Elevating Community Voices
We want the world to hear from you!
By Annie Flom
As a people-powered movement, your stories are at the heart of everything we do. There are plenty of groups that do the important work of pushing for cash policies in the halls of Congress or among think tanks, but Income Movement is the only organization dedicated solely to fostering and highlighting the grassroots momentum for a federal basic income.
To execute on that mission, we rely on our supporters to share why you believe so deeply in this issue — from social media posts to national news interviews. And, we want to make it as easy for you to share your story as possible. That’s why we just launched a new tool to track and share stories on our website. We’re starting with experiences with child checks — the monthly basic income payments nearly all parents in America are receiving this year with the expansion of the Child Tax Credit — but will expand to other cash topics in the coming months. Check out the story map here, and submit your own by scrolling down the page.
One great example of how powerful these stories can be is the experience of one of our members, Jennifer Dickman. Jennifer first came to our attention earlier this year when she signed onto a joint letter to the Biden administration we organized with the Magnolia Mother’s Trust and Marshall Plan for Moms on the same topic.
Jennifer is a great writer, and shared when signing onto the letter her powerful story of struggling to keep up with medical expenses related to her own illness and having two special needs sons. Recognizing both the unique significance of her experience as well as the universal appeal it held in showing the huge importance of a guaranteed income for parents, we worked with Jennifer to tell her story to millions of people across the country in a Child Tax Credit expansion segment featured on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.
She saw the importance in sharing her experience, and turned it into a compelling and timely case tied to the national fight for cash benefits — working with our team to place her story in front of a massive audience at TIME Magazine.
Speaking about the experience of elevating her story from personal to public, Jennifer said: “Telling my family’s story was both uplifting and empowering. Experiences that I’d previously labeled as ‘bad’ or ‘difficult’ were given a deeper meaning and purpose, as a means to help others. When we tell our stories without shame, the things that knocked us down are transformed, and have the power to lift others up. The healing power of that transformation cannot be overstated.”
Whether you’re using your CTC child checks for medical bills, school expenses or a family trip, we want to hear about it! Congress is still debating the expansion of the CTC as part of President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, so now is a crucial time to lift up how real people will be affected if this critical basic income for parents is taken away after just one year. Please add your voice to the growing calls to permanently expand this down payment on a federal basic income by sharing your support and story here.
Annie Flom is the Communications Manager at Income Movement.
