Meet Tara Anura, running for Missouri State Senate in District 16
Tara told us that within her district there are mainly rural areas that are in desperate need of positive change. She believes that the current leadership in her district is not meeting the needs of the people—and she aims to fix this issue. One example Tara gave us is that the current Senator, Justin Brown, worked to block Medicaid expansion as he doesn’t believe it will help the people. Tara disagreed with this, and even brought signatures and support for expanding Medicaid to the Senator’s office. She says that despite the voice of her community members asking for help, they were brushed off with little explanation or positive conversation. Tara told us that as a person with disabilities, she wants to make a difference in her life along with others who are like her. This means having affordable healthcare within her state. She is also a queer woman and aims to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community in Missouri.
Tara pointed out to us some of the issues that her district faces. One of the only homeless shelters between several counties is the one in her community, Rolla. This is also the home of one of the few mental health inpatient facilities. Because of this, her county is picking up the needs of many other counties. She believes that the residents of these communities deserve their tax money coming back to them in the form of improved services and resources. This way, there could be more resources across more counties.
If Tara is successful, she sees a world where people stand behind progressive candidates and give them support that they need. This would mean that more progressive thinkers could become involved in government and lead to better ways of life for the people who deserve good leaders. She also believes in a world where schools, teacher pay, housing, and healthcare are better funded. We learned that some schools in this district have even started adopting shorter school weeks to make up for budget cuts. Tara wants to help public schools stay open and funded.
We learned from Tara that in Rolla, there is a lot of diversity. The university of Science and Technology in this community brings in people from all around the world! So many different cultures and religions are represented there. Unfortunately, alongside this diversity Tara also sees fear of what people consider different to themselves. She says that some people see protecting the rights of minority groups as themselves losing something. Tara wants to show people that there are many issues we can all work together to solve and that we can all win.
Tara has a support dog named Rosie and is even a published author! She has poems and stories and even an essay that was published into a collection. One of her side hobbies is collecting postcards with mesmerizing images of travel destinations. Her postcard passion began when she would travel with her family as a child and grab a postcard from each place they went to. It helps her hold onto the beautiful memories made there!