Dear John,

Truth often makes any fiction pale in comparison, and last week’s saga on Wall Street offered a perfect example.

As if the irony of a ragtag army of grassroots investors bringing a hedge fund to its financial knees was not enough, the company that both empowered that grassroots effort—and then kneecapped it to serve its own interests—is named Robinhood.

Many people are rightly outraged that market manipulation is routinely practiced by Wall Street firms, yet uniquely disallowed on the rare occasion that those firms lose money in the process.

Do you want a voice in Congress dedicated to fighting Wall Street on behalf of the American people?

Many voices have decried the craven double standards and conflicts of interest that pervade the decision to suspend purchases of some stocks targeted by short sellers. But not enough have turned their attention to conflicts of interest that do even more damage to the public.

In 2012, Congress passed the STOCK Act to prohibit insider trading by federal policymakers. It was passed largely in response to Nancy Pelosi purchasing stock in VISA before blocking proposed regulation that would have undermined the company’s interests in order to protect consumers.

That pattern didn’t end there.

Are you tired of your voice in Congress serving their family’s investment portfolio, instead of their constituents?

Just last month, Nancy Pelosi disclosed purchases of call options on Tesla, before news became public of the Biden administration’s plan to transition the entire federal fleet to electric vehicles.

The STOCK Act didn’t go far enough.

Pelosi’s far from alone: plenty of federal policymakers have profited from the pandemic. Several GOP Senators, including former Senate Intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr (R-NC), sold millions of dollars' worth of stocks in industries (such as hotel, restaurant, and shipping) that faced pandemic-induced challenges even after downplaying public concerns about the extent of the pandemic.

You can send to Congress a voice who will work to prohibit policymakers from trading on Wall Street. That’s an ethical need to address an obvious—and longstanding—conflict of interest.

During the 1990s, I worked in Chicago for a series of Wall Street investment banks, including Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan (before the Chase merger), and Salomon Smith Barney. That’s how I paid for night school and got my undergraduate degree. Finance is a familiar arena to me.

Finance is also a familiar arena to Nancy Pelosi. As a centimillionaire, she ranks among the wealthiest members of Congress.

It’s bad enough that our policymakers mostly come from the same socio-economic class. It’s worse when their policy decisions may be motivated not by the public interest, but by the interests of the corporations that they co-own.

Our city deserves representation by a voice dedicated to our communities, instead of their own stock portfolio.

Together, we can make that happen.

Thanks for standing with us,

Shahid