This is our monthly town hall so we are really excited and we are on track, we have not skipped a single month. Hall towntile hall per month and this is our nine out of nine town halls in addition to many local community events. Before we start, i want to acknowledge everyone here. Our staff that has worked so hard putting this together. Michelle, mabel, ariel, daniel, noreen. And marcus. He is live streaming. I am forgetting everything. We have Translation Services here today so we have our American Sign Language interpreter here. If you need it feel free to raise your hand. Our staff can make sure you get the Translation Services available. Hello, everyone. Evening. Are we at evening . Michelle will kick us off. We will dive right into it. Good evening. Today forfor coming our Community Town hall. Am Michelle Hernandez we want to thank you for coming today to discuss an important topic, which is antipoverty. The congresswoman recently packageut a legislative called they just society. It is an ambitious and monumental antipoverty legislative package and we are excited to be talking about that today. Quick acknowledgments, we want the Queens Public Library for sharing this space with us tonight. Martin,to thank sylvia thank you so much for helping us outreach. The promotional efforts and i would like to recognize Michelle Dunstan who is the president of the tenants association. We are going to start with opening mark remarks from the congresswoman. Staffthat, our chief of joining us from d. C. Is going to talk about some of the specificities of the bill. That, ifore we get into want to discuss some community rules. We want to recognize everyones voice so in order to do that, we are going to keep a little bit of time so that we can hear as many voices as possible. Sign. Will have a everyone will have about two minutes to present their questions or comments. Mabel will be keeping us on track. I also want to recognize one mike one voice. We all want to listen to the person that is speaking. We want to create a respectable environment so we can have this discussion. [applause] thank you so much. Hello again. As michele noted, one of the Major Updates that we have this month is that we introduce our next major sweeping sweep of legislation known as the just society. One of the things we wanted to talk about, its a package of about five bills and one resolution that attacks some of the central core issues of poverty. We are talking about not just how we measure poverty, housing, we are talking about who we allow to be eligible for our social safety nets in america. We are talking about proworker policy that protects working conditions and has and promotes proworker policies like paid family leave, living wages, et cetera and also compels us to join the Global Community in an elevated commitment to working people. Before i get into that, i want to address the news elephant in the room. One of the other things that happened. The house of representatives has decided to move forward with impeachment of the president of the United States. [applause] this was a major development. Some folks are saying finally. I certainly feel that way. I dont want to spend an enormous amount of time talking about impeachment but if you have questions im happy to talk to you about it. Long story short, the president of the United States used the power of the United States government to attempt to extort a Foreign Government into drumming up manufactured investigation into a political opponent. This is a violation of the constitution, and abuse of power of the trail of our country and anyone who does Something Like that, i dont care if you are a democrat or republican, if you abuse power and betray our country in such a manner, you must be impeached for us to protect our rule of law in our country. Pretty open and shut. If you have questions, please reserve them for the end. I feel like it is a pretty open and closed situation. I have advocated for impeachment for some time. This abuse of power has been going on for some time. I think for our community there are a lot of folks saying this is not a joyous moment or a moment to celebrate but i do think its important to acknowledge that this is a cathartic moment for many people in our community that have been the subject to the abuse of this administration for some time especially our Community New york 14 about 50 immigrant 70 people of color overwhelmingly workingclass. We have had to endure a lot in the last two years and so im not here to police your reaction to it because we all need to go through our process so feel what you need to feel but that is whats going on. Im going to move on because frankly i think the whole thing is boring he should been impeached a long time ago. Im over it. So thats how i feel about it because weve got work to do. The impeachment of this president is the shortterm action that we need to take to preserve our democracy. If we are really going to thrive as a country, we need to make longterm investments and keep our eyes on the prize of social economic and Racial Justice in the United States of america and that is what this is about. Lets dive in. Do i have the clicker . Diane will use the clicker. What we are going to do, what the just society is, it is about five bills and one resolution that is really focused on antipoverty legislation and its focusing on establishing economic and Racial Justice. I will go through it quickly but it is basically, the first is a recognized poverty act which speak which seeks to update the poverty line. 1955 spending patterns. Any time your qualification for everything is based on a measure that assumes one income earner in a home. One stayathome mother. It does not include the cost of childcare, health care, or a ton of other things or geographic costofliving. Really what the actual cost of living is in 2019. This fixes that. This directs the federal government to establish