you are not alone

Does it feel like the deck is stacked against your family? It is.

I want you to know that what you're feeling is real and valid. The exhaustion of watching your paycheck disappear before the month ends. The fear of a medical bill that could unravel everything. The quiet dread of wondering whether this country still has a place for people like us.

That fear doesn’t mean you’re imagining things. It is the predictable result of decades of choices made by people in power who were never thinking about your kitchen table.

For generations, we've watched politicians arrive with promises and leave with paychecks from the very corporations they were supposed to hold accountable. We've been told to work harder, settle for less, and be grateful for scraps while the people at the top rewrote the rules in their favor. When we speak up, they tell us the system is too complicated to change: that we “just don't understand how Washington works.”

I understand exactly how it works. I spent 23 years inside federal agencies fighting for communities that had been written off — families navigating a healthcare system designed to extract profit rather than heal the sick, students whose civil rights existed on paper but nowhere else, communities hit by disaster and then forgotten. I've seen the gap between what government promises and what it actually delivers.

I grew up in Cleveland. I know what it costs to keep a family together when the ground keeps shifting beneath you. I am not running for Congress to manage your problems from a safe distance. I am running because I have lived close enough to them to understand that hope, on its own, is not a plan.

What I see in our communities gives me something more than hope. I see people showing up for each other with a fierce, quiet courage that no corporate-funded campaign can manufacture. That is our real strength, and it is enough to build something lasting, if we choose it.

In Congress, you will have someone in that chamber who has fought bureaucracies on your behalf, who will pick up the phone, who will not disappear after Election Day, and who will not trade your future for a comfortable compromise.

You are not alone. You have never been alone. But I cannot carry this fight to Washington without you beside me.

If you believe working families deserve a voice that actually fights — donate, volunteer, and help us build a movement that puts people first. Not power. Not corporations. People.

As long as I have a voice in that chamber, you will never be without one.

In solidarity,

Laura