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Recovery Recess: Beautiful Actions Coast to Coast

President Biden’s newly announced American Jobs Plan would make transformative investments in millions of jobs, trains and bridges, replacing lead pipes, expanding high speed broadband, ensuring workers have the right to join a union, and strengthening the care economy.

This plan is a critical piece of Biden’s agenda, which is so desperately needed as our communities are still picking up the pieces from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and decades of growing wealth inequality. And like with any massive legislation that would help working and middle class people, you’d better believe that powerful interests are already trying to stop it.

The truth is that Biden and progressives in Congress can’t make these plans a reality without support from people across the country fighting for change. If we want our elected officials to provide real recovery, we have to show up. During the two weeks that Congress was home on recess, MoveOn members and allies joined together at Recovery Recess events nationwide to demand solutions that meet the scale of the problems we’ve been handed—including green jobs oriented to address climate change, care jobs, healthcare, and all other kinds of support that Americans desperately need.

And it was beautiful. We garnered major press coverage, from local papers of record to national cable news. Watch and share this video montage highlighting some of the 200+ events that made up Recovery Recess.

recovery recess event

In the streets and on Zoom, MoveOn members across the country appealed directly to their members of Congress, urging them to go big and bold by delivering jobs, care, justice, climate solutions, tribal sovereignty, and real democracy for all of our people in the next recovery package.

Here is a taste of the breadth of actions MoveOn members helped make happen:

  • West Virginians organized “Jammin for Jobs” concerts across the state to demand passage of the THRIVE Act and held local rallies urging Senators Joe Manchin and Shelley Capito to “go big” and support the THRIVE Act.
  • Frontline Indigenous youth from communities impacted by the Dakota Access, Line 3, KXL, Line 5, and Mountain Valley pipelines ran through Washington, D.C. to demand Biden #BuildBackFossilFree.
  • North Carolinians marched to the offices of Senator Richard Burr and Representatives Virginia Foxx and Alma Adams urging them to back the THRIVE Act. Rep. Adams has now officially cosponsored the THRIVE Agenda!
  • Arizonans put in werk at the THRIVE Ball, a live drag show supporting the THRIVE Act, faith leaders called on Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema to fight racist voter suppression and pass the For the People Act, and young people gathered to demand Sen. Sinema tackle the climate crisis by guaranteeing good jobs for all.
  • Montanans organized a car caravan outside Senator Jon Tester’s office in Missoula where a staff member actually came out and spoke with them, saying he signed on to cosponsor the bill!

Recovery Recess Actions

With everything our communities have been through in the past year, individually and collectively, we know that big changes are absolutely required if we’re going to thrive. After the pandemic hit, after the insurrection, after a renewed uprising against police violence, through one climate shock after another, it’s become even more clear that we can’t just go back to the ways things were—we must build back better and stronger than ever before.

We can’t—and won’t—go back to a norm of crumbling infrastructure, tremendous unemployment, sustained racial and wealth inequalities, and ecological destruction. We need our government to go big and tackle these issues all together if we have a shot at addressing any of them.

The fight for true recovery for our country is ongoing. This is why MoveOn members are rising up to seize this once-in-a-generation political moment, and win big for climate, care, jobs, justice, and democracy.

Click here to watch this video montage of Recovery Recess, and then pass it along to your friends to keep up the national drumbeat on the call for Congress to #BuildBackBold.

Thanks for all you do.