Alexandra Hunt

I am a public health researcher, a girls’ soccer coach, and an organizer fighting for the 3rd district of Pennsylvania. I am a survivor, the daughter of two teachers, and a sister to a twin brother. Growing up in the inner city of Rochester, NY, I attended school in the suburbs and noticed the inequity in resources, education, housing, and job opportunities between both areas. Attending the University of Richmond, I worked as both a server and stripper to make ends meet and save money by graduating in three years. After college, I moved to Philadelphia to attend Drexel University and receive a master’s degree. Living here, I became invested in our community’s everyday challenges by volunteering as an emergency medical technician, working in various medical clinics, and distributing meals out of soup kitchens. In 2020, I graduated from Temple University with a MPH. When the pandemic hit, I did what I could, volunteering at testing and vaccine distribution sites, providing mental health support at local encampments, and advocating for housing and healthcare for all, rent freezes, and criminal justice reform. Seeing the government severely mishandle responses to COVID-19, I crossed a new threshold of frustration and decided to run.

• I am committed to dismantling the establishment notion that equitable and just policy is radical. We need compassionate politics and a radical love for all people.
• It is up to all of us to fight for anti-racist policy. White supremacy will exist until white people realize it is also a white person's problem and not simply a problem for people of color for white people to sympathize with. Our campaign is building a multi-racial, working-class coalition to dismantle systems of white supremacy because nobody should be marginalized in a democracy. We are dedicated to anti-racist policy across every sector because white supremacy has infected our systems of education, healthcare, housing, criminal justice, and foreign policy for too long. I am also working twice as hard to continue to learn how whiteness functions and earn the trust and votes of Philadelphia’s black community. Silence is violence, and I wi
• As a public health worker, I specialize in prevention. When you see a problem and work to solve that problem, that is an intervention. When you see a problem and work to stop that problem from occurring in the first place, that is prevention. I’m running to get at the root of our problems, which takes federal-level solutions to systemic issues.

Abolition, restorative justice, mass liberation, and decriminalizing sex work are issue/public policy areas that I am extremely passionate about and in which I have been an activist and organizer. As the daughter of two teachers and also someone with a student debt burden, I am very passionate about the necessity of fully funding our public education, including public college and trade school, having living wages for teachers, ending the pre-school-to-prison pipeline, and cancelling student debt. The country’s urgent need for a single-payer universal Medicare for All program, a Green New Deal, a federal jobs guarantee, housing for all, and food security for all is also exceedingly important to me. Education, healthcare, a livable planet, clean water and air, employment, housing, and food security are human rights. Ultimately, I’m most passionate about fighting for across-the-board anti-racist policy. Our campaign is dedicated to anti-racism and reparations across every sector because white supremacy has infected our systems of education, healthcare, housing, criminal justice, and foreign policy for too long.

My run for Congress is very much inspired by activists and abolitionists. I look up to Sarah and Angelina Grimke. The Grimke Sisters were two early activists for abolition and women’s rights. I am grateful for their legacy. I also find Angela Davis such a strong, inspiring activist and abolitionist and like to reflect on her work. Stephen Biko, too, fought against the South African apartheid in such a relentless, nonviolent way and draws my admiration.

I think that a sense of urgency is crucial. I carry around within me the urgency of a public health worker whose representative opposes Medicare for All as a pandemic bears down upon her and her city. Every day, I live the reality of a status quo that has my community in crisis. We deserve so much better. We need change.

I think that the guiding light for an elected official should be compassionate politics, radical love for all people, and the courage to fight for a free and just society.

On and off the campaign trail, an elected official should refuse all corporate PAC, lobbyist, and other big special interest money. They must answer to and be accountable to the people alone.

An elected official must also stay grounded in principles and let values drive their work to reimagine and transform the status quo. The pressure to cave is likely enormous, and it is precisely under that overwhelming pressure when, to remain true to themselves and do the job they were elected to do, a lawmaker has no other option but to lean into it fiercely and renew their commitment to values-driven public service. Otherwise they’re betraying their communities and underperforming. The way I see it is: When, if elected, I am putting my reputation with the establishment on thin ice, I am doing exactly what shattering the status quo requires of me within the walls of Congress. I am doing exactly what a future with mass liberation, restorative justice, reparations, education equity, healthcare and housing for all, and a liveable planet require of all of us together.

I graduated college in 2014 – a year early. About my early graduation, I remember one of my high school peers making the comment that “Hunt was always too smart for us.” In reality, despite the generous financial aid package the University of Richmond provided, I was actually too poor for them. I graduated in three years to save money, even despite working two jobs as a server and a stripper to make ends meet. Recently, I was pushed out of my job as a soccer coach after my transparency of formerly working as a sex worker.

I believe it's beneficial for representatives to have previous experience in activism, advocacy work, and organizing. Previous experience in government and/or politics all too often signals an establishment-backed, corporately sponsored career politician. My community is used to waiting over the course of someone's career for transformative change and never seeing it happen. In the meantime, we lead our country in poverty; are angry, frustrated, and hurt; and need representatives who are going to fight for us.

Mass liberation and restorative justice are among our greatest obligations right now and, unfortunately, among our greatest challenges in the coming years. I support eliminating cash bail, ending death by incarceration, increasing compassionate release, ending mandatory minimums, abolishing the death penalty, closing all for-profit prisons, restoring the right to vote of currently incarcerated people, significantly reducing the United States’ overall population of currently incarcerated individuals, working tirelessly to end the War on Drugs, and decriminalizing sex work. Criminalizing sex workers drives them underground, compromising health and safety. Although attempts to criminalize the purchase of sex work do exist, the stigma and fear of legal repercussions persist for the workers themselves, disproportionately affecting trans women of color. As a congresswoman, I would fight to protect sex workers by decriminalizing prostitution and loitering for adults and expunging past convictions.

Public education is the backbone of a healthy democracy, but our current system is failing students of color, low-income students, and neurodivergent students. Decades of depleted federal funds have created a multi-billion-dollar discrepancy in the funds invested in predominantly white and predominantly minority school districts. Reversing this damage in the coming years is among our country’s greatest, most urgent challenges and obligations. In Congress, I would push for equity-driven and student-focused education policies to dramatically increase our federal investment in public education, pay our teachers a living wage, and make schools the center of thriving communities.