a new poverty line which we will talk about more. The second is a place to prosper act, sweeping set of housing reforms to the entire country, which includes a national cap on raising housing prices. As well as some punishments for abuse of landlords in the United States. The third is known as the embrace act and we have i will start worth i will start with mercy and reentry act. It allows us to open all of our social safety nets and it ends federal discrimination on our social programs based on people formerly incarcerated. One reason we do that is because one of the number one reasons for recidivism, wire mass incarceration is such a persistent problem, is poverty. People come out, we refuse and deny and we refused to extend opportunities to folks so then we create so much economic isolation in this country that people feel funneled right back into recidivism and we are incarcerating the same community over and over. The mercy reentry act ands discrimination for the formerly incarcerated and the embrace act, we are doing the same, its a piece of legislation that an similar discrimination based on documentation status. Kind of annex level piece of legislation and it is something people are going to say why would you do that. I believe we need to acknowledge the contributions immigrants make in america. If you contribute to our society i believe you should benefit from our society. The last is the uplift our workers act which creates directs the federal government to create a score for score federal contractors on how good they are to their workers from predictable schedules to union participation to worker cooperatives to paid family leave. It directs the federal government to spend their money with companies that are good to their workers. Last, directs the United States to ratify the u. N. Covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. We will dig into what that means later so we can move onto the next slide. And we are going to play this quickly. It goes a little more into depth into what the suite of legislation is so we can all get we can all dig into it more. We ran into some technical difficulties. Never mind. Is it not hooked up to the speakers . We can close it out we can close it out. Dont worry about it. All the things i just said. It was going to go into more detail. You have some followups as well. As i said, it is five bills and one resolution and all of these are tackling some of the core underlying issues of poverty in America Today. This is just a beginning. It is not the decisive and product. Theres a lot more that we need to go. I will go one by one. So the first thing we talk about is that a just society recognizes and eradicates poverty. This requires us to update the federal poverty line. So what this does, our first legislation requires us to update the federal poverty line, including these things, geographical cost variation. We will recognize that living in new york city is much more expensive than living in other parts of the country and we can adapt our federal poverty line to adjust for that. The second is the cost of health care is not covered in the federal poverty line so they assume that your Health Care Costs dont exist. The thirds work expenses related to family, a. K. A. Childcare. It also includes new necessities. In our federal poverty line, we believe that Internet Access is a new necessity. We are including the costs of new necessities. This is the housing legislation we were talking about. The place to prosper act. Has anyone heard of the sweeping housing legislation that we passed in the state . Kudos to all of our organizers. The inspiration from this is pursuing the state laws that we are picking up and applying to the federal level. That is how i believe a lot of our legislation should work. This includes provisions to protect tenants. A lot of our laws are not focusing on tenants. We are focusing on mortgages. We need to protect working and middleclass families. I dont believe we have enough protections for tenants federally. We want to improve the quality of our housing stock. We want to rein in corporate landlords. And ensure that housing is affordable and available to all. If you are a landlord and cover a lot of housing stock, and you are documented for abusing your tenants, you cannot get a mortgage to build more development until you get your act together. [applause] that is a huge part of our provision. The embrace act ends federal discrimination of social benefits based on documentation status. People say, why should we do that . It is very controversial. Immigrants pay taxes. All immigrants pay taxes, whether you are documented or undocumented. They pay for public schools, they help contribute to our society just like anybody else. If a billionaire can get away with not paying their taxes and reaping from public systems, undocumented people should be recognized for their contribution to society. [applause] as i said, a just society is merciful. So often someone becomes incarcerated. Often for unjust crimes. Once you get out, there are a lot of federal programs, medicare, medicaid, etc. , were you get, where you get caught up in a system. You already paid your debt to society. This contributes to this pipeline of incarceration and going in and out of the system. When you create a state of economic desperation, that is the kind of environment where you spread mass incarceration. This does the same exact thing where it says you cannot be discriminated against because you paid your debt to society sometime ago. The uplift our workers act creates a lead score for federal contractors. An anonymous amount of our budget and federal spending goes to contractors, where the government pays a private contractor to fulfill some kind of need. I believe the federal government is injecting a lot of money into our economy. That money should be going into workers pockets and helping establish a just economy. This creates a worker friendly score for federal contractors. It says, we will put you at the front of the line for contracts if you offer paid family leave, if you pay a living wage, if you have a unionized workforce. The last one says a just society guarantees cultural and social rights for all. In the 1970s, the u. N. Put forth the u. N. Covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights. 