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money in politics
WelcomeFest’s Billionaire Backers Reveal Its True Mission
Like Third Way and the Democratic Leadership Council before it, Welcome is yet another donor- and elite-driven operation seeking to drag the Democratic Party rightward on economic policy.
Jun 04, 2025
If the Abundance universe is to be believed, the hottest ticket this summer is WelcomeFest.
Wednesday’s confab is the second such annual gathering organized by the centrist group Welcome Party and its political action committee WelcomePAC, with this year’s event touting a distinct abundance flair. The conference boasts a rogues’ gallery of corporate-friendly cosponsors, including Third Way, the New Democratic Coalition, Inclusive Abundance, and the Blue Dog Caucus. A sizzle reel from last year’s event paints WelcomeFest as an Internet Hippo tweet come to life, complete with cameos from A-listers like ex-CNN anchor John Avlon and Democratic influencer Olivia Julianna.
Taken together, WelcomePAC’s leadership and funding are at odds with their claimed opposition to the “buttoned-up [politics] of Washington elites.”
This year’s “Responsibility to Win” session (misspelled on the event’s official poster) has drawn viral attention online—both for its bizarre AI Ghibli promos and stacked lineup of neoliberal pundits, conservative Democratic lawmakers, and wunderkind pollsters serving up Dick Morris’ reheated leftovers.
Speakers include:
- Derek Thompson, co-author of Abundance.
- Matt Yglesias, confidently-wrong pundit and, per Thompson, the “OG grandfather of Abundance.”
- Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who doesn’t think Democrats should use the term “oligarchy.”
- Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), Abundance champion and darling of AIPAC and crypto lobbyists.
- Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), and Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Mich.),founding members of the Abundance-themed Build America Caucus.
- Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash). and Jared Golden (D-Maine), current and former co-chairs of the conservative Blue Dog Caucus.
- Adam Jentleson, anti-”Groups” crusader currently distancing himself from his 14-month stint as Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-Pa.) chief of staff.
- David Shor, pollster and prolific party animal.
WelcomePAC’s Donors
Campaign finance records reveal that WelcomePAC, the primary organizers of WelcomeFest, has raked in sizable contributions from billionaires and corporate oligarchs:
- Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has given over $1.8 million to WelcomePAC since 2021. A major donor to former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign and the pro-Harris SuperPAC Future Forward, Hoffman strongly opposed the Biden administration’s anti-monopoly policies and publicly demanded that Harris fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan if she won the election. Hoffman has also bankrolled the Mainstream Democrats super PAC, which spent heavily in Democratic primaries in 2022 and 2024 to defend conservative Democrats like Kurt Schrader and Henry Cuellar and defeat progressives like Cori Bush and Nina Turner.
- Walton family: WelcomePAC has received over $1.1 million from relatives and heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton—the richest family in America.
- S. Robson (Rob) Walton: Rob Walton, the eldest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, has given $100,000 to WelcomePAC since 2024.
- Samuel R. Walton: Samuel R. Walton, grandson of Sam Walton and owner of a natural resources holding company, has given $625,000 to WelcomePAC since 2024.
- Christy Walton: Christy Walton, widow of one of Sam Walton’s sons, has given $125,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022.
- Alice Walton: Alice Walton, daughter of Sam Walton, has given $25,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022.
- Carrie Walton Penner: Walton Penner, daughter of Rob Walton, has given $150,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022. She is also a prolific donor to the anti-public education charter school movement.
- Greg Penner: Penner, the husband of Carrie Walton and son-in-law of Rob, has given $150,000 to WelcomePAC since 2022. Penner is also Chairman of Walmart’s Board of Directors and a managing partner for the Walton family’s private equity firm.
- Bekenstein family: Bain Capital co-chairman Joshua Bekenstein and his wife Anita have given a combined $375,000 to WelcomePAC since October 2024.
- Michael Bloomberg: Billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has given $100,000 to WelcomePAC since August 2024. Bloomberg is best known for his controversial mayoralty (which saw the expansion of racist “stop-and-frisk” policing tactics and anti-Muslim surveillance) and his expensive, widely-mocked 2020 presidential campaign.
