By Ashleigh Crocker

It’s December, so you might be drinking hot chocolate, decorating a tree, lighting a menorah, shopping til you drop, spending time with family, or marking the holiday season with your own special traditions. But for us at Progress Virginia, December means something else too: it’s time to get ready for the General Assembly session!

That’s right, we’re frantically refreshing the legislative services website, waiting for bills to drop, preparing talking points and messaging documents, deciding which bills we will support and which ones we will try to defend against, and getting ready to hold our legislators accountable. 

We’ve got a list of about 20 policy priorities that we want to work for that includes everything from fighting for paid sick leave, expanding the child tax credit, fighting to voting rights, a constitutional amendment to protect abortion access, and much more. We’re also getting ready to fight back against who knows how many bad bills Republicans will drop. We’ve already seen bills like HB1395 that tries to limit access to abortion and HB1393, which would allow anyone to carry a concealed handgun without even needing a permit. More bills are coming in every day, we know we are going to have our work cut out for us in January and February. 

But you can help by spending some of your time during this holiday season reaching out to your legislators and letting them know what your priorities are for session. Tell them that you expect them to spend their time during the legislative session fighting to make things easier for hardworking families in our community. We want action on economic justice, health care, climate change, and much more because we all deserve to live in a community where we all have the opportunity to thrive.