Arise’s Akiesha Anderson gives a final update on the Alabama Legislature’s 2024 regular session, which ended last week. We closed the session with a big advocacy win: Lawmakers approved the funding needed to provide Summer EBT food assistance for more than 500,000 children starting next summer! For more information about what happened this year, please join Arise for our legislative session wrap-up on Tuesday, May 28, at 6 p.m. Register here.

Akiesha also shares the news that she will be leaving Arise later this month to accept a position with Represent Justice. We thank her for her work with Arise and wish her all the best in California!

Hi there. Akiesha Anderson here, policy and advocacy director for Alabama Arise, and I’m excited to be here to provide you with the final legislative update for the 2024 legislative regular session. Last week, we saw the Legislature wrap up the regular session after finally passing the Education Trust Fund budget. Alabama Arise and partners with the Hunger Free Alabama coalition worked tirelessly over the last few weeks to advocate for an appropriation of $10 million to $15 million to fund Summer EBT for 2025.

Thanks in large part to your help and the help of the thousands of Arise members that called and emailed legislators, we were able to end this legislative session with a huge win in the form of securing the $10 million needed to ensure that over half a million Alabama children who normally receive free or reduced lunch still receive meals that they elsewise might not might not have received due to school being out for the summer. I and the rest of the Arise staff are so tremendously grateful for your responsiveness to all the action alerts we sent out regarding this issue. It truly, truly, truly made a difference.

A few other notable happenings from last week include the passage of the General Fund budget, the passage of a child care tax credit bill, the passage of a workforce housing development bill and the passage of a bill that increases penalties for child labor violations. There was absolutely more. However, I hope that you will join me and the rest of the Arise team on Tuesday, May 28, at 6 p.m. for a much more thorough legislative wrap-up, where my team and I will talk in more depth about the highs and lows, wins and losses experienced this legislative session.

If you haven’t already received an email about how to register for that legislative wrap-up, simply email Pres Harris, our organizing director, at pres@alarise.org. That’s P-R-E-S at A-L-A-R-I-S-E dot O-R-G. You can email her for more registration information.

Lastly, it is with both deeper appreciation for you and the rest of the Arise family, along with a touch of sadness, that I share that this will unfortunately be my last legislative update video with Arise. At the end of this month, I will be transitioning to a new job with an Arise partner organization based in Los Angeles, California.

Some of you may know that my husband is from and located in Southern California and that during the legislative session, we are apart as I spend the session here in Montgomery. Well, as we prepare to try to grow our family, I have to make the bittersweet decision to transition to Southern California as well on a full-time basis.

Over the last two years, I cannot express how much each and every one of you have reminded me of how bright the future is here in my home state, where everyday people like us refuse to settle for the status quo, and where you all show up day in and day out to demand more. I hope that the fire that lights the fight within each and every one of you remains lit. We have certainly seen together — with the passage of both the grocery tax reduction, the $10 million Summer EBT allocation and so much more — what can happen when we refuse to let that fire be extinguished.

Again, I thank you for everything, and I hope to see you one final time at the legislative wrap-up taking place on May 28. Take care.