Two Young Independent-Minded Florida Progressives Running As Democrats But...

Anselm Weber and Rachel Brown are a progressive couple in Southwest Florida who have organized for voter registration and around issues of sensible drug policy, voter rights restoration, $15 minimum wage, Medicaid expansion, and climate action. Rachel Brown is running for the Florida Senate District 27 and Anselm Weber is running for Florida House District 76. Rachel is working on her environmental engineering degree and Anselm got his bachelors in history. I asked them to co-write a guest post for DWT introducing themselves. If you like what they have to say, please split a contribution between them by clicking on the 2020 Up and Down the Florida Ballot thermometer below.


  We met at Florida Gulf Coast University, both having a deep concern for financially distressed and uninsured individuals. We got politically active and came together as we co-led the Students for Sensible Drug Policy university chapter, where we brought to light the horrors of the drug war and mass incarceration which disproportionately target minorities and poor people of all backgrounds. Although our main priority was mass incarceration, we talked in depth about the price gouging inherent in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries and the need for Medicare-for-All. Our main action was petitioning for the Florida Cannabis Act, but we also incorporated Medicaid expansion petitioning and voting rights restoration for felons since they are heavily related issues.

During the 2020 election, we volunteered for the Bernie Sanders campaign as much as we could, as we both felt the urgency of the change Senator Sanders was endorsing. In our own lives, we feel the issues that many working class and low-income people are facing across the country at this moment. We have both worked service sector jobs and have had difficulty in finding adequate healthcare (Rachel does not even have health insurance), affordable housing or a well-paying job with benefits.


Florida has gained national coverage over the GOP's disgusting response to COVID-19. Its leadership has left its people at the mercy of the virus, rushing stores and schools to reopen, with no regard to low-income people who have no hazard pay or rent forgiveness. While we recognize how morally intolerant the GOP is and how their regime needs to be upended, we also understand that the fight for equity for all will not stop at flipping the country and the state blue. We've watched in frustration at the Democratic party over the course of the primary and how they showed heavy disregard towards demands for universal programs, upending of our criminal justice system, and a nonviolent foreign policy.


To enhance our skepticism of the party, we've seen the Democrats fail to prioritize low-income people during COVID-19 and go along with the trillions of dollars going to high income earners and corporations. Their response to recent uprisings for racial justice in our criminal justice system was pathetic as they rolled out a series of half measures to address police brutality and did a perplexing symbolic gesture with Kente clothing and an empty 9-minute kneel for George Floyd.

Our presidential nominee will not commit to Medicare for All, even as COVID-19 is exposing how abhorrent gatekeeping health coverage is. The leadership would rather talk about Trump's endlessly nauseating tweets than the deep divide between tenants and property managers, worker and management, or felons and prosecution. Trump is obviously one of the most reckless and racist presidents of our modern age, but we must be more than anti-Trump and be anti-poverty, anti-racist, and anti-pollution in all aspects of political life.

We are running as Democrats but we are not going to listen to calls from the conservative wing of the party to hedge our priorities for the working class. We know what is necessary politically at this time and for the years to come. Although we are running in conservative areas, we feel like our message about prioritizing material needs will be a refreshing turn from tired tropes from either party. Although we took a massive loss when Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race this last April, there is still hope for real progressives to succeed in making this country a better place for all Americans.