Contact: Johanna Kichton, 202.660.0605, press@peoplesaction.org
WASHINGTON, D.C.—People’s Action Deputy Director Bree Carlson today issued the following statement on the vice presidential debate:
“Americans are facing an economic crisis and an out-of-control pandemic due to Trump’s incompetence, and all Mike Pence had to offer was ‘thoughts and prayers.’ It’s insulting. Pence is the head of Trump’s coronavirus task force. He failed to explain his catastrophic failure on that front, and he did nothing to relieve the anxieties of people who don’t know how they’re going to pay the rent. Sen. Harris flattened him.”
Election Integrity
“Trump and Pence continue to attack the right to a free and fair election by undermining people’s confidence in the result. They know when the votes are counted, they will lose. No matter what we look like or where we come from, most of us believe America should be a place where everyone counts and where every vote is counted. People are uniting across distances this election season, and together we will ensure every vote is counted.
SCOTUS
“Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump blew up negotiations for COVID-19 relief and claimed there’s no time to get anything done before the election. If they don’t have time to pass legislation to get immediate relief into the hands of people suffering from a pandemic and an economic meltdown, not a single action should be taken to advance an extremist Supreme Court nominee. Nothing should move in the Senate until after they pass COVID relief.”
COVID-19 and Health Care
“As Senator Harris said, ‘if you have a preexisting condition…they’re coming for you.’ Republicans are at this very moment trying to destroy the entire Affordable Care Act, including its protections for people with preexisting conditions, in the middle of a pandemic. Pence lied repeatedly about Trump’s COVID-19 response, which is understandable because the truth is indefensible. Harris was completely correct: On the basis of their COVID-19 failures alone, Trump forfeited his right to be reelected. That’s why the New England Journal of Medicine took the unprecedented step yesterday to call for the ouster of our current administration over its coronavirus failures.”
Racial Justice
“We stand with the Movement for Black Lives, and Pence’s racist attacks on those protesting police brutality are shameful and weak. People have a right not to be treated as enemy combatants in their own communities, and they have a right to stand up to police violence and white nationalism.”
About People’s Action
People’s Action is a national network of 37 state and local grassroots, power-building organizations united in fighting for justice. We operate the largest progressive rural organizing project in the country.
People’s Action and its member organizations are coordinating one of the biggest distributed organizing programs in rural areas this election season. Together, they have called and texted over 11 million voters in the key battleground states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and New Hampshire thus far this election cycle. Of the total, about 2.3 million were phone calls and 8.7 million were texts, with a majority of attempts being deep canvass conversations.
By November 3rd, People’s Action and its member organizations expect to double these numbers to meet its ambitious goal of 5 million phone calls and 16 million texts, totalling a record-breaking 21 million voter contact attempts.
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