- James & Kathryn Murdoch: James Murdoch—the estranged younger son of News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch—and his wife Kathryn have given a combined $2.5 million to WelcomePAC since April 2024.
- Rob Granieri: Granieri, the co-founder of Wall Street quantitative trading firm Jane Street, has given $100,000 to WelcomePAC since June 2024.
- Edward Fishman: Fishman, a managing director at hedge fund D.E. Shaw, has given $200,000 to WelcomePAC since February 2022.
- Mark Heising: Heising, the founder of private equity firm Medley Partners, has given $250,000 to WelcomePAC since June 2024.
- David Nierenberg: Nierenberg, an investment manager and former national finance co-chair for Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, and his wife Patricia have given a combined $726,600 to WelcomePAC since March 2024.
- Americans Together Inc: Americans Together Inc, a centrist group founded by former Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) daughter Heather Manchin Bresch, has given over $1 million to WelcomePAC since February 2024. A core plank of Americans Together’s policy platform is opposing any repeal or reform of the Senate filibuster (the goal, ironically, of a 2021 book by WelcomeFest speaker Adam Jentleson).
- Bresch, the former CEO of pharma company Mylan, attracted national attention in 2016 for defending Mylan’s EpiPen price-gouging.
Who’s Actually Welcome to the Party?
While WelcomePAC’s donor roster makes clear who the group wants to welcome into the Democratic tent, its website is quite explicit about who they wish to exclude. WelcomePAC blames the Democratic Party’s woes on an “extreme right and socialist left […] conspiring with conflict-driven media to trash the Democratic brand.” In a poorly-aged 2021 Substack post calling for a “Jim Clyburn Day,” Welcome co-founder Lauren Harper celebrated Clyburn’s 2020 endorsement of Biden for “steering the party away from further polarization that would have led to a second Trump term.”
WelcomeFest organizers have explicitly juxtaposed their event with the purportedly left-wing Democratic National Committee, offering a refuge to those put off by the Democratic Party’s current leadership. They firmly reject unspecified “progressive purity tests” (read: having values), but lack a compelling explanation for why swing and red state voters are flocking to the progressive-populist fight against oligarchy.
Bafflingly, for a group that promises to offer “a vision for a depolarized United States,” WelcomeFest only features Democrats speaking about the need to moderate. The group, which proudly touts the label of “centrist insurgency,” has seemingly little to offer a polarized Republican Party—which is perhaps why their previous campaign to convince five House Republicans to caucus with Democrats failed so spectacularly. This has hardly hampered their push for moderation at all costs. In pursuit of this end, the group has even invented a metric that claims safe blue congressional seats are undemocratic, encouraging Republican challengers to pursue previously uncontested blue seats.
Some of WelcomePAC’s top staff have also spent their careers working to move the Democratic Party to the right. Co-founder Liam Kerr previously spent 10 years working for Democrats for Education Reform, a charter school advocacy organization founded and funded by hedge fund managers. Welcome Party board member Catharine Bellinger has also spent her career working for the same pro-charter school groups as Kerr. WelcomePAC’s political director, Daniel Conway, spent nearly six years working for No Labels, the centrist dark money group co-founded by the late Joe Lieberman that repeatedly attempted to recruit a third party candidate to run for president in 2024.
Taken together, WelcomePAC’s leadership and funding are at odds with their claimed opposition to the “buttoned-up [politics] of Washington elites.” Like Third Way and the Democratic Leadership Council before it, Welcome is yet another donor- and elite-driven operation seeking to drag the Democratic Party rightward on economic policy. That “rebranded neoliberalism” approach risks further alienating the very constituencies that Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024, and ceding further ground to right-wing faux-populists like Vice President JD Vance.
Given the WelcomeFest lineup, it’s clear that the donor class views Abundance as key to carrying out this self-serving crusade against populism.
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The Gaza Genocide Is Biden’s True ‘Original Sin’
Genocide is the worst crime human beings can commit. In the case, it’s also the one nobody’s talking about—even though it cost Democrats the 2024 election.
