Testifying in favor of financial aid for undocumented students before the General Assembly in 2016, when she was a law student in her mid-twenties and about to become a naturalized U.S. citizen, Fortune offered herself as an example of what educational opportunity can mean to a young immigrant.

“My family left Haiti in 2000. We came to the U.S. as tourists and became undocumented immigrants in search of a better future,” Fortune told lawmakers. “When we first arrived, eight of us, including my parents and brother, shared one bedroom in my aunt’s house. But the house had indoor plumbing, running water and even more importantly, access to the U.S. school system.”

Question: What would you like to accomplish if elected to Congress?

Answer: If elected to Congress, I want to be able to expand the paths that I have used to achieve a middle-class life…The trees that have shaded me as I worked hard to achieve a future for myself, they're being cut down by this administration. Whether it's the cost of education being made harder, the demonization of immigrants that is affecting our economy and making people fearful of showing up for work, vital jobs that we need in our society. Those are all things that are not only detrimental to immigrants, but detrimental to our country as a whole.

Politics found me. When I was 12 years old, my family moved to the US from Haiti. For the first 10 years of my life, I was undocumented. I live with a constant fear of deportation. So fighting for immigrant right in some ways is fighting for our constitutional rights because we're immigrants are at the bottom now. I'm a naturalized citizen. Trump is growing his team of people who will review naturalization applications to try to strip people like me of our citizenships.

Mike Hydeck: What are some of the things that are being dismantled that you'd like to change?
Ruth Fortune: There are policies that are failing us from crib to coffin. Not funding our public schools. I wouldn't be here today if I did not have the opportunity to go to a public school where I was able to take honors classes, AP classes offered opportunities to me that my parents, as immigrants, who did not speak English and earned poverty wages, were not able to offer to me. So school gave me that access. The way we treat our elders in this country. Long term care is not included as health care and as an attorney who practiced Elder Law for many years, I've had clients who are successful by many standards, retired teachers, nurses, principals, who now have had to impoverish them to get Medicaid to take care of themselves in their older ages. Those are all systems that we have designed and they're failing us. But we have people in Washington, D.C. who are not living those experiences.

“I’ve been in this country for most of my life at this point, and the way we fund our public schools—the idea that the quality of education a child [receives] based on the zip code [they] live in—is wrong,” Fortune said. “We have the resources to educate all of our students well, we’re just not fully providing those resources in an equitable fashion.” 

“Real affordability begins with pay that covers the cost of living. For my family, achieving intergenerational financial stability meant helping my parents retire by having them move in with me. I can run for Congress as a 37-year-old mother of three because in our multigenerational household, we care for each other and uplift each other. I can’t replicate my mother, who is as devoted to her grandchildren as her mother was to me, for every young mother forced out of the workforce. I can’t make everyone’s partner as supportive as my husband. What I can do is fight for policies that allow families to thrive like affordable housing, universal childcare, well-funded public schools, healthcare for all, long-term care covered by Medicare and paid family leave.”

"The US invaded Venezuela for its oil. Opportunistic. Immoral. Lawless.

Make no mistake. President Trump carried out an unauthorized act of war against Venezuela, bombing another nation’s capital and forcibly removing its leader without congressional approval. That violates the Constitution, the War Powers Clause, national sovereignty, and international law. International law does not disappear because we claim moral superiority.

This is not a partisan. War powers belong to Congress. Members are sworn to uphold the Constitution, not protect a President’s ego or political future."

“I am not an advocate of charter schools. Any system that takes away funding for our public schools into another system where you get to select your students is not to the benefit of every child. It creates two unequal systems.”