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. 

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the current financial state of play in electoral politics. Despite the mega-finances poured into the current election cycle, working families have more power than they think—power at the polls.

It’s not just the presidential race that’s being flooded with money. Every political race—from your local sheriff to state and local judges to your state governors and legislators—is receiving more donations from an ever greedier financial elite.

The AFL-CIO recently joined with other investors to ask corporations to nominate more women as directors. The AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Shuler co-signed a letter with state officials from California, New York, Washington, Massachusetts and other states, as well as executives from the nation’s largest state pension funds, mutual fund companies, and women’s organizations.

Investors sent the letter to the nominating committees of S&P 500 companies that do not have any women on their boards.