Fast Food workers and economic justice advocates across the country, but especially in New York, had much to celebrate on Wednesday as a state panel announced its recommendation that all employees at chain restaurants  should be paid at least $15 per hour by the year 2018.

The announcement by the New York’s Fast Food Wage Board followed an energized campaign by workers and progressive allies who said the $6.25 increase to the minimum wage was necessary to lift employees who work at McDonald’s, KFC, and other regional and national chains out of poverty.

On the ‘Fight for $15’ Twitter feed there  were congratulations and expressions of victory:

NPR reported:

“This is a historical moment. We did it,” Jorel Ware, a McDonald’s worker, told the Guardian at a rally celebrating the wage board’s recommendations. Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with both “I can’t breathe” and “Fight for $15,” Ware said fewer people would live in poverty thanks to the wage increase. “It’s wonderful. I get to live on my own again. I am telling you it’s a wonderful thing. When I started the fight, I just wanted something better for myself,” he said. “The Fight for $15 has showed me what’s possible when people stick and work together.”

In an op-ed in the New York Daily News that appeared on Thursday, three members of the wage board—Byron Brown, Michael Fishman, and Kevin Ryan—explained why the personal testimony of people like Yancy Rivera, a single working mother, was emblematic of why they ultimately made their recommendation:

Coming on the same day progressive lawmakers in Washington, DC received applause for introducing a $15 minimum wage bill at the federal level and the University of California system announced an increase of wages for its employees to $15 per hour by 2017, the victory in New York was just the most far-reaching example of how the national ‘Fight for $15’ movement has not only captured the imaginations and aspirations of low-wage workers, but is actually winning tactical and tangible victories.