Nearly 500 protesters were arrested in three dozen US cities on Thursday as fast-food workers and supporters staged sit-ins and acts of civil disobedience nationwide to call attention to their low wages and lack of union representation.

Organizers of the strike said that, all told, actions at fast-food restaurants occurred at about 150 cities nationwide, from Manhattan’s Times Square to Little Rock, Arkansas. Thursday’s coordinated demonstrations were the seventh – and largest yet – in a series of one-day strikes by fast-food workers since Nov. 2012.