Andrew Yang‘s non-profit organization Humanity Forward will spend over $1 million on working families affected by the Coronavirus.
In an article written by Yang himself for New York Daily, the former Presidential candidate explained how social distancing and quarantine will everyday people.
“All of us staying at home is particularly problematic to those of our neighbors who work in the service industry,” Yang writes.
“With everyone trying to avoid spreading the coronavirus, local businesses will be hit a lot harder than they’ve ever been hit before,” he continued.”
“On the average waiter’s or hotel employee’s salary, it’s impossible to have a two to three-month safety net saved up, so many workers are out of a job and quickly running out of money,” Yang stated.
Whilst Yang commended the US government for addressing the issue, the Asian American businessman said the measures are wrong.
“I’m glad to see the federal and state governments taking steps to ensure that there is some assistance,” he wrote. “However, too much of the focus has been on helping businesses, with no-interest loans or interest rates being lowered to help corporations’ bottom lines.”
Yang’s solution is to give $1,000 to everyone each month – a concept he had pledged to implement in his presidential campaign.
“Instead, we’ve got to focus on doing the one thing that we know will help people hit the hardest economically by this crisis: Send them a check of at least $1,000 each month so that they can continue to live” he explained. “So they can keep their families healthy and safe. So they can make sure their kids’ lives and learning are disrupted as little as possible.”
Yang claims that implementing such measures would inject “nearly $13 billion per month into the state of New York” through the “accounts of our friends, our neighbors and ourselves,” not the banks.
On his part, Yang pledged to appeal to higher authorities including Mayor de Blasio and President Trump. Meanwhile, his own organization will do its part in delivering more than $1 million to working families in New York.
“Humanity Forward, is proud to team up with the Collective Action Fund, Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners and One Fair Wage to today announce the delivery of over $1 million dollars (in $1,000 increments) to working families in New York and across the country in the coming weeks,” Yang announced.
In related news, former NBA champion Jeremy Lin slammed Trump for “empowering racism” by calling the Coronavirus “The Chinese Virus”.
