Friend,
Our communities are facing unimaginable challenges and difficult choices. Without federal funding, our public officials will be forced to make deep cuts that will further exacerbate the crisis. The pandemic has upended our lives and made us more vulnerable than ever. Our Black, Latinx, and Indigenous neighbors and community members in particular have borne the brunt of casualties from COVID-19 and past austerity policies. Shredding an already fragile social safety net to balance the budget will only deepen the crises in our localities.
But we don't have to go down that road.
Sign our petition demanding that the Federal Reserve provide all states, territories, local governments, and government agencies access to long-term, zero-cost loans.
Last week, we joined the Cancel Wall Street campaign, which lays out real solutions that will benefit our communities by cutting out predatory loans from Wall Street and instead calling on the Federal Reserve. This would allow our public officials to refinance all of our existing debt into new interest-free loans, and free up more than $160 billion a year to reinvest in community services. It would also enable them to take out new loans to pay for long-term capital projects to make our infrastructure more resilient without having to pay any fees or interest, dramatically reducing the cost of future borrowing.
The Federal Reserve can and must do better by the American people. This institution has a long history of making very low-interest loans very generous terms to banks and corporations in the private sector.
We demand direct, interest-free loans from the Federal Reserve! Tell Chair Powell that it's time to extend that same generosity to American taxpayers.
Together we can win this!
Jonathan Westin, NYCC