Giving Up Billionaires for Lent

Well, you know, you mentioned your, your friend with Type 1 diabetes and, and done some work with that community advocacy.

And, and the age of 26, when folks do age out of the Affordable Care Act mandates to, to be able to be on their, their parents' health insurance.

I mean, that's a deadly year for persons living with Type 1 and other health conditions because the Affordable Care Act protectionsYou know, start, start to erode and, and yeah, there's just no question.

I mean, it's, it's, it's the-- Like whenever you're doing advocacy at the level you're doing it and doing it, uh, to try to increase, uh, federal protections, it's-- you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, right? Um, a lot of people have had a lot of positive things happen from a imperfect piece of legislation as they all are, right?

Right.

And speaking of which, so, so if, if I'm, and correct me if I'm mistaken, that the, the current agenda, the way that you all, um, are describing it at Network is the economy for all agenda and, and en-encompassing things like, uh, living wages and paid leave and humane immigration system.

How, how would you describe an, an elevator pitch of what the economy for all agenda looks like? What are, what are, what are your, what's your vision for what the federal government should be doing?

So an economy for all is, is quite simply an economy that puts people first, not profits, uh, that where everyone has access to the things they need to live a good and decent life and maybe have a little fun on top of it.

But it's an economy for all because one of the things that we're really committed to is addressing racial injustices and addressing the ways that racism has been used to vi-to divide us against each other and has turned white people against their own self-interest even.

Because we have been, been taught that, that anti-racism efforts are a threat to white thriving.

But there's some really, really good work out there, scholarly work.

Uh, Heather McGhee is probably the most well known purveyor of this reality that, that when we start attacking things because we think they benefit people of color, we are attacking the very things that benefit all of us.

And the same is true, you know, in a new way being done with the LGBTQ community, particularly with trans folks, right? That the policies that are meant to harm certain groups of people actually end up harming all of us, and the po-policies that harm all of us end up harming certain groups the most, uh, people of color, LGBTQ and trans folks in particular.

And that when we come together, we actually have enough power to build a world that works for all of us.

But the billionaires, the ruling class don't want us to believe that, right? They don't want us to see that we can, we can change things because they think that this world benefits them.

But the truth is, it doesn't.

All public health indicators show that everybody does better in a more equal society.

So it doesn't really benefit the billionaires either.

They just think it does.

And so-

So an economy for all...

Oh.

No, go, go, go.

Yeah.

An eco- an economy for all is a- an economy where everyone is able to live in their human dignity to the best that we are able to provide as a whole society.