Moderate Ideas Won’t Solve the Crisis in our Communities: An Agenda for a New President
By Rudy Espinoza
What a weekend, right?
I was surprised with how joyous I felt when the election was called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It hit me out of nowhere! After what happened in 2016, I was bracing myself for a loss and four more years of chaos and gas lighting from probably the highest profile ambassador of racism and ignorance some of us have ever seen in our lifetimes. The Biden and Harris victory made me proud of us. Latinos. Natives. Black people per usual!!!! Damn, what a Saturday! Neighbors in the Northeast cheering. Echo Park dancing in the streets. Downtown LA beating drums. Champagne everywhere!
By Monday my joy has settled. We have to get back to work.The truth is that while it’s looking like we won, I’m hopeful that we don’t get back into the comforts of “normalcy.” The fact is that what was normal, shouldn’t be.
”Normal” has resulted in nearly 60,000 people in LA county sleeping on the streets.
“Normal” helped ensure that Black and brown households have only 8.7% of the net worth of white households.
“Normal” meant that hard working people — seeking to support their families — were charged with misdemeanors for street vending.
“Normal” meant that many of us still don’t have healthcare and that during a global health pandemic some non-citizens feared getting tested for COVID-19 because of their citizenship status.
The immediate future requires us to create a new normal. It implores us to think of how we not only recover from COVID-19, but how we transform our communities and provide immediate relief to people who have struggled for generations to live lives that they deserve. The pandemic has only exacerbated the inequalities that our communities have long struggled with.
We can’t go back to the status quo and we have to demand that the President & Vice President-Elect will take on bold initiatives to transform how our country works for us. Here in Los Angeles, advocates have been working hard to advance important protections for tenants, workers, and families who have lost everything during this pandemic. Too many are struggling to make ends meet, and experts are warning about the tsunami of evictions that are coming.
Local leaders need partners at the Federal level to enact a transformative agenda to support our communities. We need to push the Biden and Harris administration to take on initiatives that can make a meaningful impact in the lives of our community:
Cancel the Rent - It would be foolish of us to not thoughtfully consider what community organizers and advocates across the country have been calling for: a cancellation of the debt that is mounting as a result of the pandemic. While some cities have put in place eviction protections for families during this time, these protections do not relieve families of the tremendous debt that will await them when these temporary relief efforts are lifted. How will a low-income family ever pay off with 6 months, 12 months or even 18 months of unpaid rent? To cancel rent, the Federal government needs to take a leadership role in convening financial institutions to “recast” debt in support of tenants and individual mortgage holders who are devastated by this pandemic. The American people need a “bail out” much more than large corporations do.
Establish a Guaranteed Income for Everyone - Even before COVID-19, working families were struggling to make ends meet. Many who work two or three jobs are not earning a sufficient amount for their family’s basic needs. We are long overdue for a guaranteed income that can supplement the wages we earn. This pandemic has shown us that cash assistance does help as seen by our own Street Vendor Emergency Fund and the over subscription of other relief efforts like the Angeleno Card and the Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants. In Los Angeles, grant dollars that are supporting small businesses and families are offering a lifeline and we need the partnership of the Federal Government to make this happen on a larger, more consistent scale. Other countries are advancing these ideas, we should not be left behind.
Support small businesses with PPP 2.0 - Earlier this year, we saw how the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was misappropriated to support large corporations, and over $130 billion was ultimately unclaimed. Federal money ended up protecting those that didn’t need protecting. But the idea of forgivable loans is not a bad one, and our federal government should consider a 2.0 version of PPP that prioritizes Black and brown entrepreneurs and those employers who are committed to “high road” employment.
Develop the leaders we need - It was great to hear the Vice President-Elect say that she won’t be the last woman of color in that position. We need to be intentional about investing in developing a pipeline of leaders for elected positions. Instead of supporting career politicians (Biden being one!), we need to invest in elevating community leaders into decision-making roles. This will require an investment in “academies” that educate leaders in direct action, political theory, and a philosophy of servant leadership rather than ego-driven power grabbing. We must also consider new ways to educate community members on how government works, democratizing our processes and opening up government to be accessible to working people. Too often we see constituents turned away from participating because of language access issues or poorly designed interfaces. For our country to be strong, everyone must be involved.
Stop gentrification - During the last recession, large investors bought up huge swaths of properties in our cities. Before COVID-19, some low-income neighborhoods in cities were seeing the emerging spectre of gentrification; threatening to displace families and small businesses from neighborhoods where they have strong cultural ties too. We need to develop federally-backed apparatuses that help communities reclaim land and properties.
Just like I did, I hope you found time to celebrate the historic nature of this election — but we’re not out of the woods yet. Not only are there various lawsuits already at play to reverse the results, but the Democrats have already begun to point the finger at each other, arguing that perhaps some wings of their party are not moderate enough.
The needs of the vast amount of people are not moderate needs but urgent ones. They require bold initiatives that alleviate the poverty and income inequality that too many have faced for too long. We as a community need to push for transformative ideas that will meaningfully move us towards economic justice. We can’t settle for going back to normal.