prior to coming to the aflcio cindy worked for seiu from 2007 to 2012 and in various capacities as the mid-atlantic area political director, senior legislative advocate and coordinating manager overseeing seiu's retiree problem and as a field director for the south carolina democratic party and provided technical assistance to candidates for city council, mayor and school board and has a ba from the university of south carolina. marcus mason is a partner at the madison group. he is responsible for managing the firm's transportation, energy, tax and homeland security portfolio. in addition, he focuses on crisis management, complex integrated campaigns and coalition building. he has more than 15 years of political and policy experience. prior to joining tmg he served as amtrak's senior director of government affairs. a member of the board of directors of the black caucus foundation and on the political action committee and also a published author who writes spy thrillers which i just found out. next we have my home boy, jeff johnson. jeff is an award-winning journalist, social activist a

with me on "comunidad del valle," cindy chavez, the head of the south bay labor council, south bay aflcio. and cynthia warren trying to earn a living. i would assume the increase would help you significantly. >> definitely. >> tell us about that. >> i am a minimum wage worker, full-time student at san jose state and i am a mother. so you know, it is really hard to juggle and make balance of my checkbook when i have no money, living on minimum wage, with the exceeding cost of gas, it is hard to provide for my son. i shouldn't be struggling to make a wage. i should be able to live adequately in silicon valley. >> work hard for your money. now, i know there's some conflict over whether this increase is going to go through. you gather signatures, students at san jose state went out and gathered thousands of signatures to get it on the ballot. what's going to happen to this initiative? >> 35,000 signatures were gathered. the registrar certified we had 19,161 is what we needed to get on the ballot, but we collected 35,000. so well beyond what we needed. and i think the reason is that people in