The AFL-CIO held its national convention in California last week, and it turns out it couldn’t have picked a better time to be there. For it was last week that California really began to deliver on the promise of the labor-Latino alliance.
On Thursday, with the legislature rushing to meet its targeted adjournment date on Friday, it passed a bill raising the state’s hourly minimum wage from $8 to $10—the highest in the nation. It passed a bill permitting undocumented immigrants to get driver's licenses. Governor Jerry Brown has committed to sign both bills. It also passed a bill mandating overtime pay for domestic workers, and, for good measure, outlawed the sale of rifles with detachable magazines and required owners of such rifles to register them with the state. And perhaps just as remarkably, on Thursday, 15 Republican members of the state legislature announced their support for federal immigration reform, including legalization of the undocumented.
In September, 2009 Atlantic Monthly named 
