Education
Students deserve to be engaged and empowered to think critically, and their teachers should be respected and supported.
Solve Our Teacher Shortage Crisis
Thousands of public school classrooms in Arizona are without a qualified teacher. And it’s no wonder, Arizona ranks 49th in teacher pay. Our students need and deserve individualized attention if they’re going to learn. Our overcrowded classrooms gave us one of the country’s highest student-to-teacher ratios. We need to respect the time of our students in the classroom and respect the profession of teaching by bringing class sizes down. We need to pay teachers more and respect them as professionals who we trust with our future. And we must oppose permanent tax cuts to public education that will jeopardize our schools’ stability down the road.
Stop School Privatization and Segregation
Radical right politicians prioritize profit over the needs of students. The growing privatization of our education system is a prime example. Corrupt corporations now receive public dollars for the schools they run and increasingly push out students who they don’t want. This led to the more segregation of our schools and undermines the concept of a universal public education system.
Teach More, Test Less
Each of our children learns in their own way and comes to the classroom with a different perspective. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work, yet we’ve been overtesting students while denying them time for unique programs and hands-on learning. We need more STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) curriculum that fosters creative and critical thinking, and unique courses that reflect the different backgrounds of our students encourages all of our students to learn.
We need to rethink our current system of teaching to the test, and appropriately hold schools accountable through different methods. Teaching and learning should be transformative, and our system should reflect as much.
Accessible, Affordable Higher Education
Our district is fortunate to be home to Arizona State University. For years the Republican leadership in our state has denied our public universities the support and funding they need to grow and innovate. As a result, tuition costs have skyrocketed. Scottsdale Community College is also a point of pride for our district, and the Maricopa Community College system is the largest in the nation. Yet conservatives cut state support for our community colleges to $0. Community colleges are a critical component of adult learning and our state must restore funding to these classrooms.
Our constitution states that a higher education should be “as nearly free as possible”. It’s time we fulfill that goal and work towards a free system of higher education.
SAFELY EDUCATING STUDENTS DURING A PANDEMIC
The return of students and staff to schools must be both equitable and safe. Schools should follow the evidence based practices that slow the spread of COVID-19, including access to PPE, cleaning supplies, and vaccines. Schools should be able to delay start dates, enact distance learning, and implement hybrid options for instruction. Now more than ever the legislature must allocate more funding to address the inequities that students with disabilities or from communities of color, tribal and rural areas, and low-income neighborhoods experience, in addition to adjusting funding to account for the increased costs that schools will accrue in order to create safe and healthy places for their kids.
Healthcare
Healthcare is a universal right. Everyone should have access to high-quality care.
Healthcare FOR ALL
We support the passage nationally by Congress of Medicare for All. At the state level, offering a public option through Medicaid to all Arizonans makes sense. The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) is one of the best-run Medicaid programs in the nation. We should build on that success by allowing every Arizonan to affordably buy into the program.
paid family Medical leave
The United States is the only developed country to not guarantee paid family medical leave to workers. Passing twelve Weeks of Paid Family and Medical Leave is one of the most impactful policies that we could implement today to support our working families, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hold Big Pharma Accountable
Prices for prescription drugs have skyrocketed in recent years, and instead of supporting consumers, politicians have consistently sided with the corrupt and greedy corruptions of the pharmaceutical industry. It’s time to pursue policies that rein in costs, bolster safety standards, expand coverage for generic drugs, and hold drugmakers accountable for the harmful marketing practices that helped to create our current opioid addiction crisis.
Addressing the long-term consequences of covid-19
Over 1 million Americans, including almost 30,000 Arizonans, have perished from the deadly coronavirus under failed public leadership. Arizona is ranked among the worst pandemic responses in the world. Thousands of workers are out sick on any given day, creating a drag on the economy. Decisive action based in data and science should guide our decisions going forward. This includes bolstering access to vaccines and boosters, continuing to support mask usage in public places where social distancing isn’t possible, increasing availability of free testing, and prioritizing and collecting accurate data. We should advance policies such as expanded sick and medical leave, increased access to disability benefits and medical care, and other economic supports for people who are recovering from or experiencing long haul symptoms from COVID-19.
Reproductive Freedom
Self determination does not exist outside of the right to decide if and when to have children. Yet, radical right politicians continue to interfere with personal decisions that should be left up to patients and their doctors. This needs to change.
