CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Restorative justice is a theory of justice that focuses on repairing the harm caused by the crime. It is best accomplished through cooperative processes that allow all willing stakeholders to meet. This can lead to transformation of people, relationships and communities.

• Support services while serving time to prepare for reentry into society in order to decrease recidivism.

• Restore the right to vote after serving time.

• Physical and mental health services for those living with addiction.

• Address the disparities of longer sentences and extended probations.

• Ensure reentry programs and probation services are not privatized.

• End wage slavery where incarcerated people get paid below market value for jobs benefiting corporations

GUNS & VIOLENCE

Every day, more than 300 Americans are shot or killed–whether from mass shootings that are occurring with alarming regularity to more frequent acts of domestic violence and suicide. A vast bipartisan majority of Americans agree that we need sensible gun laws that create real safety throughout our homes, schools, and neighborhoods without infringing on our Constitutional rights.  

• Require a gun safety education, storage, and a license in order  to own a gun

• Enact extreme risk / red flag laws

• Conduct strong background checks

• Disarm domestic abusers

• Restrict the sale of military weapons

• Allow the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to research gun deaths and injuries in the same way it researches other health issues in order to find workable solutions

PROTECTING DEMOCRACY

Voting is the right of every American Citizen. Our democracy is reliant of people’s ability and access to voting. The entire process must be transparent and accountable.

• Automatic voter registration

• Secure Vote by Mail

• Nonpartisan districting

• Best practices that improve voter engagement and turnout

• Thorough campaign finance reform, including overturning Citizens United

• Publicly funded campaigns

EDUCATION

Life changes so quickly now. Our economy and society demand lifelong learning and reskilling to keep up with ever-changing circumstances. Our citizens need to be prepared for a multitude of inevitabilities, and our public education system–like our military– should be funded and flexible in order to promote and sustain meaningful work regardless of one’s chosen job, career, skillset, or entrepreneurial inclinations. We must support creativity and ingenuity for every child pre-K-12 in order for them to succeed.

• Provide quality childcare and school wrap-around services that support working families in economically depressed communities.

• Fund universal pre-K education giving children the foundation to be lifelong learners

• Ensure that the arts and extracurricular activities are fully funded in public schools

• Expand apprentice, trade, and technical programs in high school

• Relieve current student debt and reinstate protections from predatory for-profit student debt companies and colleges

• Build towards a free technical, community, HBCU, and public college education;  expand grants and work-study options in areas of focus so students can complete their studies debt-free and gain skills in their field of choice

• Provide education and job training programs to re-skill workers as occupations become obsolete through automation

•  Create a social-emotional coursework with dispute resolution skills with strong anti-bullying curriculum

HEALTHCARE

A vital component of the economy that works for hardworking families is Healthcare. Healthcare should be patient-centered, accessible, and affordable by all. Health care includes medical, Dental, Vision, mental health, comprehensive reproductive health care, and addiction wrap-around support services.

ENVIRONMENT 

Areas with the worst environmental polluters also have the sickest populations and require healthcare facilities that recognize and specialize in treating environmentally-induced diseases, including lead exposure. 

• Invest, attract, and transition to green & clean technology

• Build or retrofit manufacturing plants, particularly in fenceline polluted communities and communities that have lost manufacturing jobs over the last four decades.

• Develop ambitious training, job corps, and other work opportunities to retrofit the way we get energy, drive, grow our food, heat and cool our homes, handle natural disasters, and secure clean air and water.

• Require corporations to have environmental, social, and governance plans to rapidly remediate their waste and decrease environmental harm. Encourage a complete lifecycle of products with recycling or reuse to achieve net-zero waste.

• Invest heavily in training, education, and career opportunities for professionals who are desperately needed in a rapidly changing environment: biologists, climatologists, renewable energy engineers, inventors, regenerative farmers, conservationists, and specialists in fields as far-ranging as soil regeneration to closed-loop waste disposal to renewable energy financiers.

• Remediation of brownfields and superfund sites. 

• Federal oversight and audit of the remediation of brownfields and superfund sites. Remediation should be paid for by polluters, not taxpayers.

• For more information on the environment and the seventeen principles of environmental justice, which were drafted and adopted in 1991 by the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, click here.

ECONOMY

The economy must work for everyone. We must ensure living wages that sustain families. Create cost of living formula that’s data driven and doesn’t rely on congress to vote on

• Provide real support, incentives and investments to small and medium sized business owners so they can do right by their employees and enjoy the profits of their work.

• Ensure equal pay for equal work.

• Provide equal protection to workers throughout the economy, whether in board rooms, executive suites, cubicles, restaurants, shop floors, civil servant offices, retail stores, caregiving or home-care settings, farms, hospitals--everywhere there  is labor.

• Enforce consumer and usury protections across all industries.

• Ensure affordable housing which stabilizes and strengthens communities and the economy.

• Address the regressive tax structure which contributed to the growing deficit in order to balance the budget.