The fast-food workers strike comes one day after President Obama delivered an address drawing attention to widening inequality in the United States. Speaking in a low-income neighborhood in Washington, Obama offered a rare presidential acknowledgment of class divisions in the United States.

President Obama: “The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race, and that gap is growing. So if we’re going to take on growing inequality and try to improve upward mobility for all people, we’ve got to move beyond the false notion that this is an issue exclusively of minority concern. And we have to reject a politics that suggests any effort to address it in a meaningful way somehow pits the interests of a deserving middle class against those of an undeserving poor in search of handouts.”

In his remarks, Obama backed proposals including an increased minimum wage, more funding for early childhood education and comprehensive immigration reform.