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By Rebekah Friend

Imagine working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year and not having money to pay rent, put gas in the car or eat.

This November, the people of Arizona have the chance to act where business and government have failed. We can vote to raise the minimum wage by voting "yes" on Proposition 202.

Proposition 202 is about doing the right thing and rewarding hard work. It's been 10 years since Congress voted to raise the minimum wage. Since then, the real value of the minimum wage has dropped to its lowest level in 51 years. Yet while members of Congress haven't seen fit to raise the minimum wage for millions of low-wage workers, they have received nine pay raises since 1997.

For working people and our families, a good, middle-class life is growing out of reach. Proposition 202 would raise the minimum wage in Arizona to $6.75 starting Jan. 1. Each year, the minimum wage would be adjusted to keep up with inflation.

Research shows that employment and payrolls in small businesses grow faster in states that have a minimum wage above the federal level of $5.15. This makes sense. If working people get a raise, they take the money and spend it on essentials, like clothes, food and housing. Money is put back into the economy, making it grow stronger.

Business groups have tried to confuse the issue by introducing the question of privacy into the debate around Proposition 202. They are using a fabricated civil-liberty issue in an attempt to keep the public from voting to raise people out of poverty. Talking about privacy diverts attention from what's at stake for working families — a raise.

About 145,000 workers in Arizona would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage to $6.75. State statistics show that nearly 75 percent of minimum-wage workers are adults. Some are senior citizens who must return to work to pay for the skyrocketing cost of medications.

More than 58 percent of minimum-wage workers in Arizona are women; more than one-third are the primary wage earners for their families, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington think tank.

The same study also estimates that 200,000 children in Arizona live in families that would be affected by an increase in the minimum wage. For these children, an increase can mean moving out of poverty, which means gaining access to better food, shelter, health care and education.

We can be sure businesses won't raise the minimum wage. And we've seen that we can't count on Congress to change it. The people of Arizona can only depend on each other to do what's right for working families.

This November, vote yes to raising the minimum wage. Vote "yes" on Proposition 202.