170 International Parties have ratified the covenant. The United States is not. We need to do this. One of the hunches i have as to why we have not ratified this is because it essentially codifies 21st century rights. The right to a dignified and safe workplace. Education, health care. Obviously we dont fulfill or satisfy all of those rights in the u. S. I think it is about time that we do. That is what advanced societies do. If we want to continue to say that the United States as a leader in the world, we need to be a leader in the human condition. Human rights. The quality. Equity. Really creating a robust economic and socially just society. These are all of the countries that have signed on to it but the u. S. Has not. That is it. [applause] given all of that, we want to open the floor for questions. This legislation, what we want to do is frontline any questions on this. But we will open the floor to other questions. Feel free to take it away. If you have any more, write them down on that slip. You have the first question. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge a councilmember who is here. Thank you for joining us. [applause] how are you doing . Rep. Ocasiocortez i am good. The last time we met was in the bronx. I gave a question and you gave a great answer. I want to ask it again since we are on camera. My question is concerning the Democratic Party. It has been reaching out to lgbt concerns and immigration concerns. But in recent years, there is one group that has been left out. It is africanamericans. We feel the trade. Or used by the Democratic Party. When donald trump said, what do you have to lose, some people did not vote for him but some people stayed home. How can you and your squad friends meet people like me and reach out to africanamericans. Rep. Ocasiocortez i appreciate that. That is a great question. [applause] i sympathize a lot with that sentiment. I understand why people say that. I experience it a lot when i am in d. C. it feels like our votes and support are taken for granted because of how reliably democratic our communities are. People say you are going to vote for us anyway. We dont need to worry. As a result, our concerns and our pursuit for justice take his seat. Our concerns are put to the end of the line. We kick the can on immigration justice. It is a black issue. All of the seven it is controversial to talk about these things. I understand and empathize. People are saying, we vote for the Democratic Party, why doesnt it vote for us . That is why i get into trouble. [laughter] [applause] that is why people say, she is a lightning rod on the left and the right. One of the reasons why we are controversial within the party is because we will say, why do we have to wait for these things over and over and over again . James baldwin has this really epic clip where he is in an interview and he says, my parents and my family were born waiting for our rights and they have died waiting for our rights. How long do you want me to wait . That is a very core part of the questions we are dealing with today. My family is from puerto rico. My grandfather was born without the ability to vote in federal elections and he died in the direct aftermath of hurricane maria. We will not wait. Like my friend Ayanna Pressley says, change cannot wait. We are at a breaking point in American Society with inequality in income, Racial Justice, outcomes. We are at the point where people are at the brink of eviction, dying because they cannot afford insulin, family caught up in a system of mass incarceration. We cannot wait to fix these problems. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can worry about swing district concerns and we consent to the concerns of the black community, of all sorts of communities that are deemed controversial to tend to. Equal and equitable outcomes should not be controversial in the u. S. And not in the Democratic Party. [applause] i recently received a newsletter from your office that outlines your priorities, which included appropriation of amendments for opioid treatments. I have not seen anything about alzheimers and related dementias. This is becoming a Public Health crisis. The People Living with this disease is set to triple. Send there will only be people who have it or have had it. Someone is getting it every 65 seconds. By the middle of the century the costs are projected to be a trillion dollars. I know most people dont think about it until they are personally affected. I wasnt until my mother was diagnosed in 2013. She was a new york City Employee so she had really good health care. The cost of putting her in an assisted facility was exorbitant. If my mother had not saved money, there would have been no way to take care of her. Right now im hoping as an advocate for the Alzheimers Association that you could sign on. Right now it has bipartisan support. Can we know that you will pay more attention to alzheimers and the way it is affecting people . It has a disproportionate impact on women and people of color. Rep. Ocasiocortez thank you. [applause] thank you for your advocacy. There are so many issues and so often the way we decide which one to do any given day is because someone in our communities stood up and made the request just like you did right now. Absolutely we will take a look at whatever legislation you are bringing up. I want to take this moment to say this is why medicare for all is so important. Not everyone is lucky enough to work for an employer who guarantees them health care. Even