(Photo by Rachel Sadon)

When a coalition of activists launched their campaign to raise the minimum wage in D.C. to $15, they did it from the front steps of the John A. Wilson Building. Today, almost exactly one year later, SEIU was back; but this time around, they were rallying inside the mayor’s briefing room.

The upgrade came along with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s support for an increase in the city’s minimum wage. In a surprise move last month at the State of the District address, the mayor announced that she was joining the so-called Fight for 15, and would send legislation to the D.C. Council within a matter of weeks to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2020.

“We have to make economic opportunity mean something,” Bowser said at today’s rally.

It remains unclear, though, how closely Bowser’s proposed legislation will mirror that of a ballot initiative that has been in the works for more than a year. The effort was put in jeopardy by a lawsuit over the make-up of the Board of Elections, but a judge ruled in favor of the initiative earlier this month. Activists are now working toward getting the necessary signatures for it to appear on the November ballot.

Should the initiative pass, the wage would continue rising according to the following schedule: $12.50 in 2017, $13.25 in 2018, $14 in 2019, and $15 in 2020. It would also raise the minimum for tipped workers to $15 by 2024.

Among the biggest open questions is if the mayor’s proposal would also include raising the minimum wage to $15 for tipped workers.

“We’re focused on the general wage right now,” Bowser told reporters at the rally today. “We’re still crossing the ‘t’s’ and dotting the ‘i’s’ on the ballot initiative.”

Spokesman Mike Czin said that legislation is still coming “this week,” though he wouldn’t say whether or not it would include the provision for tipped workers.

“I want to give the mayor the benefit of the doubt—I don’t think she will cut tipped workers out,” Delvone Michael, the executive director of DC Working Families and a co-chair of DC for $15, told DCist last week. “We definitely support the mayor’s efforts and want to applaud her on stepping up, but we intend to move forward on the ballot initiative with our efforts until we see exactly what her proposal is.”

A 2013 law gradually raised the wage from $8.25 up to $11.50 in 2016 (the final pre-determined hike goes into effect on July 1, and from there on out, the wage is tied to the increase in the Consumer Price Index). D.C. passed that legislation in conjunction with similar bills in neighboring Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

But with the city’s wage gap between the rich and poor at a 35-year high, activists say it isn’t enough—and the mayor agreed.

“$11.50 was a big step but it doesn’t get us to the finish line,” Bowser said, pointing to a stack of petitions in favor of the $15 wage (she also gave a ringing endorsement of Ward 7 and 8 Councilmembers Yvette Alexander and LaRuby May, who were in attendance).

“They are dishwashers on U Street, janitors on K Street, cashiers on Martin Luther King Avenue. They work hard, they play by the rules, and they do right by their families. They show their children everyday that sometimes it takes seven days a week to make the ends meet. But they want to see their children grow up, too,” she said. Bowser again reiterated her commitment to raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2020, and called on other jurisdictions in the region to do the same.

The event at the Wilson Building comes as home health care workers around the country are rallying today for better pay and working conditions, part of an ongoing series of national efforts to increase wages that is starting to see successes. The governors of California and New York signed legislation this month to gradually raise their state’s minimum wage to $15 over the next few years.