Jun 04, 2025
“Original Sin” was an odd title choice for the recent book, co-authored by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and subtitled “President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and his Disastrous Decision to Run Again.” The book confirms long-standing suspicions about former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, its handling by Biden’s inner circle, and the Democratic Party leadership’s attempts to conceal it.
These may be sins, but they’re hardly “original.” The earliest confirmed cover-up of presidential incapacity goes back over a century, to President Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 stroke. Ronald Reagan’s aides were so concerned about his inattentiveness, competence, and mood that they proposed invoking the 25th Amendment.[1] Questions about Biden’s cognition were already circulating in Washington by the mid-2010s and were openly discussed during the 2020 election.
In the long arc of history, political cover-ups and lies are relatively venal sins. But genocide is a mortal sin—the worst imaginable.
Meanwhile, the conversation around this book is distracting us from the worst sin of all: genocide.
Out of Sync
American complicity in Palestinian slaughter isn’t “original,” of course; it has a long history. The Biden team’s originality lay in its open disregard for international law and global institutions. They defied the world court system well before Trump did.
Genocide is the worst crime human beings can commit. In the case, it’s also the one nobody’s talking about—even though it cost Democrats the 2024 election.
Other factors affected the outcome, too, of course, but many people predicted that the Gaza genocide would hurt the Democrats[2], perhaps fatally—and all indicators are that it did.
It will continue to hurt them for the foreseeable future. Pew Research reports that, as of March 2025, 53% of Americans held “a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Israel.” That includes more than two-thirds of all Democrats—at a time when the party’s approval rating has plummeted[3] and it desperately needs renewed enthusiasm among its base voters.
Silent Running
Except for a brief cease-fire, President Donald Trump has continued his predecessor’s assault on Palestine. That’s something we’re all morally obligated to resist. But Democrats, and the equally complicit media, must be held responsible for their actions—actions that made the Trump presidency possible.
When’s the last time anyone believed that the Democratic Party could be persuaded to change just because it was the right thing to do?
No wonder they want to keep talking about Joe Biden. But Biden is gone. If they were serious about changing, Democrats would ask themselves why they let the charade to go on for so long. A few initial answers: big-donor money, disregard for popular opinion[4], a pronounced detachment from the experience of working people, and a party culture of self-advancement and sucking up to power.
What they wouldn’t do is fixate on superficial questions of messaging or image. The problem isn’t their choice of language; it’s not even their “gerontocracy,” as pronounced as that is. The problem is the forces behind their use of language, their perpetuation of incumbent power, and their ossification of thought. These forces stem from the party’s dependence on big money in its various corrupting forms.
A Heaven of Hell
I thought I past being shocked by the behavior of liberal politicians after they’ve been embraced and seduced by the tentacular flow of big money—that never-ending flow of cash which remolds their perceptions as they sit through think-tank conferences, fawning interviews, desserts and conversation at fundraising dinners, or drinks with lobbyists in cigar-scented wood-paneled rooms.
Horrors like the Gaza genocide are transcendental evils, but they’re born in mundane places like these.
And yet, Democrats seem reluctant to sacrifice these pleasures for anything as banal as winning elections. I’m sure that Tapper’s book makes lively conversations at their gatherings. And those conversations mean they don’t have to talk about genocide.
In the long arc of history, political cover-ups and lies are relatively venal sins. But genocide is a mortal sin—the worst imaginable. This one cost the Democrats the presidency in 2024. Unless they change, it will continue to cost them for years and decades to come.
Postscript
A lot of left-leaning columns, including this one, make a habit of citing poll numbers. I think we do it because we hope (sometimes consciously, sometimes not) that we may yet persuade Democrats to govern more humanely—if only out of self-interest.
But since we’re talking about sin, here’s a question: When’s the last time anyone believed that the Democratic Party could be persuaded to change just because it was the right thing to do?
[1] There’s no conclusive proof that Reagan was mentally impaired while in office, although it’s still widely suspected. A clinical analysis of Reagan’s press conferences later concluded that he used a progressively smaller vocabulary as time passed, a pattern that is “associated with the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.” Reagan announced that he had dementia in 1994, six years after leaving office.
