WASHINGTON, D.C. — Tonight, Tax March board member and activist Angela Peoples hosted a conversation with fellow board member and economist Indi Dutta-Gupta, Louisiana-based advocate for economic justice Kenya Slaughter, and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities Executive Director Angela Lang. Tonight’s conversation is part of Tax March’s week of action following the launch of ads and actions in Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa and Illinois last week calling on elected officials to support immediate relief to the American people. The conversation covered a lot of ground, but every speaker echoed the national rallying cry:

“As the wealthiest country in the world, the United States has more than enough resources to care for its people—what we can’t afford is leaving millions of people sick, unemployed, drowning in debt, unhoused and unpaid. We need relief now,” said Tax March board member and activist Angela Peoples. “We’re committed to working together to make it abundantly clear that federal lawmakers must take action to save people’s livelihoods—and lives. Only then will our country be able to move forward from this crisis.”

“People need consistency in relief, too. Getting ‘relief checks’ every few months is just not enough,” Angela Lang, Executive Director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, shared. “Unless these bills can ‘wait and see,’ I don’t see how I’m supposed to ‘wait and see’ between checks.”

“Working in retail, I know we need more PPE, more resources, education on the vaccine, and education on the impact of the pandemic on essential workers,” said Kenya Slaughter, an advocate for economic justice in Alexandria, Louisiana. “Here in Alexandria, Louisiana, there is a PPE shortage—people come into the stores without masks all the time. We need access to more PPE, and we also need education about the vaccine, especially given there are people in my community who are hesitant about the vaccine, given the history of vaccines in America.”

“Both in 2008 and today, we saw policy-makers start by responding with too little. They have this ‘wait and see’ attitude, but I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” expressed Indi Dutta-Gupta, Tax March board member and Executive Director of Georgetown University’s Center on Poverty & Inequality. “With nearly half a million people dead, and the reversal of 22 years of gains in Black people’s life expectancy in the first six months of last year, it’s unfathomable. We have to marshal the resources and do what it takes to end this pandemic. Here’s the right way to think about the way forward, in my mind: Let the government go into debt so you don’t have to.”