Minnesota: Advance a People’s Agenda!
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Coalition to Advance a People’s Agenda.
Working and oppressed people are facing the biggest crisis we’ve experienced in generations. The government’s disastrous mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic combined with deepening unemployment and economic collapse are throwing millions of working people into crisis. So far the government is doing what they usually do — Trump responds with racism, trying to blame China and deport immigrants rather than bringing people together in solidarity to fight the coronavirus. The government spends trillions of dollars to bail out big corporations and a pittance for people who are struggling to pay for food, rent and health care. This crisis has laid bare all the ways the capitalist system fails us: a health care system that we can’t afford while it makes huge profits for the rich; no real safety net when we lose our jobs; deep inequality that leaves Black, Latino and Native people getting sick and dying more at higher rates from the pandemic.
We cannot survive like this! Our basic needs, including our health, must come before the profits of big corporations. To get out of this crisis now and to make real lasting progress for our futures, we put forward these demands that put people before profits.
Demands:
-- Prioritize worker and community safety over profit, as the state lifts the stay-at-home orders
-- Universal health care now
-- Jobs or income now
-- Housing for all
-- Labor rights and safety for all workers
-- Police accountability and prisoner justice now
-- Full equality for immigrants
-- Justice for students
-- Solidarity with workers at home and abroad
-- Protect the environment
Many of us worked together in the People’s Bailout Coalition to respond to the economic crisis in 2008. At that time, we brought forward Minnesota People’s Bailout legislation, which called for extending and expanding unemployment benefits, creating a public works program to put people to work, putting a moratorium on the five-year lifetime limit for public assistance, protecting state workers from layoffs, and calling for a 2-year moratorium on housing foreclosures. We also put our bodies on the line to oppose foreclosures.
Now is the time to pull together again. We invite individuals and organizations to sign on and join the Coalition to Advance a People’s Agenda.
Signers list in formation: AFSCME Local 3800, African American Center of MN, Anti-War Committee, Climate Justice Committee, Minnesota Immigrant Movement, Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, Minnesota Workers United, Students for a Democratic Society UMN, Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar, and Welfare Rights Committee
Contact us at [email protected].