With more than 75 million voters from every region of the United States choosing our next President, and the historic election of our first female, Black, and South Asian Vice President Kamala Harris, we – once again – feel optimism and promise in our collective future.
At Heartland Alliance, our program participants and people like them all over the world have faced unprecedented challenges over the last four years – many of them direct results of actions taken by the Trump administration.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to rebuild the U.S. federal government and use this as an opportunity to do things differently: our new leaders should build a government that boldly advances human rights and justice, and dismantles systemic racism. A government that unequivocally supports people who struggle to make ends meet. A government that centers anti-racism and stands up to anti-Blackness.
Before the pandemic, data showed that 34 million Americans and 1.4 million Illinoisans were living in poverty and still struggling every day. The destruction of the pandemic is far from over, and the disparate impact on Black and Latinx people has been devastating.
We must ensure that everyone has access to health care, especially in the midst of a pandemic. We must rebuild our strategies for helping people access economic security in our country, such as with access to cash, food assistance, employment, and affordable housing. We must rebuild our legal systems to focus on restorative justice, decarceration, and harm reduction. And we must rebuild our pipeline for serving refugees and immigrants, and do so in a way that focuses on pathways to citizenship.
Our democracy continues, but it has never worked for everyone. We look forward to being part of the movement to chart a new path forward – one that transforms our systems, and creates equity and opportunity for all.
