Contact: Olivia Burlingame [email protected] Tel: 301-613-4767
Frontline Communities and Workers Demand Immediate Relief & Investment in Long Term Recovery and a “Down Payment” on a Regenerative Economy
Today, May 1, 2020, Climate Justice Alliance members, community groups and workers across the country are hosting actions to demand President Trump, Congress, and other local and state leaders act on the demands of working people, not corporations and the wealthy. Whether through a people’s strike or demands to cancel rent and debt, a people’s just recovery is what’s in order, and it’s possible right now.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen workers at Amazon and other corporations striking for safer working conditions and improved pay, while frontline health workers demand masks and protective equipment. Immigrant communities, excluded from the last stimulus package, are calling for immediate support and inclusion. Renters and homeowners have pressured landlords and banks to cancel rent and mortgage payments, while calling for a moratorium on water and electricity shut offs. Meanwhile, over 26 million people have filed for unemployment, making these solutions even more pressing.
This May Day, community groups and individuals are joining together to participate in local actions and a national virtual rally, twitter storms to Congress and the White House, car caravans to show support for essential workers and their livelihoods, and intentional shopping at local businesses while refusing to support chains that put profit over the safety and well-being of their own workers.
This is a pivotal moment for congressional and corporate leaders to not simply qualify frontline workers as “essential” but actually do something meaningful to ensure they can carry out their work with fair wages and under safe working conditions. Either elected officials will continue to spend billions bailing out Wall Street and oil companies or they will invest in the health, safety and well-being of millions of people through good jobs and the expansion of inclusive social safety nets. We need a People’s Bailout that includes us all.
More information about local and national actions happening around the country can be found here.
Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network
“The Navajo Nation has one of the highest rates of Covid-19 infection rates in the country despite a population of 175,000. It’s imperative we immediately get the resources we need to address this crisis. By ignoring the pandemic in Indian Country the US government continues its legacy of genocide.”
Rosalinda Guillen, Community to Community (Washington)
“We need to look at containing COVID-19 in the food system from the human rights and food sovereignty perspective, not from the capitalist perspective of keeping profit margins up. Farmworkers, as essential workers, want to stay alive and need essential resources and enforceable rules in the workplace to survive and keep food on everyone’s tables.”
Antonio Tovar, Executive Director Farmworker Association of Florida
“Farmworkers ARE essential workers and have always been so, but for too long they have not been valued as such. In the same way that people applaud and thank healthcare workers in this crisis, everyone should thank farm workers as they sit down for every meal.”
Davin Cardenas, Right to the City Alliance
“Today, renters, homeowners, and small businesses are taking action across the country to ensure that they aren’t left behind as corporation after corporation is bailed out. Legislators need to put their money where their mouths are, to support the millions of people and 48% of renters nationwide who are unsure about how they will pay for rent in May, by cancelling rent, mortgages, and guarantee homes for all immediately.”
###
