I wanted to share this email call to action which I received from the Poor People’s Campaign. There’s a script at the end that you can use to call your Senators and tell them to quickly pass the House Coronavirus Bill - HR6201 - Families First Coronavirus Response Act with no watering-down or alterations, as a first step to protecting our health, healthcare, and wellbeing during this pandemic.
Dear David,
We are in the midst of an unfolding public health crisis due to the coronavirus — but our current state of emergency results from a deeper, much longer-term crisis — that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that ignores the needs of 140 million poor and low-wealth people. We know that we must enact the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival to fully address this crisis.
We support the call to pass House Coronavirus Bill - HR6201 - Families First Coronavirus Response Act because it provides critical resources for food assistance, testing, unemployment insurance, immediate paid sick days, and protection for health care workers. Importantly, this bill also includes things the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has been demanding for a long time — a suspension of work requirements for SNAP, worker protections in the form of paid sick leave, increased resources for Medicaid and free testing for all, including the uninsured.
In this moment, we must join the call to demand that our government face this crisis — we cannot go back to business as usual. We call on each of you to reach out to your Senators to vote and pass this bill immediately (see below for a call script you can use).
This bill alone, however, will not fully address this crisis, nor the ongoing crises of poverty and inequality in this country. We call for important additions to the bill, listed below. Many of these demands are already a part of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival’s Moral Agenda. It’s clear we need them now more than ever:
We demand more targeted and specific protections for low-wage and temporary workers, including child care workers and care providers. Rapid, direct payments to individuals is the most effective way to ensure low-wage workers who are especially sensitive to changes in work schedules have the resources to provide for their families and households and to manage their care and treatment.
We demand targeted and specific protections for homeless people, including and especially children, who will not have access to online learning, meals, or running water outside of their schools; this can and must include a call on city and local governments to open and prepare vacant properties to house the homeless.
We demand a national moratorium on evictions, tax foreclosures, and rent hikes.
We demand a national moratorium on water and utility shut-offs and maintained access to communications and Wi-Fi.
We demand a national moratorium on medical debt collection that would compromise an individual, family or household’s ability to provide for their health and care during this emergency.
We demand a suspension of Medicaid work requirements.
We demand the reauthorization and protection of community health centers and rural hospitals, including the suspension of any pending closures of rural hospitals.
We demand targeted protections for people in mental health facilities, prisons, jails, immigrant detention centers, juvenile detention centers, and nursing homes, especially in the form of supplies, personnel, testing and treatment.
We demand that immigrant communities are able to seek safe testing and treatment by suspending CBP and ICE enforcement and declaring all emergency provisions as disaster relief, thereby making immigrants who are otherwise ineligible for health care, nutrition and other government programs eligible for these emergency programs.
We demand that nobody — no individual or corporation or financial interest — is profiting off a public health crisis by ensuring that vaccines and treatments are affordable and/or free for those who cannot afford the costs.