Platform
Our campaign stands for care, accountability, and justice. From housing and healthcare to education and wages, people deserve stability, dignity, and opportunity. We must end the cycles of war and exploitation, rebuild systems that serve everyone, and ensure that human rights, fairness, and community guide every policy decision.
Genocide
Ending the genocide of the Palestinian people is the cause for this generation. For the past two years, Palestinians have been documenting the genocide that they are facing from Israel. In these past two years, we have witnessed the state Israel enact a genocide on 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza totaling up to 680,000 people. All the while the U.S. continues to fund billions and billions of dollars and weaponry to Israel to continue to inflict mass atrocities on the Palestinian people. Multiple ceasefire resolutions vetoed by the U.S., the U.S. defunding of UNRWA, the multiple ceasefire agreements that Israel torpedoed, the war crimes; the absence of any accountability for the violence raging across Palestine, the tens of thousands of Palestinians held in prison without due process in abhorrent conditions, the blocking of aid and the famine it created - all of this must end. Ta-Nahesi Coates stated, “People are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic party defend this assault on democracy, I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you can’t probably draw the line at Democracy.”
As Americans overwhelmingly took to the streets to protest the U.S. funding of genocide, AIPAC-funded representatives put the desires of a foreign country over the people of the U.S. - arresting our students, censoring our people, targeting anyone who expresses even the slightest criticism of Israel's actions have been maligned by simply only requesting that any sense of humanity be restored. We cannot let people who supported Israel’s genocide to rewrite history and their own actions on our democracy to go unaccounted for. We cannot trust people who put the rules of the quiet car over international law. There is no bipartisanship in genocide. There must be an arms embargo, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sponsorship of the the Block the Bombs Act must pass. Any effort to stop this genocide and ensure the humanity, dignity, and respect of Palestinians must never dissipate.
Housing
Housing stability is at its highest need. Rent costs exceeding 50% of our monthly income, the inability to save money to put towards a downpayment for a house, the average age of the first-time homeowner highest that its ever been. Safe, permanent, quality housing is a right reserved for everyone. Developers, real estate companies, and landlords have set the rules of where we can live and the conditions we live under. Rooms remain empty as landlords refuse to lower the rent, a voucher system riddled with barriers, expiration dates, and waitlists, tenants facing constant fears of evictions - the balance of power against tenants leaves all of us vulnerable. As homelessness increases to expeditiously soaring levels, more protections should be in place to ensure permanent housing for residents. Direct and reliable rental assistance, the financing of public housing and collective/cooperative housing, ensuring everyone has a healthy place to live. For the elderly, for our children for those with disabilities, every effort must be made to urgently attend to the needs of our people and continue to push for Housing First policies.
Minimum Wages
The minimum wage has not been increased since 2009, and by that time it only rose from 70 cents from $6.55 an hour to $7.25 an hour. In those 16 years the minimum wage has seen no increase. As prices have continued to rise the current minimum wage of $7.25 is simply not acceptable. It is imperative that the minimum wage be increased to $15 an hour and higher. People at every juncture in their lives rely on a decent and fair wage that enshrines their time with value, respect, and dignity. High school students getting their first job and trying to save up for school, the parent in a dual income household looking to afford childcare, the single parent that is doing their best to support their children. Congress from both parties have denied increases from $10 to $15 Every job that contributes to our society no matter the industry deserves a wage they can live off. One full-time job should be enough, period.
Education
Schools are a representation of our communities. The healthier our communities are the healthier a school is. Federal policy from No Child Left Behind to the Every Child Succeeds Act, to Supreme court cases on vouchers, and the multi-pronged public investment in charter and private schools has left a discordant and incongruous policy in providing quality education for students. The efforts to hollow out the funding of public education have laid bare the incapacity to preserve quality education to the public and maintain stability for learning and growth of students, parents, and teachers alike. The struggles outside of school are having a large-scale impact in the classrooms as teachers are expected to bridge the gaps that they are not responsible in creating. Teachers deserve nothing less than quality and increased pay, benefits and consistent support in the classroom. Students as well, deserve an environment that is in inclusive to the their needs where the threat of gun violence is not present, where safety officers do not feel emboldened to enact violence in an environment where parents expect their kids to be safe, where LGBTQIA+ students and Black and Brown students are in an environment where racism, discrimination, and bias are addressed and rectified and where students can feel free to be themselves and learn more about themselves and their place in the world and not a topic of debate in their existence of it.
Foreign Policy
We are living in a multipolar world where U.S. dominance is no longer the currency of international relations. We cannot bomb our way to peace. Values of sovereignty, human rights, and peace must mean something. Continous interventionist policies, the funding of wars and genocide, the use of economic sanctions and tarrifs, along with the weaponization of the U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council has set us a part from the people of the world. All of this has fundamentally altered America’s place across the globe and how Americans exist in relation to nations, countries, and peoples all around us. Past and present historical involvement beyond our borders is unsustainable and it is driving the U.S. and its people into conflicts and destruction beyond our imagination. Diplomatically and militaristically we have no choice but to drastically shift, reform and build a new foreign policy based on the peaceful cultivation and strengthening of community of peoples in this world that strives to have an equal voice in the betterment of its people. That means reinventing our military funding to systems of care needed in our society. That means restructuring the U.N. Security Council to rebalance towards movements that seek dynamic change away from conflict and to resolution. The U.S. needs to come to terms with its roles and presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, the occupied territories in Palestine, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the world at-large. The U.S. led world order is fracturing at the seams, and our denial and inability to meet this moment where people crying for profound change will only lead to future consequences for the American people.