[2] I called Gaza “Biden’s Vietnam” in November 2023 and warned it could hurt his presidency in much the say way as Vietnam hurt Lyndon Johnson’s in 1968. The Arab American Institute’s September 2024 poll showed a catastrophic drop in Arab-American voter support. I used AAI’s data on swing states, cross-referenced it with other voter groups in those states who felt strongly about Israel-Palestine (non-Arab Muslims, Black people, and college students), and concluded in October that the election could be lost on the Gaza issue alone. Many others reached the same conclusion.
[3] As of late May 2025, only 36% of those surveyed in an Economist/YouGov poll viewed the Democratic Party favorably while 57% viewed it unfavorably. Republicans fared better, with 41% favorable versus 52% unfavorable. (Still, these results suggest that Americans aren’t very happy with their choices.)
[4] By the end of his first year in office, a Politico/Morning Consult poll showed that voter confidence in Biden’s fitness had plunged, with only 40% agreeing that Biden was “in good health” and 50% disagreeing. Only 46% agreed he was mentally fit for office. At roughly the same time, nearly 60% of voters surveyed told Harvard-Harris pollsters that Biden was too old to be president. By July 2022, two-thirds of Democrats polled said they wanted someone else to lead their party’s ticket in 2024. Roots Action began a “Don’t Run Joe” campaign in 2022.
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The US Is in Free Fall, But We Can Turn Things Around by Valuing Our Neighbors Over Money
The United States’ version of capitalism has systematically failed its population through corporate greed and manipulation of the legislature. But don’t lose hope.
May 11, 2025
The United States is often revered as the most powerful nation in the world. The U.S. has a strong economy; the most equipped military on the planet; a working class of over 130 million people; the biggest GDP of any nation; and large music, film, agricultural, beauty, food, fossil fuel, and technology industries. However, many of these industries are on the brink of collapsing, or are already starting to. Most industries were built on the backs of a marginalized working class, and continue to perpetuate deep flaws in integrity from the wealthiest 1%.
By examining my own life as an impoverished Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Indigenous person), comparisons to socialist ideologies, and through extensive economic analysis, we will find the truth of how the United States’ version of capitalism has systematically failed its population through corporate greed and manipulation of the legislature.
It’s difficult for me to find footing to explain Hawaiian culture to anyone, because most of it has been erased. Hawaiian is a critically endangered language, with only 2,000 native speakers at one point in time. In the few years I lived in Hawaii during my early childhood, I always questioned tourism, and I always questioned what was going into our clear oceans. I questioned why others visiting was so “important,” why the beaches and trails were always overcrowded with not only people but litter, and why the natives always spoke of the “haoli” with such ferocity. I quickly connected the dots as to the negative effects of taking advantage of such a beautiful land, but before I could do anything about it, we were moving, and headed off to Texas.
As financially successful as the United States is, it’s clear this “success” is an illusion that, when looked at more closely, is rampant with corruption.
Growing up raised by a single mother in a poor area off the metropolis of San Antonio, my family faced many struggles. Before we had to leave him, father would come home from working 70 hours a week just to support our family, and the hours took a toll on his mental and physical health. His knees were weak, his voice hoarse, and overall seemed off. Watching my father waste his life away in a society that treated him and his native people ruthlessly instilled in me a strong feeling of injustice.
By the time I was at the age to look for work, I could hardly juggle working for tips after school in the eighth grade while trying to impress my family with my academic achievements. The issues my family faced snowballed and forced their way into adulthood. Not a dime was saved for my sister and me after we finished high school. Learning this, I understood my options were narrow, and I had to work longer hours to get into the college I wanted. Luckily, I was accepted into a great university, but I had to start working as many hours as I possibly could to support myself.
It’s no secret that the U.S. is highly segregated, not only by race, but by income. Want to get the best education? Well, you’d better have enough money for that. Want health insurance? Be sure to pray you don’t turn 26. It’s a constant reminder of “inferiority” that kills the will of impoverished children, marginalizes people of color, and amplifies the richness of those who were born into wealth. It disrespects the time and work the lower and middle class pour into the golden cups of CEOs and investors. According to the American Journal of Public Health: “Neighborhoods ‘redlined’ by the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s (i.e., neighborhoods with large Black and immigrant populations) experience higher rates of firearm violence today than do neighborhoods deemed most desirable. This past de jure segregation may be related to present-day violence via impacts on education, transportation, jobs, income and wealth, and the built environment.” These same people who were segregated and forced into these disadvantaged, gerrymandered zip codes to begin with, and are often too poor to relocate, continually face the blame for the issues in this country. In other words, we, the working class, bear the pain and consequences of a failing nation that we’ve traded our lives and well-being to support.
