Main Street

Keeping It Local

By Eddie Soliz

It was a regular Monday and I was pointed to canvass a neighborhood or city named Sterling, a middle class town located west of Dulles airport in northern Virginia. As it reflected in the press, healthcare was the national issue and it had most peoples’ attention, so as soon as I started to work I was talking about health care “…. And there are over 47 million Americans that can’t afford to pay for private insurance, that’s why we need a public insurance option and a health care reform. . . . . ”

After knocking and talking at some doors with different people I noticed that I was talking about the wrong issue, because for that particular community the most important issue was transportation and the beginning of the project about the extension of the Metrorail from Vienna to Dulles Airport. This project would bring million of dollars to the local economy and also employ hundreds of thousands of people for a period of ten to fifteen years. Realizing the issues that concern that community I started talking to people about Federal stimulus money. The federal government has already approved for money not only transportation projects but for unemployed workers here in Virginia and the projects in mention are delayed because of the inaction of politicians. The result was rewarding, most people now wanted to sign as members of Working America and actually build pressure on local politicians to take advantage of every federal aid or stimulus package that would benefit the city and state of Virginia.