As a minister who worked with Andrew Yang, I'm glad to see everyone finally admitting he was right

What Andrew proposed spoke to me, as a reverend from a small town in Ohio whose family worked in blue-collar jobs

Andrew Yang ( Stephen McCarthy/Collision)

Andrew Yang was right — and I knew it from the day I was first introduced to his campaign in February 2018. I’d stumbled across an article in the New York Times entitled “The Robots are Coming”, featuring a new entrant into the 2020 presidential race.

Though I was still reeling from the outcome of the 2016 election, I found the article’s title intriguing enough to continue reading and found therein a message that resonated on a level with me that I was not expecting.

Yang talked about how thousands of jobs had already been automated away, particularly across the Midwest, and how more job losses were on the way if immediate action was not taken. He pointed out, accurately, that people were suffering, feeling left behind and uncertain about their futures. I knew intimately the scenario he was describing.

I grew up in the small town of Portsmouth, Ohio in the late 70’s and early 80’s, and manufacturing was the backbone of our community. My grandfather worked at the atomic plant; my grandmother, the shoe factory; and when their jobs began to disappear, due to automation or being shipped overseas, so did their hope.

Making $16 to $20 per hour in those days meant a pretty decent living, and afforded our family the opportunity to maintain a relatively stable existence. In the absence of that income, everything faltered.

There were no comparable jobs available and unemployment income was merely a temporary stop-gap. Everything fell apart, not just for our family but many others in the community. We felt forgotten.

Yang talked about that human suffering and how people needed a lifeline then and now; how people need to feel like they have a chance to recover. Subsequently, he introduced the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month for every American to offer some measure of stability and reassurance while we faced the crisis ahead. He was offering a tangible solution, not just an idea. All I could think about was how that money would have made a world of difference to our family and so many others. I reached out to the campaign via email that day and never looked back.

Universal Basic Income, I later discovered, had been supported by many in the past, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, who championed the idea just before he was assassinated in 1968, the year I was born. He saw it as the moral imperative of our time. Andrew picked up the torch. Under his campaign mantra of Humanity First, he carried it forward to the present day and brought it to the presidential debates. Andrew believed in giving Americans an economic floor to stand on.

As a minister, I thought about members of my congregation who were faced with the choice of paying for their rent or getting their medications and how an extra $1,000 a month would change the entire trajectory of their lives. Spiritually, it was akin to “taking care of the least of these” and following the golden rule.

Many dismissed the idea of UBI during Yang’s campaign, which he suspended in February; some even laughed. Now he’s being sought after by people across the political spectrum, including the current administration. His phone is ringing off the hook.

The coronavirus pandemic is a human crisis of monumental proportion, the likes of which we have not seen before. All of humanity is being affected and the potential for losses both emotional and financial is tremendous. Our collective hope is being shaken and people need immediate help.

Suddenly the idea of putting cash directly into people’s hands, as UBI proposes, has caught on and is making sense to everyone. The notion that money is needed to keep us from falling off a cliff is the same message Yang was sharing two years ago. It makes sense in so many arenas: in the context of the threat of automation as well as an epidemic.

Votes were taken this week in Congress to pass a form of temporary Universal Basic Income for all Americans. Checks will begin going out in April. What began as a novel idea became an actionable proposal and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

People are seeing today what I saw early in 2018 — Andrew Yang was right. And our country is the better for it.

Rev. Wendy Hamilton is the former Director of Spiritual and Cultural Outreach for Andrew Yang for President 2020