Friend,

When I walk the halls of the United States Senate, I often ponder the work you and I are doing to leave our country better off for our children and grandchildren. 

As Americans, we may disagree about how to address certain problems, but the problems themselves are matters of fact. Inequality is growing. Social mobility is at a standstill. Proper health care is beyond the reach of tens of millions. So is a good education and life lived in safety.

The ultimate goal of our work, friend, is creating a just society and if we are to truly accomplish that, I believe every American must have access to four essential freedoms.

Freedom to rise: Our policies need to value workers and working families — and they need to enable workers to organize on their own behalf.

Freedom to learn: Without education — education that lasts a lifetime, education that extends to the way we advance our most cherished ideals — mobility and justice are out of reach. 

Freedom from violence: Violence affects our everyday lives — gun violence; our broken criminal justice system; addiction in communities everywhere; and the quieter violence that flourishes in social media. 

Freedom to govern ourselves: We need to confront voter suppression, gerrymandering, the influx of dark money into policies, and partisanship in Congress.

Our big quarterly fundraising deadline is tomorrow. As we continue working to restore reproductive rights nationwide, curb the effects of climate change, and create a just society for our children and our grandchildren, I hope you’ll recommit to this fight and chip in what you can before tomorrow.

Together, we can continue this critical work, and we can elect and re-elect the leaders who are critical to this fight. 

As always, thank you, friend.

–Michael