Month: November 2020

WORKING FAMILIES SUSTAIN AMERICA

No full-time worker should live in poverty. Colorado seems remarkable with some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. But when we look closely, rural residents, single women with children and people of color are unemployed and underemployed at far greater rates than their city-living white, male counterparts. I will uphold and strengthen employment laws that guarantee equal wages and prevent discrimination, that support paid family leave and access to affordable childcare.

As Senator, I will also oppose big tax cuts to big corporations while I push banks to provide loans to entrepreneurs and small businesses, especially those that are underrepresented- and/or women-owned. I will work to protect the jobs of teachers, nurses and other healthcare providers, farm workers and service workers, and to create additional jobs that improve our infrastructure for the future.  

Communities throughout Colorado are dependent on agriculture, coal/fossil fuels, and tourism. As I work to support different aspects of these economic drivers, I will also promote legislation to assist communities to shift from outdated industries into sustainable alternatives such as clean energy and cyber security, in which Colorado is already heavily investing.

While individual states are increasing their minimum wage, we must ensure wages remain a livable wage rates. Colorado home prices and rents are among the fastest growing in the nation. The minimum wage has to be connected to the cost of living. I will fight to make sure that everyday people and working families make enough money to afford to live and support their families.

EDUCATION ACROSS AMERICA

The current tax bill, targeting everything from K-12 teacher allowances to graduate students, is a full-on assault on educational access and equity. I will work collaboratively to bring educators, parents and students back into the foreground of the conversation and the legislative process, to protect the rights of all students, and to ensure funding structures that support equity and access.

As an educator from a family of educators, I will prioritize equitable financial support to local districts, comprehensive early childhood education, internet access for our rural communities, reduced costs of higher education, minimizing or eliminating student debt and providing diverse learning opportunities such as trade certificates and hands-on job experience for students who want to further their education. To address real concerns about access to and cost of higher education, I will work to construct co-curricular legislation allowing high school students to earn college level general education credits and/or work toward associate degrees alongside their diplomas. Regardless of zip code and income level, learners deserve educational opportunities designed for their lifelong success.

The “Every Student Succeeds Act” is excellent foundational federal legislation that we can build upon as we strengthen school districts across America. ESSA’s emphasis on transparency, accountability and the responsibility of each state sets the stage for improved federal K-12 supervision with regard to inequitable expulsion rates, the re-segregation of schools through funding disparities, and disparate graduation rates.

Health care should be a right for all Americans, not just a privilege for some. The incumbent voted for all of Donald Trump’s failed plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Had this worked, everyday Coloradans – especially those with pre-existing conditions – would be left at risk of losing jobs, going bankrupt to afford medical treatment or even dying, while the wealthiest 1% would get huge kickbacks. No one in this country should be afraid that they will lose their life or their homes just because they got sick. 

More than 20 million Americans, including 500,000 Coloradans, now have health coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. The law also requires insurance companies to spend their money on patient care, not administration and marketing. Young people and low-income earners have had the greatest gains, and are most at-risk if this coverage goes away. Since 2010, the Affordable Care Act has improved our health care coverage. But it is far from enough!

Yet many people – especially in Colorado’s rural areas – still struggle with high health care, medication, and insurance costs. Accessible health care isn’t really accessible if you can’t afford it or readily see providers. I will work to reform and improve the ACA, lower prescription costs and make sure we move towards achieving universal health care in the United States.

I support Medicare for All. Members of Congress, their staff and other federal workers have access to the best health care options available. So should the American public. As a leading nation in the 21st Century, we must provide all that one needs to be well human beings vision, dental, hearing mental wellness, substance use treatment, preexisting conditions, long-term coverage, reproductive planning, maternity care–full wellness coverage. Overall when people are well cared for, our nation thrives.

Cutting back essential health care services to women, children, veterans, rural and underserved communities in order to return favors to big donors is not morally responsible. I assure you I will be on the front lines of fighting for comprehensive, affordable, accessible health care for all people, not just for the privileged few.

We need a viable, coordinated, popular and immediate response to runaway climate change, which threatens agriculture, coastal cities, human health, biodiversity and global security. We must aim for implementing the goals of the Green New Deal, beginning with a ban on fracking on public lands. We must take back the public conversation and control from those who place record-breaking profits for their fossil fuel donors over the lives of the people they are elected to represent.

Solving this problem starts with working across the aisle on a Carbon Dividends Plan developed by self-identified conservative Republicans. I will support this plan to place gradually increasing fees on carbon emissions and return all proceeds to the American people as a regular dividend. Something like this has worked in Alaska for the past 35 years. This market-friendly, small government policy option also opens a path to help conservatives understand the science.

I will also push to develop an energy infrastructure that relies on balancing energy independence in the U.S. with comprehensive use of wind, solar, and hydroelectric and developing technologies. Incorporating more renewables will help our country move towards energy-independence while creating good jobs and economic stability. In the past five years, the solar industry alone has created nearly 80,000 living-wage U.S. jobs.

Additionally, I will fight against opening our precious Rocky Mountain parks, wild lands and open spaces to drilling or other resource extraction. I will fight to block corporate lobbyists huge influence through campaign contributions and to eliminate tax subsidies those companies get in return, known as ‘pay for play.” I will also fight to make it illegal to promote inaccurate information concerning energy and environmental impacts; Colorado and our nation cannot afford to have a Congressional Senator who shrugs off the threats we face to our forests, air quality, watersheds and public lands.

Going to pick up hangers, baby wipes or whatever should not result in the loss of life or a ubiquitous sense of fear that violence is always around the corner. Nor should the lives of mothers walking their neighborhoods with the expressed commitment to keeping their children safe from gun violence be taken from that very evil.

Like most Americans, I am angry at the lack of courage from government officials who are in the pockets of the NRA and refuse to do what is right to end this epidemic. I am disgusted that mass shootings and death by gun violence has become so much a part of our society’s norm that folks can recycle the same tweets and posts from days prior with no thought of specificity. I am broken-hearted for the families and communities for which vacuous words don’t mean a thing right now as they will not give one more hug, kiss, moment to argue and reconcile, to be disappointed by and then overjoyed with the ones they love; our words will not refill the gaping holes that are now present by the loss of life. I am all these things right now.

And I’m also determined not to sit in the paralysis of fear allowing this very evil to win. I am determined to keep striving for the world and future we desire and deserve. I refuse to die inside and allow apathy to be my legacy. We must pass sensible gun safety legislation that includes universal background checks, closing loopholes on the possession of firearms by those deemed an extreme risk to themselves and others, and repelling the Dicky Amendment so we can effectively research the causes and impacts of gun violence across America.

HUMAN DIGNITY AND DECENCY

I believe it’s time that we adopt a 21st Century Bill of Human Rights. One that respects the human dignity and decency of every person and community. My work as an organizer/activist emerges from a deep space of faith and commitment to the belief that not only are we capable of transforming the world, we are purposefully required to do the work. Since I was a youth, I’ve been actively involved in community transformation through one-on-one, communal, and institutional processes.

Human dignity is under attack. From dehumanizing immigration policies, threats to civil rights and racial justice, to demoralizing efforts to roll back gains in women’s reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ rights our humanity in civil society is at stake. I am committed to redressing the moral injuries that marginalized communities consistently face due to a lack of criminal justice reform, voter protection, immigration reform, income equality and protections against all forms of discrimination.