Teachers, nurses, janitors, dishwashers, firefighters, truck drivers, grocery baggers, servers, social workers, and many more all comprise the working class. These respectable people are our neighbors, our community, our family. Our families, however, don’t reap the benefits of this work, and it’s easy to prove it. As of 2025, the ratio of the price of the average house divided by the median household income in America is at 7.37, an all-time high. This is even worse than during the housing crisis of 2008, where it was 6.82. In some metro areas, this number exceeds 10 for renters. With education, the price of attending college adjusted for inflation has skyrocketed over 500% in the last half-century, and the average American is spending $14,570 on healthcare per year, a 670% increase from $2,151 in 1970.
One of the main issues that capitalism in America causes when left unchecked is large monopolies that control the market too tightly, which undermine a free economy. Among markets that are “thriving” in the U.S., as discussed before, many of these markets consist of only a handful or less of main corporations controlled by billionaires. As a result, the market loses its flexibility. If the top dogs are struggling, it means everyone is. Most Americans don’t grow their goods. We buy goods from a supermarket that gets their produce and other items shipped from mass production farms and factories, filled with chemicals and human rights violations.
There are, however, alternatives that we can learn from. In other countries, there are creative solutions that will be briefly covered. Our first example, Vietnam, reformed in 1986, shifting to a more “socialist-oriented” market economy, where they implemented reforms in the country that led to positive changes and reductions in inflation. They allowed farmers to sell their surplus crops to private markets, leading small farmers and local businesses to thrive even during a recession. In the case of Cuba, their government established a food rationing system on March 12, 1962, called the libreta, that allowed citizens to purchase necessities and services at an affordable price.
Left unchecked, the prices and quality of life in the United States will continue to dwindle, and soon the country won’t have a healthy population to support itself. Many other countries have already realized this, such as France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. They employ similar rules to set price caps on pharmaceutical services and products. For example, in the U.K., they have a price limit on prescriptions. You pay nine pounds and ninety pence, no matter what prescription, no matter how many pills you need. If you need 30 pills or 90, it’s all the same. In Canada, you don’t have to pay anything for healthcare; instead, they’ve all agreed to pay a slight percentage increase to their taxes so that everyone gets free healthcare. As a result, poor people don’t avoid going to the hospital when they get ill or injured, because they don’t dread the hospital bill, or get turned away from a surgery or life-saving care due to insurance or money problems. This is precisely why Canadians live on average three years longer than Americans.
The flaws in the United States’ version of capitalism, such as price gouging, violations of workers’ rights, and the commodification of human lives and experiences, are felt greatest by those who are economically disadvantaged. In the United States, if you are born into poverty, you have over a 90% chance of staying in the same tax bracket you were born in. This is because trends show that over the past 50 years, the poorest 20% of American citizens have seen zero increase in wages (adjusted for inflation). In contrast, the wealthiest 1% nearly doubled their wealth over the same period. Furthermore, these wage issues affect marginalized groups more adversely, such as females, people who have disabilities, people of color, and people who identify with the LGBT community. Fifty-one Fortune 500 Companies have CEOs who make over 840 times the amount of the average worker for their company in wages.
These issues with wages, coupled with the rising costs of living, are causing people in poor communities to either find more roommates than the space can comfortably accommodate to afford rent, or become homeless. Unfortunately, once that happens, it’s mostly game over for most Americans. The U.S. infrastructure provides little to no assistance to those who are homeless or need necessities. Overcrowding in the few homeless shelters that do exist leads to overflow and people being denied rooms, forced to wait in the cold overnight. In Denton, Texas earlier this year, a locally renowned woman named Kimberly Pollock, who became homeless due to personal financial struggles, was turned away from a warming shelter and froze to death outside. She was somebody’s daughter, and she was a close, dear friend to many. These preventable and tragic losses of our local citizens are only the tip of the iceberg.
