Community First

In today’s economy, when so many of us find ourselves working more just to make ends meet – or worse, working more and finding ourselves deeper and deeper in debt; when jobs are leaving our shores; when our government keeps telling us to pay more and do with less, while at the same time handing bigger tax breaks to the corporations, banks and the ultra-rich – I say: Enough’s enough!

We need to rethink our priorities.

Why do schools – our children’s educations – keep getting hit with budget cuts, while spending on the prison-industrial system soars? I want a meaningful future for the next generation instead of a one way ticket to jail. Education makes all the difference and that means fully funding our schools first.

Why are thousands of people living and dying out on the streets, when there are more empty housing units than homeless? Housing is a human right and affordable housing is necessary for a sustainable healthy community. We must make the housing that is there available for all those in need. The answer is simple: People first – profits for banks and developers last.

Why in one of the richest States, in the richest country on earth, do we still have one of the worst health care systems on the planet?

Single-payer Universal Health Care Now!

Has anyone asked themselves why, after the banks got bailed out, not just once, but twice; when through our tax dollars the banks have already been paid off for all the bad loans, which they instigated – and tricked many good, hard-working families into – that foreclosures are still going on every single day? Is there ever an end to their greed?

I say that we have the power to demand an end to the foreclosure and to hold the bankers responsible for crashing our economy.

First, we stop cooperating with the enforcement of evictions and force the banks to refinance the bad mortgages at reasonable and fair fixed rates.

Second, let’s start taxing the banks. In fact, to start closing the budget gap, let’s end these huge subsidies and tax breaks for all these massive corporations that take our money and ship all our jobs overseas and start making them pay their fair share in taxes and invest that money right back into our communities.

There are so many resources available. Everything we need is right here and so much work needs to be done. It is inexcusable that unemployment is skyrocketing. We need to start reinvesting in ourselves and create jobs to repair our failing infrastructure – our roads and bridges and railways and isn’t it about time that we started investing in wind and solar power – with solar panels made right here, in California and not China? 

Let’s bring our jobs back home!

When hope has failed you,

and all seems to despair,

When all the choices

go from bad to worse,

When you’re struggling to get by

and it looks like nobody cares,

When you’re tired and angry

and life feels like a curse,

When you’ve had enough

of not having enough,

It’s time to look in the mirror

For what we’ve all

been looking for

is right there.

The difference is us.