Alec here! I recently joined the PA Stands Up staff as the Traditional Communications Organizer, and I am so excited for us to get to know each other.
I began my community organizing journey during the summer of 2022 after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that had enshrined the right to abortion for nearly 50 years, was leaked by a staffer. I remember the breaking news notification popping up on my phone and feeling a huge pit grow in my stomach. I was terrified that I would lose access to essential health services, and that if I became pregnant, I wouldn’t have a choice over my own body and my future.
I decided at that moment that I had to take action and was lucky enough to find NEPA Stands Up, a group of like-minded folks building broad working-class power. Together we rallied our communities to fight for reproductive healthcare access, canvassed to end the use of solitary confinement in the Lackawanna County Prison, and are now mobilizing hundreds of folks to stand up to those who are bullying and targeting our most vulnerable, queer and trans youth.
As MAGA Republicans’ so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” continues to advance through Congress, threatening cuts to critical services for working-class families, I can’t help but think of my own family. My mother suffers from chronic disability, and our family relied on SNAP and Medicaid to survive when I was a kid. If it weren’t for government-funded healthcare, my mom wouldn’t be able to afford the medications she needs to stay healthy, and I wouldn’t have been able to get the critical mental healthcare I needed as a teenager.
I worry about my mom’s future, and I know there are thousands of other folks across PA with stories like mine. It’s time for us to band together in support of policy solutions like the All Eyes On Yass Coalition’s Pathway to Prosperity that would ensure Pennsylvanians retain access to fundamental programs by making billionaires pay their fair share.
Trump’s Big Fugly Bill would defund essential services like SNAP, Medicare and Medicaid, senior care centers, Planned Parenthood services, and cost PA 49,000 government and healthcare jobs. It’s up to our state officials to ensure that Pennsylvanians still have the resources we need. Yet, Governor Shapiro is already talking about obeying in advance and cutting vital programs like SNAP. If Governor Shapiro has presidential ambitions and wants PA’s support, he should show up and fight for working people, not the wealthy few. It’s about damn time to tax billionaires like PA’s richest resident, Jeff Yass, and greedy corporations who aren’t paying their fair share.
Our backward state tax system currently forces the lowest-income households to pay the highest percentage of their income, while the top one percent pays the smallest percentage, if they even pay anything. While working families struggle to get our basic needs met, billionaires make record profits. That ain’t right!
It doesn’t have to be this way, and the All Eyes On Yass coalition has a solution—taxing billionaires and corporations. The Pathway to Prosperity revenue platform shows that if the rich paid their fair share, we could fund what working people in PA deserve and need, like healthcare, transit, housing, education, and more.
HB 1678, for example, would require Jeff Yass’s Tik Tok, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft to apply their existing 5% gross receipts tax to annual gross revenue derived from digital advertising. Paired with the recently passed HB 1610, that would add more than $2 billion to next year’s PA tax revenue! That’s $2 billion our state government can put towards services and resources working people need and deserve while having little to no effect on these billionaire-run social media companies.
It’s up to us to put pressure on our elected officials and demand they serve their constituents. No tax cuts on lifesaving services! Pass HB 1678, and tax the greedy billionaires and corporations who profit off of our labor! Find your state legislator here, and give them a call or email to make your voice heard!
We’re fighting for the rights we all deserve, and a PA where everyone has what they need to thrive. It’s going to take all of us to get there, so join us today!
In community,
Alec
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