John,

I recently sat down with TIME as part of their featured series The Closers — “18 Black leaders working to end the racial wealth gap.”

Here’s what I told them:

After I graduated from law school, my mom asked me, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

I decided to move to Newark’s Central Ward to see if I could make an impact.

It was only through the support of our community that I could make that impact on the city council. Virginia Jones, a local tenant leader who helped with that first election in 1998, told me, “Boy, don’t forget where you came from and who sent you.”

That’s why I still have a map of Newark’s Central Ward hanging behind my desk in my Senate office. I still live in Newark’s Central Ward today, where the median household income in my Census Tract today is $19,500.

Through my time on the city council, serving two terms as mayor, and a decade in the Senate, I’ve seen the impacts of the racial wealth gap personally.

Since 1980, the wealth gap has widened, and today White Americans have six times the wealth per capita of Black Americans.

The solutions aren’t complicated. They just require the political will to get them done.

The American Rescue Plan Act included an expanded child tax credit that reduced child poverty by 43% — until Mitch McConnell and the GOP let it expire. Today, child poverty is back to the pre-pandemic status quo.

I’ve introduced “Baby Bonds” legislation with Rep. Ayanna Pressley that would create a savings account for every child in the country, and would virtually close the Black-to-White racial wealth gap within a generation.

And I will continue to work with anyone and everyone to solve it. Because I’ve also learned this: Genius is equally distributed in America.

There are as many geniuses born in Beverly Hills per capita as in Newark per capita — but we must give that genius the opportunity to flourish in communities like mine.

That’s what I’m working for every day in the Senate and on this campaign. If you’re able to support this work, I’m personally asking you to pitch in $10 to help build the more just, loving nation that I know we can become.

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With love and gratitude,

Cory