Protecting Abortion Rights
When someone decides to have an abortion, it should be safe, affordable, and free from punishment or judgment. The reality is that too many women, transgender, and nonbinary people in Arizona face barriers to abortion care. We will fight bans and restrictions on abortion and while championing legislation to protect access to this care.
Universal Access to Contraception
Providing coverage for and universal access to contraception, such as long acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) and traditional birth control pills, is key if we are ever going to afford our constituents choice, equity, and dignity when it comes to their personal reproductive health.
Equal Pay and the ERA
We all deserve equal pay for equal work. Sexual discrimination in the workplace is real and Arizona is nowhere closer to solving this problem. As your elected representative and senator, we have fought hard each and every year for the passage of a resolution calling on Congress to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
dignity for incarcerated women
Building on the #LetItFlow campaign championed by Athena in 2018, the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, originally sponsored by Athena, was signed into law in 2021. The law guarantees feminine hygiene products, outlaws shackling pregnant people and broadens protections for incarcerated women. We will oversee that the prisons are implementing the law and hold them accountable if they violate these basic rights.
Civil Rights
We must condemn the exclusion or targeting of persons based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Columbia Law School
Racial justice
Arizona has failed to meet the needs of communities of color: we are over-policed, underpaid, and are expected to work twice as hard to succeed. The color of a person’s skin still plays a significant role in determining who gets ahead and who gets left behind. We must face that reality and we must enact proactive policies to fix it.
LGBTQIA rights
Thanks to the SCOTUS’s landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, LGBTQIA persons in the United States finally have the right to marry who they love, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. However, this decision remains in peril as the Supreme Court of the United States has been captured by the radical right. We must overturn Arizona’s ban on marriage equality and enshrine protections into law. Additionally, employers can still discriminate against their employees based on who they love or decide to marry, and previous attempts to expand workplace protections to LGBTQIA have failed. If we are truly to be a state that is “Open for Business,” then we must enact policies that ensure this openness applies to everyone.
Voting rights
The Republican-led Legislature has chipped away at Arizonans’ voting rights while expanding protections for dirty money and increased corporate spending on elections. Our democracy is stronger when we protect the freedom to vote. Expanding access to the ballot will diminish corrupt corporations’ outsized influence on elections.
Housing rights
Access to a safe home should be a right. Arizona must foster policies which provide a safety net to our most vulnerable, especially low-income families, veterans, people with a disability, and the elderly.
Criminal Justice
Arizona is 4th highest in the nation for mass incarceration and leads the US in locking up women. Our state’s leaders have thus far ignored this problem despite the many evidence-based solutions that have worked to reduce incarceration in neighboring states.
Martin Luther King Jr. at Arizona State University
End Cash Bail
Arizona needs to end pre-trial detention by reserving it for only the most extreme cases. 7 out of 10 persons in Arizona jails at any given moment are too poor to bail themselves out. Yet none of these people have been convicted of crime but face stark collateral consequences such as job loss, eviction, or even losing custody of their children.
End Mass Incarceration
Arizona’s jails and prisons are filled with people whose only offense is drug-related. We must stop incarcerating people struggling with drug addiction and pass common-sense justice reforms such as legalizing marijuana possession and ending mandatory minimums.
End Life Sentencing for Children
Arizona is one of the few states that still sends kids away for life without the possibility of probation or parole. Our children deserve second chances and need a safe and loving environment to grow and learn from their mistakes, not to be caged.
End Privatization of Prisons
There should not be a profit motive attached to imprisonment and Arizona’s prison infrastructure is crumbling while producing an abysmal recidivism rate of 2 to 1. Inhumane treatment of people behind bars must stop and we can fix it by investing in a true corrections system that seeks to rehabilitate over driving up incarceration rates.
Policing
State-sanctioned violence against black and brown communities has marred our country since the beginning. Public safety should not look like a war. It is time we reinvest in programs that empower our community to be healthy and safe.
