An advocate for those in need

Among the roster of inspired speakers we heard at the local Women’s March (Jan. 20) was Kerith Strano Taylor, candidate for Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District. Drawing on her long experience working with at-risk families and children in the foster system, Strano Taylor spoke with clarity and passion about issues confronting Pennsylvania’s vulnerable families and youth. Recounting individual stories, Strano Taylor put human faces to the swirl of crises — unaffordable housing, underemployment, substance addiction and an ever-more frayed social safety net — that have pressed far too many families to the breaking point in 21st-century America. And these are problems, she rightly observed, that “fall disproportionately on the shoulders of women.”

While applauding voluntary, grassroots efforts to alleviate the hardships of the working poor, Strano Taylor stressed that we must also be advocates for serious and sustained federal action. We must demand that Washington invest substantially in a whole range of programs — such as Children’s Health Insurance Program, Food Stamps, Title 1 funding for school districts with poor children, Head Start, and addiction recovery programs — that support struggling families.

For concerned members of our community, there are many ways to be advocates for the those in need. Not least, we can support candidates who find the dire conditions described in her address neither inevitable nor acceptable, and who champion government programs that can help struggling families make it through. We believe that Kerith Strano Taylor meets this standard of legislative activism admirably.

This story was originally published January 29, 2018 at 7:33 PM with the headline "An advocate for those in need."