Progressive Democrats Praise Biden on Covid but Call for Bolder Action

By Adam Gabbatt, Guardian UK

29 April 21

Congressman Jamaal Bowman urges president to do more on climate, inequality and ‘burning crisis of structural racism’

he progressive wing of the Democratic party praised Joe Biden for his handling of the Covid-19 crisis in a response to the president’s first address to Congress, but urged the president to be bolder in tackling the climate crisis and economic inequality, and to do more to address “the burning crisis of structural racism in our country”.

Jamaal Bowman, a Democratic congressman from New York, gave a speech responding to Biden’s address shortly after the president finished his address, as progressives seek to convince Biden to pursue more ambitious policies.

Bowman hailed Biden’s handling of the Covid pandemic, in particular the aid given to schools in low income areas, but said the Democratic party, which controls the presidency, the House of Representatives and – narrowly – the Senate, could do more.

“The proposals that President Biden has put forward over the last few weeks would represent important steps – but don’t go as big as we’d truly need in order to solve the crises of jobs, climate and care,” Bowman said.

“We need to think bigger.”

Bowman was elected to the House in November 2020, after running a successful primary campaign against the long-serving centrist Democrat Elliot Engel. He was speaking on behalf of the Working Families party, a progressive political party which lends support to left-leaning Democrats and has previously backed Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

It is unusual for progressives to offer a response to an address from a president of their own party, and Bowman had been keen to tout his remarks as more a constructive criticism of the commander-in-chief than a rebuttal. Bowman told NBC News his speech would be “a balancing act”.

In the most impassioned part of his address, Bowman, who is Black, addressed the ongoing issue of police violence against people of color.

“Every single time I have to watch a video of a Black man, or a brown kid, die at the hands of police violence, a little piece of me dies too,” Bowman said.

“I have one message to law enforcement. Stop killing us.”

Bowman also pointed to the billionaires who got richer during the pandemic, the millions of families who are behind on rent payments and the climate crisis as areas where the government must act.

“We have taken steps to abate the immediate crises of Covid-19 and the economic shutdown it caused. But we, as the governing party, have to go beyond putting a Band-Aid on the virus.

“We need to rebuild our nation with a new foundation. A foundation rooted in love, and care, and equality. Where justice is truly real for all of us, regardless of race, class, gender, orientation, or religion,” Bowman said.

Bowman, a former school principal, said Democrats were “capable of big, powerful, transformative change” and urged his party to pass progressive Green New Deal climate legislation which would invest in schools, public housing and cities. He said Democrats should approve the Protect the Right to Organize Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize.

“We also badly need a $15 minimum wage, not phased in 10 years from now, but today,” Bowman said. “And if we need to get rid of the filibuster to do that, that’s absolutely what we must do.”

In his own address, Biden touted his $1.8tn American Families Plan, which would invest billions in a national childcare program, universal preschool, tuition-free community college, health insurance subsidies and tax cuts for low- and middle-income workers, and Bowman pushed the president to ensure care workers were also represented.

“There is a whole economy of workers, mostly women, and disproportionately women of color, who are doing the hard, essential work of caring for our moms and dads, looking after our kids, and healing the sick,” Bowman said.

Biden said his plan would provide affordable childcare, but Bowman said it should be “universal and exemplary”, adding: “We need living wages and benefits for care workers who provide the services we all need.”

As Bowman ended his speech, he pressed Biden to be stronger on the issue of police violence against people of color. Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, was convicted last week of murdering George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis last year, but many other instances of police officers killing Black men have not yielded prosecutions.

“I am connected to every Black man in America. Like them my ancestors were kidnapped from Africa, robbed of their language, and stripped of their religion and culture and God, and we continue to be redlined and killed by the police,” Bowman said.

“I have one message to law enforcement. Stop killing us. I need for President Joe Biden to say the same thing. Black people are not for target practice. We are simply trying to survive in a world stacked against us.”

Bowman said the US needed to “finally step back and have honest conversations about race and racism in this country”, and he called on Congress to pass HR40 – a bill originally introduced in the House in 1989 which would explore reparations to address the lasting effects of slavery.

“Because it’s not just police – it’s housing discrimination, and wage theft, and Black maternal mortality, it’s environmental injustice, and all of the ways racism is built into the very fabric of America.

“More than anything, America needs a process of truth and collective healing. We have to be honest with ourselves about the ugliness of our history and the discrimination that persist. Only then will we meet the ideals of our democracy and get one step closer to realizing the American experiment.”