Leslie Cockburn FOR CONGRESS
There has never been a more critical time to stand up and fight for good government. The 5th district of Virginia needs someone in Congress with proven experience in holding Washington’s feet to the fire. It needs someone with integrity, courage and grit. I have 35 years of award-winning investigative journalism behind me. I have exposed wrongs in Washington and on Wall Street. I have covered six wars, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
For nearly two decades, I’ve owned a farm in Rappahannock County. I’ve planted hundreds of trees, watched my daughters get married there, and wondered at the beauty of the Blue Ridge. I have fought for land conservation so that our farms can thrive. I have fought power lines and pipelines and uranium mining, challenging the outside corporate interests that want to exploit the 5th district and leave the mess behind.
Right now corporate lobbyists and their allies in the White House and Capitol Hill are trampling the environmental laws that protect our children’s health, our air and our water. They are unleashing the banks to take ever-greater risks. They are dismantling the Affordable Care Act so that those with pre-existing conditions will not be covered, a path to catastrophic hardship for many Virginians. They are doing everything in their power to gut Medicaid, which spells disaster for the children and families it serves. They are champing at the bit to defund Social Security and Medicare, hoping to cut billions in disability payments. These are extreme and callous actions that will tear apart the fabric of our community. This has to stop.
Join me in this fight. Let’s put healthcare back on a sound footing. Let’s treat women as full citizens, with the right to control their own bodies. Let’s make senior citizens a top priority. Let’s change the rules so that students, their parents and grandparents don’t have to take student loans to the grave. Let’s make community college affordable for all. Let’s give those students and their families the broadband they need to work in the new economy. Let’s bring in new energy jobs and raise our shameful minimum wage, now $1.50 less than West Virginia. And let’s protect the land we cherish. We need to stop the Trump White House from dismantling the Farm Bill and slashing 29 billion dollars from crop insurance. We need to protect the weakest among us, immigrant families who live in terror of deportation and families scarred by opioid addiction. And we need to protect our citizens from hate-groups who wrap their pursuit of violence in the cloak of free speech.
This is not an easy fight. It will take an army of citizens to turn things around.
So join me.