The special election primary to fill the seat David Cicilline is giving up in eastern Rhode Island has been scheduled for September 5th— 4 months from now. There are already 16 Democrats running, mostly corporate conservatives. Blue America has endorsed the proven progressive in the race, former state Rep Aaron Regunberg and we asked him to explain why he’s decided to run and what he would like to accomplish. If you like what he has to say in his video and in his short essay below, please consider contributing to his campaign here.
In Rhode Island's Special Congressional Election, We Have A Chance To Take On Corporate Power-- And Win
-by Aaron Regunberg
My wife Katie and I have a two-year-old. Being a parent is amazing, but like a lot of parents, I worry about the future. Will our kids be safe at school from guns and mass shootings? Will they be able to afford college? Will they have a livable future on this planet?
When I’m up late at night worrying about these fears, I don’t just feel scared. I feel angry. Because it’s not an accident that more children die from guns in this country than anywhere else on Earth; it’s not an accident that the cost of living keeps going up and up; it’s not an accident that our climate is spiraling out of control. Massive corporations and the politicians they control are creating and maintaining these problems, because they’re making billions and billions of dollars from them. And all the while that they’re ripping us off and destroying our futures and raking in the cash, they’re also trying to distract us. They’re doing whatever they can to cast the blame on immigrants and trans folks, so that working people don’t notice everything that they’re taking from us.
Well, we know where that leads. My grandfather was a refugee from the Holocaust– he taught me exactly where those strategies of hatred and division lead. So we’re going to fight back, by placing the blame where it actually belongs.
Take the climate crisis. We have– right now, today– everything we need to make the transition to a clean energy economy. How amazing is it that we live in a moment when the cheapest way to produce electricity is to point a piece of glass at the sun! The problems here are not technical, they’re political. We need leaders in Congress who are willing to take on the fossil fuel industry with everything they’ve got– to call out Big Oil for its decades of deception and fraud; to explore new legal strategies like the prosecution of fossil fuel companies for climate homicide; to join frontline communities and youth activists in risking everything to stop the further expansion of oil and gas infrastructure that basic physics tells us will lock in levels of warming that are incompatible with the maintenance of organized human civilization on this planet.
We need the same approach when it comes to addressing the cost of living crisis, which my wife and I have been feeling in so many areas recently– daycare, health insurance, diapers and groceries, our utility bill. Like these other crises, inflation doesn’t just happen (and despite what Wall Street allies like Jerome Powell claim, it’s not being driven by wage growth among working people). Costs are continuing to go up and up because we don’t have laws to stop big corporations from price gouging. We don’t have price controls on vital goods and prescription drugs– even the ones our tax dollars developed. We don’t have taxes on windfall profits. And we don’t even try to break up massive monopolies that let companies raise prices without having to worry about competition.
On these and so many other fights, we’re not going to see substantial change just by electing another Democrat in a deep-blue seat like Rhode Island’s First Congressional District. We need leaders in Congress who can organize, and build coalitions strong enough to overcome these entrenched interests, and who have a record of winning real progressive policy change. That’s what I’ve been doing in Rhode Island for years– as a state legislator, winning laws to give working people paid sick days and higher wages and access to renewable energy; as a community organizer, working with students to win changes in our public schools; and as a new climate lawyer, supporting court cases to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their climate crimes. In all of these capacities, I’ve seen that it’s possible to bring people together and take on powerful corporations and win. And that’s the work I want to do in Congress– with your support.
it would be much better to have a party that actually cared about climate... than someone who may or may not be sincere about it as a member of a party that is opposed to any meaningful action on climate.
remember where your democrap party gets their money?