This is a guest post by Mike Louis of the Missouri AFL-CIO and Sean Soendker Nicholson of Progress Missouri. 

Ever wondered what keeps payday lenders and the CEOs who pay poverty wages up at night? It’s not the 1,950% interest rates they’re allowed to charge Missourians on payday loans, or how the employees who make them rich are able to survive on $290 a week.  

Here in Missouri, we know what terrifies the payday lending companies and corporations who want to keep paying poverty wages: It’s the convergence of faith, community, student and labor organizations who collected 350,000 signatures in the past 18 months to cap the rate on predatory loans and give minimum wage-earning workers a raise.  

The collaboration and building of alliances across nontraditional lines has been truly transformational, and investments in this new alliance will pay dividends for the people of Missouri for years to come, including in future battles on the right to organize and bargain collectively that are erupting throughout the Midwest.  Missouri unions worked with our Missouri Jobs with Justice to unite with congregation-based organizations like Communities Creating Opportunity, Missouri Faith Voices and Metropolitan Congregations United for St Louis. The collaboration also included grassroots direct action groups like the National People’s Action affiliate GRO-Missouri. 

We very nearly ended triple-digit interest rates on payday loans and poverty wages with ballot measures this cycle.  Unfortunately—and tragically—an unprecedented legal challenge from the predatory lending industry silenced the voices of hundreds of thousands of Missourians by tying up in court our initiative petitions to "Cap the Rate" and "Raise the Wage." Our transformational campaign of faith, labor and community groups overcame the most dishonest and aggressive corporate misinformation and intimidation campaign ever seen in Missouri.  

We were not stopped by threats to faith leaders, harassment in our neighborhoods, stolen petitions, unlimited secret funds or dishonest ads on our airways. But equipped with limitless resources from the payday lenders who would do anything to protect their outrageous, immoral legal framework that allows them to fleece our communities, our opponents were able to run out the clock in the courts so they wouldn’t have to face voters on the November ballot.  

I can tell you firsthand that hearing our lawyers tell us that we had submitted enough valid signatures—yet did not have enough days on the calendar to clear legal hurdles erected by the payday lenders’ unprecedented legal maneuvering—was one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking things I’ve ever heard in my life.  

While we were ultimately unsuccessful in passing both initiatives during the 2012 cycle, we have forced economic dignity and justice issues into the state’s political conversation, engaged tens of thousands underrepresented voters and communities, deepened our relationships as allied organizations and developed a robust infrastructure for other victories this fall and beyond.

We’re smarter, stronger and more dedicated to the fight than ever before. We learned that investing in our own infrastructure pays big dividends and must continue. We learned that we cannot underestimate the depths to which our opponents will sink.  And we learned that we cannot underestimate the resiliency of our base.   

Together, labor, faith, community and student leaders in Missouri are building an economy that works for all of us.  

Onward!