James Evanoff began earning a pension while working at a UPS warehouse in 2001 and continued adding to it when he switched to a job at a small chemical company in suburban Cleveland.

But then a wave of insolvency roiled multiemployer pension funds, threatening to wipe out everything that he and 1.3 million other workers nationwide had spent years—in some cases, decades—building.

Fortunately, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio stepped forward with an unshakable resolve to save their retirements. He spent five years fighting for legislation to shore up the failing plans and ultimately pushed the bill over the finish line in 2021 without a single Republican vote.

Among the 535 members of Congress, only a handful stand with working people so faithfully, and so passionately, that they’re considered part of labor’s family.

Brown is one of them.

“My opinion is, he’s the working people’s champion,” said Evanoff, now a member of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 979 who works at the Cleveland-Cliffs mill in Cleveland. “There’s no other way to describe him. He cares about working people, not big business.”

This year alone, Brown joined the USW’s effort to rebuild the domestic shipbuilding industry, helped to secure duties on several countries unlawfully undercutting U.S. shopping bag producers, and urged new limits on imports of oil country tubular goods to support workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

And by assailing China’s scheme to dump steel in U.S. markets via Mexico, he’s working to preserve jobs at Evanoff’s mill and others like it.

Just as important, Brown understands that workers need not only a good paycheck but a seat at the table and safe working conditions. He’s a top proponent of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, a USW-backed bill that would empower more workers to form unions, and his advocacy with federal safety agencies continues to protect workers from cancer-causing silica and other workplace hazards.

Russell McCarthy takes two forms of insulin, along with various other medications, to help control the diabetes that’s plagued him for decades.

As he worked to lower his blood sugar levels, the prices of his prescriptions continued to rise, costing him thousands of dollars out of pocket every year.

But then President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took a step at once compassionate and sensible. They capped insulin at $35 a month for all Medicare recipients, annually saving retirees like McCarthy thousands of dollars that they’re able to use to pay other bills, spend on local businesses or otherwise pour into the economy.

Even as McCarthy relishes this additional security, however, he knows that the future of accessible, affordable health care will be at risk in the Nov. 5 election.

As vice president, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate two years ago to overcome Republican obstructionism and pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the legislation that curbed skyrocketing insulin costs and delivered other kinds of health care savings to millions of retirees.

Now, Harris wants to build on the IRA, improve the nation’s care system and continue to cut patient costs.

Donald Trump wants to drag the nation backward. His supporters already circle like vultures, eager to conspire with him to roll back the IRA, restrict access to health services, and free drug companies to exploit seniors all over again.

“I am insulin-resistant. I use a lot of insulin,” explained McCarthy, a former steel mill worker and United Steelworkers (USW) activist in Mansfield, Mass., who estimates the $35 cap saves him about $530 a month and nearly $6,400 a year. “The money comes in handy, for sure.”

McCarthy, 70, who’s had complications with his eyes, feet and heart because of diabetes, left the mill and changed careers long before retirement. While he occasionally delayed picking up a prescription to stretch his money over the years, other retirees faced a much grimmer scenario before the IRA.

It broke Cynthia Overby’s heart over the years to see her students struggle to afford menstrual products, try to get by without them or skip school some days for the privacy of home.

The longtime teacher later worked with an Illinois legislator to make these essentials available on college campuses and cheered when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation providing them in his own state’s public schools.

Overby, long active in the United Steelworkers (USW), knows that America’s greatness depends on lifting everyone up and providing opportunity to all. That’s why she became an educator. It’s the reason she’s devoted decades to civic and union activism.

And it’s why she’s voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Walz, in the Nov. 5 presidential election.

Harris and Walz want to empower the disadvantaged, build the middle class and ensure retirement security, harnessing the enormous strides of the past four years to continue America’s march forward.

The other candidates, Donald Trump and JD Vance, threaten all of that. As the two bumble through a campaign devoid of decency, not to mention good ideas, they and their supporters stoop so low as to mock Walz’s kindness for others.

“That a man implemented a policy like that so warms my heart,” said Overby, a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) in Granite City, Ill., who has a few choice words of her own for the out-of-touch, low-class Republicans who call Walz “Tampon Tim.”

When she taught children with varying abilities, she told her students, “Help each other.” Now, she devotes part of her retirement to a super-active SOAR chapter that fights childhood hunger, raises scholarships for college students, sends holiday gifts to U.S. troops overseas and supports a local emergency shelter for women and children.

She insists that America’s leaders not only demonstrate the same level of compassion but share her determination to level the playing field for others.

A knot formed in Sam Phillips’ stomach a few months ago when he learned that corroded titanium—sold with faked documents—somehow made it into doors and other components on civilian airliners.

It was exactly the kind of nightmare scenario that Phillips and other members of the United Steelworkers (USW) warned of while trying to save the nation’s last titanium sponge plant, located in Henderson, Nev.

TIMET closed the plant anyway in 2020, not only leaving America dependent on foreign supplies of a crucial industrial material but putting the nation’s security at risk.

Only domestic ownership of manufacturing supply chains—from the sourcing of raw materials like titanium sponge to production of goods like airplane components—will keep the nation strong.

Fortunately, the Biden-Harris administration grasps what’s at stake and delivered historic legislation like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to revitalize the nation’s manufacturing economy and preserve America’s freedom.

It’s essential for Americans to own supply chains across all industries, Phillips said, noting foreign companies can cut off shipments of goods at any time and for any reason.

Even manufacturers in ostensibly friendly countries like Japan can encounter production delays or shift operations, affecting U.S. access to needed goods. Just as worrisome, as the airliner titanium scare shows, the long decline of domestic manufacturing capacity even left Americans at the mercy of rogue, corner-cutting producers operating in the shadows thousands of miles away.

“How did it get manufactured and actually put in a plane?” asked Phillips, former president of USW Local 4856.

“It doesn’t make me want to get on airplanes anytime soon,” added Phillips, who learned about the debacle while reading a New York Times article in June. “They should have U.S. titanium in them.”