Representative Ritchie Torres is a fighter from the Bronx who has spent his entire life working for the community he calls home. Like many people in the South Bronx, poverty and struggle have never been abstractions to him, and he governs from a place of lived experience.
Ritchie’s mother single-handedly raised him, his twin brother, and his sister in a public-housing project. She paid the bills working minimum-wage jobs, which in the 1990s paid $4.25 an hour. While Ritchie grew up with mold, lead, leaks, and no reliable heat or hot water in the winter, he watched the government spend over $100 million dollars to build a golf course across the street for Donald Trump. In 2013, at the age of 25, Ritchie became New York City’s youngest elected official and the first openly L.G.B.T.Q. person elected to office in the Bronx.
There’s nothing more important to me than ensuring that every child in the South Bronx has a safe home, does not go hungry, and receives a good education. I am deeply concerned about how segregated our schools are. Even in New York City, we have an intensely segregated school system that is denying a generation of kids of color a fighting chance at a decent life. As a City Council Member, I introduced a bill to create an Office of School Diversity aimed at tackling deep segregation, and I will continue to fight for our children in Congress.
The educational crisis does not stop with our youngest students. The student debt crisis from higher education has grown to an unconscionable extent. Canceling student debt would relieve an unprecedented economic burden on working families, build a stronger bridge to the middle class, and fulfill the people’s right to an accessible, affordable education. I’m in favor of cancelling as much as $50,000 of student debt for federal student loan borrowers as well as extending the interest reduction on student loans as a form of pandemic relief. The cancellation of student debt would dramatically narrow the racial wealth gap, giving millions of families a fighting chance at long-term financial security.