In Nome, Alaska, a gallon of milk can cost $10, gas often runs past $6, and the town's minimum wage has been stuck at $14 an hour, even though the true cost of living there runs about 69% higher than the national average. According to MIT's Living Wage Calculator, a single adult working full-time in Nome needs almost $24 an hour just to cover the basics, and a family of four needs two working parents earning closer to $28 an hour each to get by.

Six teenage girls decided that gap couldn't wait for someone else to close it. After learning about city-by-city minimum wage campaigns at a Native youth leadership conference, they came home and built their own: the Nome Living Wage For All Alliance. Their proposal would raise the local minimum wage to $25 an hour, phased in through 2029 for large employers and 2032 for small businesses, a plan shaped in direct conversation with the town's biggest employers.

"We decided that money was a problem, and that we wanted to help get, not just a few people, but everybody, what they need," said Alora Stasenko, one of the students who helped lead the effort, according to The 19th.

The city already approved their petition. Now they need 108 signatures, a quarter of the votes cast in Nome's last local election, to get the $25 minimum wage on the November ballot. In a town this remote, where hunting and fishing supplement grocery runs that can empty a paycheck in one trip, a wage floor that actually reflects the cost of living isn't a luxury. It's survival.

Sign the petition to put Nome's $25 minimum wage initiative on the November ballot, before the students who started this fight run out of time to finish it.