“Essential Workers Turn out Essential Voters” to “Save Lives, Fire the Liar” Through GOTV
Washington, D.C. – In a clarion call to save essential workers’ lives and end the war on immigrants, hundreds will take the battle to the White House doorstep, at a socially distant rally pledging to elect a new President through massive GOTV efforts. First time voters will share their personal stories before crowds holding signs with photos of essential workers that read “Essential Workers Turn Out Essential Voters” and “Save Lives, Fire the Liar.”
In Pennsylvania and Virginia, CASA in Action will reach almost 200,000 low-propensity voters of color. The organization’s universe in Pennsylvania centers around voters of color with a special focus on Latino voters especially Puerto Ricans who have arrived in the Commonwealth since Hurricane Maria. CASA in Action plans to bring Pennsylvania and Virginia home for Democratic dream team Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“We have teams of canvassers – people of color, DACA holders, former TPS holders, and other immigrants – calling and texting voters to help change the face of the country,” said William Renderos, CASA in Action field manager. “With so much at stake, essential workers are working hard to turn out essential voters in favor of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and everything they stand for.”
32BJ’s essential workers are a part of SEIU’s largest-ever voter engagement program to expand the electorate by turning out infrequent Black and Latino, including a robust paid media strategy in multiple languages. SEIU is reaching well over 6 million people, including millions of Latinos in the key battleground states. 32BJ members aim to register 8,000 union voters in Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania.
“Trump underestimated COVID and he underestimates immigrants, but we are going to show him,” said first-time Virginia voter and 32BJ essential cleaner, Maritza Pena.
ESSENTIAL WORKERS DECIMATED BY COVID
For essential immigrant workers, this election means the difference between life and death, and financial stability and poverty. Denied the lifeline of hazard pay while getting sick and dying with the nation’s economy on their backs, immigrants are turning out voters as their lives in fact depend on it.
Essential immigrant workers are paying the biggest price for the pandemic, paying with their lives on the job to keep us safe and our economy running, without essential pay or unemployment. Essential workers and their families are getting sick and dying from COVID-19 at the highest rate thanks in no small part to Trump’s endless lies about COVID-19, a failure to develop adequate testing and protective equipment for frontline workers and proposals to force people back to work under dangerous conditions.
WAR ON IMMIGRANTS
From forced sterilization of immigrant women, keeping children in cages and ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for immigrants who’ve lived and worked in the U.S. legally for decades, many with U.S. citizen children, to trying to weaken political representation for immigrants under the census, mass deportations tearing apart families and ending DACA for Dreamers.
ESSENTIAL WORKERS SAFER WITH BIDEN
Biden pledges to repair the injustices of our broken immigration system and reassert our commitment to people seeking asylum. Immigrants know he would undo the divisive policies and hateful rhetoric that impose needless cruelty on families in search of the American Dream and pause deportations, while making DACA permanent on his first day in office.
Joe Biden has pledged to make COVID testing free and widely available, while making treatment affordable. He is committed to making paid leave available to affected workers and make more people eligible for unemployment. Biden also pledged to work with unions to help protect frontline workers.
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With over 175,000 members in 11 states, including over 20,000 in the D.C. area and Baltimore, 32BJ SEIU is the nation’s largest property service workers union. Follow us at @32BJSEIU
With more than 100,000+ lifetime members, CASA in Action is the largest electoral organization fighting for immigrant rights in the Mid-Atlantic region. For more information, please visit CASAinAction.org. Follow us at @CASAinAction