While we spend billions overseas waging endless wars and funding genocides with bipartisan support from Washington, more than 100,000 children in New York City’s public schools are homeless. And nationwide, 1.2 million children are homeless — meaning that there are more children who are homeless across the country than there are total children in at least 28 different states. 

We live in the richest country in the history of the world. It’s not that our country doesn’t have the resources to fix this: it’s that our leaders in Washington lack the political will.

With just the $3.8 billion U.S. taxpayers send to Israel in military aid every year, Darializa knows that we could instead be funding almost 400,000 units of deeply affordable public housing, providing 1.3 million low-income children with healthcare, or creating over 39,000 jobs for teachers to educate our kids. Fundamentally, this is an issue about whose lives our Representatives in Washington value, and whose they don’t. Working class communities of color, like so many communities in uptown Manhattan and the Bronx, have suffered for decades from disinvestment from Washington, and everything from our health outcomes to our credit scores have paid the price. 

We must end the genocide and occupation in Palestine, divest from Israeli apartheid, stop all funding to the Israeli government, and reinvest in us. To invest in our babies is to invest in our entire communities. We must stop funding the bombing of children overseas, and start funding the systems here at home that can support our children reaching their full potential instead.

As your Congresswoman, Darializa would work to end childhood poverty, ensure all children have access to a quality education, renew and fully fund expanded child tax credits, fight for universal family leave for all New Yorkers, and more. She would also support the Block the Bombs Acts in Congress and vote against sending weapons or bombs to any country while our families at home continue to be left behind.