If we want to build a financial system for working families, Black White & Brown, not big Wall Street banks, we need policymakers to take up the cause.

In the last Congress, our elected leaders were fixated on rolling back Dodd-Frank consumer protections and measures to reduce the risk of another financial crisis. In 2017, they made big Wall Street banks the single largest beneficiaries of a tax bill which only 25% of Americans supported when it passed. They even voted to make it easier for auto lenders to charge black customers more for a car loan or home mortgage. How else do you explain these votes? Big Wall Street banks have bought politicians so they can enrich themselves at our expense.

That is simply not where the American peoples’ heads are at. The polls are clear — people want to vote for politicians who don’t take Wall Street money. People want to vote for someone who holds big banks accountable when they discriminate against women, African-Americans, and Latinos. People want to vote for someone who will reverse the tax plan’s huge gifts to Wall Street. They don’t want to vote for someone who’s going to appoint the same old investment bankers to regulate the very industries they worked for just weeks before. And they don’t think it’s right that Wall Street billionaires use loopholes to pay lower taxes than teachers, when million of families are struggling.

We think each and every candidate running for office has an incredible opportunity to answer that call, to respond to public sentiment. They can do that by demonstrating their independence from Wall Street and promoting reforms to curb Wall Street’s influence over the economy and our government.

Our goal is an informed democracy. So we are helping to inform voters about the candidates’ views about financial reform, the campaign contributions they are (or are not) receiving from Wall Street, and in the case of incumbents, their voting record on financial reform, especially on tax cuts for Wall Street. And we are also making sure all the candidates are aware of how the American public feels about curbing Wall Street’s influence.