We have never completed the project of Reconstruction. The First Reconstruction was stymied by violent terrorism in the 19th century. The Second Reconstruction was stopped by the white backlash to the civil rights movement. America must reconcile with our past by creating a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission to lead our nation through a process that investigates the generational harms caused by slavery and Jim Crow and propose necessary reparations.

We have the largest prison population in the world. We must end the War on Drugs, end mandatory minimum sentencing and cash bail, end solitary confinement, end private prisons, end the school-to-prison pipeline and end our justice system’s reliance on incarceration — which has clearly failed — and move toward a system based in redemption and reinvestment, not punishment.

In this unjust criminal legal system, policing has been used as a violent enforcer of a broken, classist, and racist system that has proven unsuccessful even in its own stated goals of protecting communities. Law enforcement should not be a catch-all for all of society’s problems. Yet, police spend a fifth of their time responding to people with mental illnesses. Many of those cases are not something the police should be involved in at all. Empowering health care workers to support people in crisis, rather than involving police, is possible with named budget priorities and investments in public health programs which can truly make our communities safer. We must reallocate resources and invest in education, housing, healthcare, jobs, and other programs that address the root of crime. We must also end qualified immunity, create stronger civilian review boards, demilitarize the police, and support violence interruption programs that have a track record of helping our communities.

Instead of policing and locking up communities that have been systemically disinvested in, we should be tackling the root causes by funding these communities’ housing, healthcare, jobs, and education and stop treating poverty like a crime.

Almost one in four people in the nation have a disability, yet ableism in our national infrastructure and legal system treats disabled people like second class citizens. That’s why we must expand and reform Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), ensure that Medicare for All includes coverage of community-based long term support services, and pass legislation like the ASAP Act which seeks to make all public transit ADA-compliant and accessible. 

Gun violence is a public health crisis in the United States that disproportionately impacts communities of color. More than 90 percent of Americans support expanded background checks, 54 percent want a ban on assault weapons and 54 percent want a ban on high capacity magazines. We agree with the majority of the American people and support these measures. To enact common sense gun safety measures, we must break the NRA’s hold on our corrupt government and prioritize the mental and physical health of the people over the billion-dollar gun manufacturing industry’s bottom line.

Additionally, we must acknowledge that so much everyday gun violence is not happening at the hands of assault rifles or weapons of war, but from handguns between individuals. Ending the scourge of gun violence in our communities demands that we invest in the root causes of that everyday gun violence which is poverty. If we want to end gun violence, we can start by fighting to end poverty.

Every person deserves to be able to put a roof over their head but on any given night, over 770,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness. We cannot put the future of housing into the hands of corporate developers that helped facilitate every major housing crisis in this country’ s history. 

The United States can end homelessness if it wants to. A national homes guarantee would ensure every person safe, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing. With less money than the Pentagon spends every year, we could build 8.5 million new public housing units, fund local development of 3.5 million new private, permanent affordable housing projects, and fund billions for climate resiliency, public housing repairs, and critical infrastructure upgrades nationwide. In order to do so, we must repeal the Faircloth Amendment that has put a federal limit on public housing spending for over 25 years.

About 1 in 3 Americans are renters, but they have little federal housing protections. Nationwide rent control would cap annual rent hikes from corporate real estate conglomerates and not let people’s housing be dictated by individual landlords’ greed. Tenants facing eviction should have a federal right to counsel, just-cause eviction protects to prevent baseless evictions, and stronger tenant unions so renters have the power to organize and protect themselves against predatory landlords.

Our housing should be driven by human need, not corporate and billionaire greed.

The LGBTQ+ community is under attack by right-wing extremists who are trying to strip away healthcare, housing, education, and basic rights from millions of people. We need to protect their ability to live their lives with dignity and not let right-wing politicians demonize trans people to divide-and-distract us while their billionaire and corporate donors pick our pockets.

Passing the Equality Act would explicitly ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender and non-discrimination protections that currently apply to race, religion, and gender should be expanded to include the LGBTQ community. A Medicare For All system would also expand LGBTQ+ mental health services and protect access to healthcare for trans communities access.

The Republican Party has gutted abortion rights and reproductive freedom in this country and Washington must fight back. We need to codify abortion rights at the federal level once and for all — including repealing the racist and classist Hyde Amendment protecting access to medication abortion as Republicans target it even in states that have protected access to abortion care. Abortion care should not be a carveout — it should be a staple of a healthcare system that treats healthcare as a human right like Medicare for All, where all reproductive healthcare would be free.

Reproductive freedom in America is an economic and racial justice issue where the GOP’s forced birth agenda forces families into lives they cannot afford. Meanwhile those same Republicans cut Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP as well as systemically disinvest housing, education, and jobs in low-income communities. The right-wing agenda seeks to create cycles of poverty by defunding or criminalizing every resource that could help families live their lives with dignity and on their terms.