What is WV Can’t Wait

Working West Virginians have borne too much for too long. No party or politician will save us. Only a movement can.

Three years ago a group of West Virginians got together to ask: what if the values of generosity and service and common sense that already guide our churches and neighborhoods also governed our statehouse? What if our land and water and wealth were invested into our own children, our own workers, our own entrepreneurs, instead of out-of-state monopolies? This should be our golden age, and it can be.
In three years time, WV Can’t Wait has built the largest electoral organizing infrastructure our state has seen in decades. With county teams in all but one of our 55 counties, 39 constituency groups representing seniors, veterans, and so on, and 107 candidates running under the WV Can’t Wait banner, our movement, three years in, is poised to take on the wealthy Good Old Boys Club and win.
At 197 Town Halls and through 11,000+ conversations with our neighbors, we asked: what would you do if you were Governor, or if you were Mayor, or on your Board of Education? Everyone we spoke to wanted bold change.
Together, we created a People’s Platform called the New Deal for WV. 
That platform includes: Broadband for All, Prosecuting Corruption, Fixing our Roads, Full Cannabis Legalization, Cutting Healthcare Costs, a Workers Bill of Rights, a Mountaineer Service Corps jobs program. And more.
107 candidates ran on that very platform and now our first slate of WV Can’t Wait candidates has been elected into office! These 11 representatives from rural and small towns represent politics that aren’t controlled by corporate interests.
In today’s West Virginia, odds are that a kid you know will die young from a drug overdose. Odds are you know someone who can’t get safe drinking water out of their tap–maybe it’s you. A family that use to get by on one job now scraps to make it on three. If those of us lucky enough to have work, can barely make it on our patchy roads. Cannabis, a pain-easing drug, could be a real boon to our economy, but the few growers permits that exists are doled out to the wealthy and well-connected. And if you’re a public employee in this state, you’ve got to fight tooth and nail on a picket line, to get an ounce of respect.
We all know why: our wealth doesn’t stay here. It ends up in the pockets of out-of-state CEO’s and the politicians they own, from both parties.
The thing is, it doesn’t have to be this way. 
We can have an economy and a government that works for all of us. If we take it. 
It will take 1,000 leaders, not 1, to win a West Virginia that works for all of us. We are recruiting, training, and mobilizing 1,000 volunteers for the 2022 election cycle and beyond. 

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It will take 1,000 leaders not 1 to win a West Virginia that works for all of us. That means we need you!