Rachel Sanchez describes herself as a Medicaid cancer patient, a survivor and a fighter. This past week, she added advocate to the list.
She joined several other Coloradans from across the state who travelled to D.C. to meet with their Congress members or their staff to ask them to support more funding for cancer research and to extend the enhanced ACA tax credit.
“Cancer research actually has saved my life. It actually gave me a chance to fight. I'm fighting right now. And why I am also here is because I would like to give a voice to those that could not be here,” she said. That includes her two sisters, who died from ovarian cancer, and her father, who had prostate cancer twice.”
Sabrine Hobart has been making this annual trip with the American Cancer Society for 10 years. “It is so empowering to be able to use my own voice and everything that I've been through with my cancer journey to turn it into something that is good.”
Visits like this give advocates an opportunity to educate members, especially new ones, on their topic and to start to build relations. But, Hobart said, it can also be frustrating talking to an office that you know will not likely support your ask.
“When you have a lawmaker that says, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, I hear you,’ but they're not going to support the legislation. Cancer is nonpartisan,” she said.
Still, she understands the current political and fiscal situation. The Trump Administration has cut a lot of research funding and the Republican-led Congress has not moved to reinstate any of it. (Congress is currently working on government funding bills.)
“With cancer research, if they continue to cut cancer research and don't fund it, we're going to lose so much innovation. The ripple effects from that (is), people are going to actually die. Americans are going to die because of this,” she said.
ACS wasn’t the only group that brought Coloradans to the U.S. Capitol this week. Another group, this one associated with Save the Children, came to advocate for early childhood education and Head Start funding.
“I think that we bring kind of an energy and a passion and a commitment to children in early childhood and their families, and I think it's important that we share that voice,” said Kiki McGough from Arvada, who was lobbying for more Head Start funding. “It is something that is really valuable for our future, and the investment in young children during that critical brain development will make a profound impact for the future.”
Dr. Cathrine Floyd, who was on the Save the Children team to advocate for early childhood education, agreed.
“We do panels, we do interviews, we talk to lawmakers and we hear over and over again that constituent voices really count,” she said. “They really are listening. They want to know what people think, particularly if it's maybe an issue that they don't know all that much about.”
Hearing directly from constituents does matter, even if it always doesn’t change votes.
“Sometimes it brings to light issues that weren't top of mind for me,” said GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert. An example she gave was the issue of ‘right to repair,’ which Colorado has passed, but not the federal government. She’s heard from farmers, car manufacturers and car dealers on the issue. “And I've told all of them, I have to take a deeper look at these pieces of legislation because this is not something that I was focused on in prioritizing.”
Hearing the different angles, Boebert said, helps her before making any decision on legislation or drawing a hard line.
And ultimately, that’s what the Coloradoans who make the 1,600-mile trek want.
Jamie Vigil, a cancer survivor from Pueblo, knows she won’t change everyone’s mind; “some support us, some don’t. So it’s iffy.” But she says it's still worth her time and effort.
“We don't win everything that we go for. Life's not like that,” said Martha Cox from Morrison, a fellow cancer survivor. Still, she comes back year after year to make the case that cancer research is not a waste of taxpayer money. “I keep coming back to try to get people to see it that way.”
