US Rep. Ayanna Pressley and 5th Suffolk District state Rep. Chris Worrell hosted a “Coffee with the Congresswoman” event at First Parish Dorchester on Tuesday (April 23) where Pressley shared some of the projects she had taken on over her past five years in Congress.

After she was greeted with a standing ovation, Pressley talked about her work on the House Committee of Financial Services holding some of the biggest banks in the country accountable for their promises in 2020 to commit $32.5 billion dollars to “advance racial equity” in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, and she said she was pleasantly surprised to see that they were making some progress.

“Because banks have played a role in creating the racial wealth gap, I want to hold them accountable for being just as the harm was, in being just as precise in the healing,” Pressley said.

One of the main issues Pressley has said she’s focused on is housing.

“Housing is the first, second, and third priority,” she said. For a number of reasons, one of which being the partisanship of the House of Representatives in this current session, Pressley said they have only been able to hold two hearings so far on affordable housing.

Additionally, Pressley was one of the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, which she brought up at the event, and she also reiterated her call for instituting a redesignation of temporary protected status to Haitians, and to provide humanitarian aid to Haiti during their period of political turmoil.

“If you believe Black lives matter, Haitian lives matter too,” Pressley said.

Pressley answered several constituents’ questions, and promised that she or her staff would follow up with ones she couldn’t address at the event.
“They’ve taken away a lot of my in-district time because of the unpredictability and chaos in Congress right now,” Pressley said. “But just know, you have my attention.”