John Lewis and civil rights leaders in Selma on Bloody Sunday.
demilitarizing police departments
The 1033 Program has effortlessly militarized police departments across America at no cost, including in Arizona. To keep combat equipment, 1033 requires it to be used within a year of receiving it. While Congress must eliminate the program, the state needs to take inventory of this equipment and create a transparent and pulbic process to demilitarize our police.
increased transparency and accountability
Every police officer should wear a body camera while performing official duties with the records maintained for a period of time. The state must eliminate qualified immunity so that officers will not be sheltered from lawsuits when negligent or engaging in unlawful conduct. The legislature should also limit uses of force in order to prevent the needless loss of life at the hands of law enforcement.
strengthening the police misconduct registry
Police cannot have unchecked and unbridled power. We must be willing and able to hold law enforcement accountable. While conservative legislators are trying to make it more difficult to identify and hold bad cops accountable, now more than we must establish a statewide database that includes all peace officers in the state and their discipline records.
re-prioritize investments in people and communities through education, healthcare and housing
Diverting resources away from our criminal punishment system may seem like a bold idea, until we realize that conservatives have defunded public education, corrupted healthcare and made housing unaffordable. Divesting money from life-saving supports that people rely on has led to the indefinite increase in funding for law enforcement and imprisonment. Our constituents deserve better and need leaders who will fight to reallocate resources that will empower our communities.
Environment
Climate change is real. We must reduce our carbon footprint and hold accountable the polluters who place profits over the health of our community.
Water
Access to clean water is the climate justice fight of our lifetime. Arizona is experiencing a 20-year drought and lacks a sustainable plan for the future of our water. We need solutions now that prioritize the health of our community over the profit motives of developers and corrupt utilities who are depleting and poisoning our shared water supply.
Pollution
Lower-income and racially diverse neighborhoods are forced to live with poorer air quality while wealthier communities enjoy healthier standards. Research shows that low-income households and people of color are disproportionately impacted by air pollution. In Arizona, children of color are exponentially more at risk for asthma and airborne related illness than their white counterparts.
Clean Energy and Clean Jobs
Clean energy is common sense in Arizona. We have more sunshine than any other state in the nation, yet places like New Jersey have more solar energy than we do. Embracing clean energy standards will also create good-paying clean energy jobs, which are already rising in other states that have decided to invest in clean energy. We must begin by making investments now in solar, wind, and hydropower.
Jobs & the Economy
We can prioritize people over profits by creating policies that can end poverty once and for all.
Living Wage
Providing Arizona’s workforce with a livable wage will not only contribute the overall success of the local economy, it will result in an increased standard of living for all of us. When working families feel secure about their future they participate in the economy. Demand is what drives job growth, not giveaways to greedy corporations.
Economic Fairness
Arizonans are facing unprecedented rates of income and wealth inequality. Families are working harder than ever to earn less, while the profits from their work further enrich the top one percent. Arizona pays out nearly $14B in handouts to corporations every year, money from your pocket, and the result has only made our economy less prosperous.
Good-Paying Jobs
As technology continues to advance, so must our workforce. Investing in programs of study that will provide people of all ages with the technical education and work-based skills that employers are looking for will create a strong bridge to meaningful and lasting employment for all Arizonans.
Strong Foundation
For years, Republicans have chipped away at important programs designed to lift people out of poverty. The help we give to those desperately in need of a break should not come with strings attached. We live in the richest country in the world and have the resources in hand to provide everyone with the safety and security they need to get back on their feet.
Immigration
Immigration is the backbone of this nation. We must honor our history as a nation of immigrants by supporting policies that keep families together, treat people with dignity, and provide an opportunity for citizenship to all that is free of unnecessary obstacles.
Repeal SB1070
SB1070 damaged our state and enabled the discriminatory and criminal practices of Joe Arpaio. It’s long past time to undo this mistake. Keep Families Together. End Family Separations.
Clean DREAM Act
When Trump announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) program, he put the lives of over 800,000 people in jeopardy. Every day that Congress doesn’t act brings us one day closer to a possibility of the deportation of nearly a million people who call the United States of America their only home.
Welcoming Refugees
To millions around the world fleeing violence and persecution, America is a nation of freedom, safety and refuge. Under the worst global migration crisis in modern history, Trump has turned his back on the most vulnerable people. Refugees have an entrepreneurship rate that outshines that of other immigrants and the US-born population, with businesses generating $4.6 billion federally in revenue. We must partner with all levels of government to keep Arizona a welcoming state for refugees and asylees, and counter narratives of fear and hate.