This week's Chicago City Council vote requiring big box stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot to increase their minimum wage salaries to $10 per hour by 2010 is the latest example of how activists are having a lot more success in local communities than they have had at the federal government level.

Activists have tried to get the federal minimum wage level of $5.15 (set in 1997) raised for years, they've always failed to get the hundreds of Congressional votes needed. But in Chicago's City Council, all they needed was 26 votes to get the same measure passed.

Activists used the same technique to get the wages of hotel and restaurant workers raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico last year. And then those same hotel and restaurant owners who opposed the increase were forced into supporting a statewide minimum wage increase so that they wouldn't be economically disadvantaged versus competitors in others towns like Albuquerque and Taos.

Just as all politics are local, so too is activism.