Every month People’s Action shares the latest victories,
campaigns and events from our member groups
You, our members, came to Washington, D.C. from 27 states and 60 congressional districts last week to let lawmakers know we won’t let the powerful steal food and health care from our families to give tax breaks to greedy billionaires. Why? Because that ain’t right!
“When the richest people in the world are demanding cuts from almost a trillion dollars to Medicaid, so they can have a sixth mansion and a third yacht, they’re coming for every single working family,” said Juanita Lewis, People’s Action’s board chair and the executive director of Community Voices Heard in New York, when she spoke last Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
Juanita and People’s Action Institute members, including Alyssa Tierney from the New Jersey Resource Project, Cate Readling from The People’s Lobby in Chicago, Glicerio Zurita from OneAmerica and Dr. Majadi Baruti from PUSH Buffalo, spoke in front of the Capitol alongside our key allies from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including CPC emeritus chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who founded and ran a People’s Action affiliate group, OneAmerica, for ten years before she was elected to Congress.
“They want to distract you from the fact that they are stealing your taxpayer dollars, your benefits, your programs, so they can give a $4.5 trillion tax cut to the billionaires,” said Jayapal, who founded and led People’s Action member group OneAmerica in Washington State for ten years before she was elected to Congress. “They want you to criminalize immigrants. We need to focus on the greedy billionaires, and make them pay their fair share. We can’t let them continue their lies and their distractions.”
You are the ones who came to our nation’s capital to speak truth to power. You told lawmakers from your own experience how Republicans’ bid to cut essential services and give trillions in tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and corporations will harm us and the ones we love.
What is the difference you make? “Ordinary acts of power, if we do enough of them,” says Sulma Arias, “are the ones that will hold us all together.”
The courage you show is living proof to me that organizers and organizing are what our nation needs in this moment, when so many of us are under attack. My heart is full as I hear stories of all of the ways you are stepping up to defend your neighbors and say no to the greedy few.
Together, you landed a one-two punch against Texas billionaire Joe Lonsdale and his Cicero Institute. These two play a big role in the Far Right’s efforts to profit off of our housing crisis: Cicero seeks to pass laws to arrest anyone who lives on the streets, while Lonsdale invests in private prisons and surveillance technologies. Cicero-drafted bills have already become law in 8 states, and gained momentum with the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision.
Yet in Indiana, Cicero’s bid to criminalize the homeless failed – because Hoosier Action stepped up to defeat their bill, H.B. 1662, as part of their “Care, Not Cuffs” campaign. At the same time, over a thousand miles away, VOCAL-TX was confronting Cicero and Lonsdale on their home turf in Austin, which is also the hometown of Alfredo Reyes, one of the speakers on Capitol Hill.
“After the end of this year, I might end up back on the street, and that’s not right,” said Reyes. “We need to make sure the billionaires pay their fair share, and make sure it goes to where it belongs, which is the community.”
It’s your creative thinking – and your commitment to act together – which makes me so proud to be a part of People’s Action with you. You never rest until you find the root cause, then take action together to address it.
There’s so much more to mention – many of you, from Michigan United Action and ONE Northside in Chicago to PLAN in Nevada, LUCHA in Arizona and Neighbor to Neighbor in Massachusetts, are stepping up to offer mutual aid and host Know Your Rights sessions for your immigrant neighbors. And those of you in our Care Over Cost campaign came to the New York Stock Exchange to tell UnitedHealth to stop denying care.
And at our latest Deep Canvass Institute virtual training, more than 250 people showed up to learn how to change hearts and minds through active listening and engagement. We then dove right in and talked with over a thousand people in Michigan about the impact the billionaire tax breaks and cuts to crucial budget priorities will have on our communities.
What can you do? Join our Make Polluters Pay Taxes! strategy and action call on March 11, when we will talk about next steps in our fight to save Medicaid, SNAP and climate investments. Attend our next Introduction to Deep Canvassing session on March 25, our two-part Fundamentals of Organizing workshop on April 1 and 8, or our Deep Canvass Institute 101 on May 13. All are free and open to all.
So thank you. And read on, to learn more about signs of hope from across our network!
In solidarity,
Amanda Weaver
People’s Action
Lead Story
“Walk In My Shoes for a Day”: People’s Action Members Speak Out in Washington, D.C.
People’s Action members came to D.C. from 60 Congressional districts as part of our “Take Back Our Money” tour to talk with lawmakers about the real harm the proposed $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid, food and housing will cause to their families. Read more
Organizing Stories
VOCAL-TX Defends “Victims of Cicero” from Efforts to Criminalize the Unhoused
VOCAL members from Texas, New York, Kentucky and Tennessee rallied at the Cicero Institute’s headquarters in Austin to denounce the billionaire-funded conservative think tank’s efforts to draft and pass legislation criminalizing homelessness. Read more
Hoosier Action Beats Indiana Bill to Criminalize Homeless
Hoosier Action helped defeat Indiana H.B. 1662, a Cicero Institute-drafted bill which would have criminalized homelessness in the state. Read more
Michigan United Action Launches Know Your Rights Sessions Statewide
Michigan United Action is one of the many People’s Action member groups which has launched mutual aid and Know Your Rights sessions to help immigrant and mixed-status families prepare for potential unlawful raids by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. Read more
OneAmerica Introduces Washington State Legislative Agenda with Lobby Day
More than 250 OneAmerica members came to Washington’s State Capitol in Olympia on February 5 to support the group’s 2025 bold legislative agenda, which includes expanding voting rights, a fairer tax system and securing funding for asylees. Read more
Citizen Action of Wisconsin Advances Climate Accountability Act
As the federal government walks away from its commitments to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels, Citizen Action of Wisconsin and progressive lawmakers in the state are stepping up to the challenge with a bold new bill to hold polluters accountable. Read more
UnitedHealth (Denies) Care: Patients, Doctors Rally on Wall Street
Members of People’s Action Institute’s Care Over Cost campaign, which helps people who have been denied healthcare by private insurers, rallied in front of the New York Stock Exchange on January 16 to denounce UnitedHealth’s denials of care on same day the private insurer, the nation’s largest, announced their 2024 earnings to investors. Read more
Recent Media
READ: “Anti-Immigrant Legislation Only Serves Prison Contractors”
Sulma Arias reflects on how anti-immigrant legislation like the Laken Riley Act, which makes it easier to detain and deport immigrants without cause, only serve to benefit for-profit prison contractors like CoreCivic and GEO Group and their investors.
READ: “My Fight With United Healthcare”
Jenn Coffey, a former EMT and member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, explains how UnitedHealth’s denials of her care for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CPRS) after her cancer diagnosis led her to join the Care Over Cost campaign, where she advocates for all patients to get the lifesaving care they need when they need it.
WATCH: “Tax the Greedy Billionaires” Press Conference on Capitol Hill
Juanita Lewis, executive director of Community Voices Heard, and other People’s Action Institute members speak at a press conference on Capitol Hill on February 25, 2025 with legislators from the Congressional Progressive Caucus to denounce proposed tax breaks for the wealthy at the expense of working people.