story, New York’s got a similar $30 whisper on the city hall wind, while the “Fight for $15” movement from a decade ago watches inflation laugh in their faces. So cheers to democratic action by ballot in 2026—because if we can’t fix it soon, at least we can have fun pretending to try.

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