Once a magnifying glass is aimed at American capitalism, it becomes clear that the system works exactly as intended, to make the most money possible, no matter the means necessary. Ample industries rake in more money than any other country, and since more assets are being put on the table, it’s all positive reinforcement to keep going. The food, drug, and beauty industries are all aware of this. In the European Union (which formed in 1993), over 2,400 harmful chemicals have been banned in food and cosmetics. In contrast, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which oversees the safety of produce, drugs, cosmetics, and other products in the United States, has only banned 11 harmful chemicals as of today.
This disparity in the regulation of our foods, hygiene products, furniture, pesticides, medicines, and more has several key drawbacks. First, the FDA bans only a small number of chemicals because it allows companies to put cheaper, yet more harmful, chemicals in their products. Usually, it’s done to increase shelf life or to heighten the taste of a food. This causes Americans to become overloaded with chemicals and become sick, slowly and chronically. Once this occurs, an American is forced to see if they can afford to deal with their illness for the rest of their lives in their healthcare system. Bloated, high off should-be-banned chemicals, tired from working excess hours with no time off, upset with the cost of living, with a serious illness, but too poor to pay for help. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation, and this is the sad reality for many of our neighbors.
The part of capitalism that I believe makes it unredeemable is the fact that it is in direct conflict with our form of government. The United States is a representative democracy, but to run for office, you have to have thousands, if not millions, of dollars to have a strong campaign. That already excludes any low-income citizens from running for a higher-up position. Secondly, most people in our government can be “bought out” or influenced politically through lots of bribery. It’s the sad truth, but our last hope of reforming the system, through law reversal, is corrupted as well. For example, in 2024 alone, over $150 million dollars were covertly given to the Senate, House, and both presidential candidates by the fossil fuel industry alone. Some of these people include U.S. President Donald J. Trump, with over $2,100,000; former Vice President Kamala Harris, with over $1,300,000; and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), with over $1,000,000. The numbers for food industries in 2024, such as Coca-Cola, exceeded $24 million dollars. These companies are paying our “representatives” to vote in their interests, not ours. This is the reason why no chemicals are being banned, why we keep going to war with countries that coincidentally have tons of oil underneath them, and why we make so much more money than anyone else.
One of the most alarming things about the current state of the United States is that, under its current administration, there seems to be no plans for reform from our government. Despite worldwide protests, public uproar, and the deaths of many innocent citizens, it seems no steps are being taken to address the undeniable inhumanity of the United States. To try and redirect our anger at the lack of change, fingers are often pointed at the most disadvantaged of our population. People of color, gay, or poor communities are blamed for not working hard enough, shooting their kind, stealing, or getting addicted to drugs. It’s the Mexicans stealing our jobs, and the immigrants paying no taxes, or drag queens influencing our children the wrong way. It’s never the 151 mass shootings since 1982, the 26,000 Americans who die each year from not having insurance, or the sad reality that a woman only makes 83% of what a man makes in the same job position.
As financially successful as the United States is, it’s clear this “success” is an illusion that, when looked at more closely, is rampant with corruption. Even though things look unfixable, I encourage you not to lose hope and to look to your neighbor with compassion. We became the country that values our money more than our neighbors, that focuses on productivity, and not connectivity, by taking, and not giving. Figuring out adulthood as a queer, homeless Hawaiian in Texas would have been impossible without my close friends whom I met along the way. They are a constant reminder that even though we live in a country known for its selfishness, that is not a valid placeholder for the average American.
In Hawaii, we have a saying that goes Ua kuluma ke kanaka i ke aloha, meaning, we are all naturally loving people. I believe this is true. We’ve been misguided as a country and as a people, and our values have been manipulated over generations to value material possessions instead of other souls. We must reclaim our administration, restore our poor and middle class communities, and actively fight having to choose between profits and people. Slowly, and with powerful, passionate change, we can dismantle systems that commodify the human experience, and the American dream won’t be something we have to be asleep to live in.
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