Interview: With Philadelphia Congressional Candidate Alexandra Hunt

Date of Interview: 07.04.2021

Interviewee: Alexandra Hunt, alexandramhunt.com, @ahunt4congress

Interviewer: Amira Holandi

Video Format Link: https://youtu.be/RaVD8r0hwpk

[00:00] — Holandi
Thank you for taking time to speak with me today. Can you begin by introducing yourself?

[00:05] — Hunt
Sure, my name is Alexandra Hunt. I’m a public health activist, girls’ soccer coach, community organizer, and I’m running for Congress in Pennsylvania's Third Congressional District.

[00:17] — Holandi
I’m Amira Holandi, and I’m writing for The Progressive Teen. To be respectful of your time, I’ll move straight to the questions. So you are an avid volunteer. How will you bring your spirit of helping your community from volunteering to public office?

[00:34] — Hunt
Well, I think that plays a key role that people should have when holding public office. We need to stop allowing politicians to kind of sit away in an Ivory tower and instead be involved in the community. So when elected to public office, I intend to maintain that relationship and use that to continue to grow my relationship within different community organizations, rather than just going to DC and never having contact with the people who put me there in the first place.

[01:14] — Holandi
Yeah. And similar to that, you have spoken about complacency in leadership and the importance of having young people involved in politics. Given that this is a teen publication, I think it would be interesting to hear about your experience working with young volunteers on your campaign. So how is that going?

[01:37] — Hunt
I think that it’s extremely important to have people involved in politics. I’m a young person involved in politics. I’m a young millennial, and essentially we are inheriting this world that is very much broken. And so the earlier we can get involved, the earlier we can get active and start to use our voice to start to build our power as younger generations, the sooner we can start to correct our course into future generations and move forward.

[02:12] — Holandi
So you said currently you are a public health research, how is studying and working in the medical field impacted your perception of the health care system?

[02:28] — Hunt
Oh, that’s a very complicated question . . . It left me a bit jaded. It has left me a bit jaded. My involvement . . . I’ve been on the clinical side of things, and I’ve been on the research side of things, and they’re not exactly identical. They are married to each other. On the clinical side of things, it made me a huge advocate for the need for universal health care. For the need to nationalize our health care system, so that every single person in this country can have health care and when they are in need of care, they feel confident going to whatever outlet of care that they have near them and they’ll receive care and they won’t have to worry about debt. Because as I’ve moved through my career towards the public health activist that I am today, I’ve worked a lot in cancer therapy. And so one of the most devastating things to learn is that when a patient is given their diagnosis, they have cancer and they’re going to need to fight for their life, they’re more concerned of how are they going to pay for that rather than how are they going to live? And that’s a huge issue, so it made me a big advocate for universal health care.
And then on the research side of things, it has engrossed me in a world that we need to constantly discuss ethics. And we need to constantly discuss our responsibility to subjects and to people who are coming onto trials, who are pushing our questions and our horizons of science forward. But how can we honor them in the involvement, in research?

[04:15] — Holandi
Yeah. That’s very comprehensive. So to speak of your other job experience, throughout college, you worked as both a restaurant server and a stripper. So how has your experience as a sex worker and a restaurant server informed your positions on the economy?

[04:42] — Hunt
I know what living paycheck to paycheck is like, and I know the anxiety that comes from it and just the constant stress and how it feels like. Every day you never know what’s going to happen next and how the foundation that you’re trying to build beneath your feet is going to crumble. It’s very lonely. It feels shameful, and it’s isolating to be under that much debt and burden of economic instability. And then working as both a sex worker and a server — it comes with stigma. It comes with people who think that they are better than you because they don’t do what you. And what I learned is that, A) they’re not better than me and B) I learned the important lesson of putting in the effort and the work and just how to roll up my sleeves and get a job done.

[05:43] — Holandi
Speaking of people thinking that they’re better than you because of the job that you did in college, have you experienced any discrimination in regards to your past being a sex worker?

[05:57] — Hunt
Yes, I have. Quite a lot, actually. Especially in regards to the patriarchy. But I had at the start of the launch of this campaign, I was coaching two girls’ soccer teams. And when the parents of these teams found out that I was formerly a sex worker, I ultimately got pushed out of the job by the club. And that was pretty heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking not just to face bigotry and discrimination, but just to lose my players because I love coaching girls’ soccer.

[06:40] — Holandi
I’m really sorry to hear that happened. Speaking of your campaign, you have taken a strong stance against taking any corporate funding. Has that complicated the way your campaign is, especially going against someone that’s so established?

[07:01] — Hunt
Yes, it is so hard. But at the end of the day, I think that it can help me get to sleep at night to know that I am fighting for the people and with the people and not for corporate interests. My opponent recently joined with the community college that he attended, and they put out an $850,000 TV commercial on him. I’m not going to have that kind of support. I am going person to person asking for $5, asking for $10. But in going person to person and building it dollar by dollar, I’m getting to learn what the community needs. I’m getting to meet people, and there are incredible people in our community who want to see this world be a better place. And I’m getting them to join our movement. Individual donations: I think he has 11. We’re approaching 800.

[08:05] — Holandi
Wow. That difference is very contrasting. So how will the people of Philadelphia benefit from having you represent them?

[08:17] — Hunt
We need a fighter. We need somebody who’s going to fight for our issues, and then also somebody who knows about our issues. And when this pandemic struck, I was out at food distribution sites. I was at our homeless encampment that formed in the Parkway. I was out distributing menstrual items. I was in the front line doing testing and vaccine distribution. And so I could just hear. And then on top of that, I was out protesting with the Black Lives Matter movement. And you being in community, you hear what’s going on, and we cannot get our current representative to join us in community. And that was something that was just so frustrating. Is that being so close to the pain, facing the pain, Philly is in a lot of pain. Everyday life is very, very hard. But knowing that our representative was, you know, in his Ivory tower, not coming around, not really understanding how badly our community was being hit.

[09:27] —Holandi
So as a final question, is there anything that you want to add, anything that we haven’t discussed that you would like to bring up?

[09:39] — Hunt
I would like to add just more about young people getting involved. I think the reason more young people are getting involved and are being politically active is because they have to be. It’s because our future as a viable country and a viable world is no longer much of a guarantee. It’s actually very up in the air. So young people getting involved, Progressive Teen, volunteering on campaigns, or just simply organizing and advocating—it’s incredible. And I have so much respect for our younger generations, and I’m learning from just as much as I’m learning from what I’m inheriting from our older generations. The younger generations — I really admire their fight and their courage to make sure that we have a future.