Welcome to Amped Up. This is your host Ryan Knight and our guest today is Chris Armitage. Chris is a US Air Force veteran and a candidate for Congress in Washington's fifth Congressional District.

Chris, welcome to Amt Up.

Thanks for having me Ryan, excited to be here.

I've been following you on Twitter for a while. I love the work you're doing and

you know, we big pharma and Wall Street banks might have record profits but you know what not a lot of people get de-radicalized or unradicalized right now after getting screwed over.

And so I'm really optimistic about this movement.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, we beat the machine with people power.

And the progressive movement right now,

we've got the people on our side. You know, and I'm from Washington.

So it's exciting to see that there are progressive candidates that are getting out there in this fight and you know fighting. of candidate from Washington I've had on the podcast. I also had Rebecca Parsons on last month who was fantastic. So this is it's exciting.

Since this is your first time on the show why didn't give our listeners a little bit about your background and why you're

running for Congress? Sure, you know, so I come from a union family. My dad was a

member of a trade union when he did HVAC repair and then was a member of UTU when he worked for the railroad.

My grandfather was a teamster delivery driver.

As I come from a pretty blue collar background, I joined the military right out of high school.

And you know, that was an opportunity for me to get out there and get, you know, education without a lot of debt get universal single-payer

health care because that's what active duty military have I'm not talking

about the VA talking about active duty military have completely free universal health care from hospitals to clinics on base and there are millions of them and their family members and that was some incredible health care where I didn't have to

worry about my doctor getting me in and out as quick as possible so they could bill

more and they didn't have to fill out a bunch of paperwork for me to go get an x-ray

or get an exam or get a test. They just say go to the third floor or get the test.

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