Housing, Healthcare, and an Economy for All
All Georgians deserve a safe place to live, affordable, comprehensive healthcare, a living wage, and high-quality education for our children. Anyone working a full-time job should be able to support themselves and their family. Many of us work hard every day, sometimes at multiple jobs, to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. Despite putting in overtime, we seem to be able to afford less and less. We must reverse that trend.
I am running to represent you – I want to know what’s important to you! If you have thoughts or feedback, please reach out to us here. Let’s make Georgia work for working people!
Housing
Housing is a human right. Everyone deserves a safe and affordable home, but we are facing an affordable housing crisis in Cobb County and across the state. Since the start of the 2020 pandemic, this trend has only worsened, and now Atlanta has the most overpriced housing market in the country. Predatory corporations from all over have been buying up houses throughout the Metro Atlanta area. Many of these corporations have one goal – profits. And because of this, they’re driving up rents, pushing properties into disrepair, and exploiting tenants, instead of doing their job to provide housing for working people.
We must fight to change that.
If we work together, we can reign in the corporate greed that is keeping housing unaffordable and out of reach for many of us, and guarantee housing for all.
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Here’s how I’ll help advocate for safe and affordable housing for Cobb families:
Promote strong investments in affordable, public, and social housing developments like Atlanta's AUDC housing
Create strong regulations to keep our housing livable, clean, and safe
Make it easier to rent by reducing income requirements to qualify for an apartment, ending application fees, limiting security deposits, and allowing local governments to control rent
Keep exploitative businesses from buying up family homes
Establish programs to allow long-term renters to eventually own the homes they rent
Healthcare
Universal healthcare is a guaranteed right in every single developed country, except for one: the United States. Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world, the U.S. has one of the worst, most overpriced, and inaccessible healthcare systems. Americans pay the most per person for healthcare. And the reason is crystal clear: corporate greed. Big Pharma will do anything to make a quick buck, including pushing addictive drugs like opiates on patients, hiking prices for medication and necessary services, or denying people coverage wherever possible. Georgians have a fundamental right to healthcare, and yet we allow greed and corruption to lead the way in our healthcare systems.
The solution is a single-payer, public healthcare system like Medicare for All that guarantees healthcare coverage to everyone. In the Georgia legislature, I will do everything in my power to advocate for a single-payer public healthcare system, including expanding Medicaid. But we must go further than that to ensure the health and safety of all Georgians.
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Here’s how we can guarantee healthcare as a right for everyone in Georgia:
Expand Medicaid immediately, with an ultimate goal of a single-payer, Medicare-For-All healthcare system for all Georgians
Pass the Reproductive Freedom Act to immediately lift Brian Kemp's abortion ban
End the bans on essential gender-affirming healthcare
Strong investments in maternal healthcare and expanding hospitals and medical services in areas that need it to address our maternal mortality crisis in Georgia
Increase regulations to prevent harmful chemicals from being put in our food and environment, like Sterigenics releasing toxic chemicals to local Cobb and Atlanta residents
Import drugs from other countries to reduce the costs of medicine and medical devices in Georgia
Economic Rights
In the face of rising costs, inflation, and stagnant wages, what do Georgians deserve? We need an economy that works for everyone, not just for the top 1% and the big corporations. That means guaranteed paid time off and parental leave to care for our families. That means reliable hours and a living wage of at least $20 an hour. That means protecting and expanding the right to unionize. Working people like teachers, nurses, drivers, and more perform the essential jobs that keep society running and the economy afloat, and we deserve more! It’s time to invest back into the people who truly run the economy - the workers.
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Here’s how we can have an economy that works for all:
Raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour
Break corporate power over ordinary people by:
Repealing Georgia's anti-union “right-to-work” laws
Ending employee misclassification
Banning drug screenings and “the box” during employment applications
Require business to establish just cause before firing employees
Guaranteeing fair leave including 12 weeks paid parental leave, 30 days of required paid time off, and a four-day work week for all full-time workers with no reduction in pay
Expand collective bargaining and the right to strike to ALL workers in Georgia
End work requirements for essential benefits (disability, healthcare, SNAP, etc)
Tax the wealthiest 1% so they pay their fair share with a more progressive state income tax
Education
Our public schools are under attack. There is a concerted effort by billionaires and special interests to privatize our education system. They are doing this through efforts like school vouchers, misleadingly named “school choice”, as well as right-wing attacks on our schools and teachers, like book bans, anti-trans legislation, censorship of free speech, and more. It is imperative that we protect our schools from these attacks, and instead invest in public schools and find bold, creative solutions to improve them.
The number one predictor of educational success is poverty, and currently, Georgia's schools are extremely unequal. We need an education system that works no matter where a student lives. Free breakfast and lunch should be made available to all students, and we must expand Georgia’s successful Pre-K services so they are universal and free to all families. We must push for accessible early childhood daycare programs, and after-school care that is accessible for working families. We must significantly increase teacher pay to what they deserve and equip them with the resources and staffing they need to keep our children safe and learning. Finally, let’s invest in Georgians by providing tuition-free public colleges and universities for all of our residents.
Climate Change
Climate change is already hurting our communities, with record flooding here in Smyrna, devastating hurricanes in Georgia, and forest fires sending smoke across the country. We’re in danger because oil and gas companies have lied and polluted our environment to make extra profits. Even in our own backyard, Sterigenics knowingly released toxic chemicals into our community and have yet to be held fully responsible. It's time to create a sustainable world where our children and grandchildren will thrive. We must cut carbon emissions down to zero in Georgia by 2040. Let's build a green new Georgia by expanding public transit, bringing our utilities into public ownership, and investing in union-made renewable energy.
Voting Rights
Our right to vote is the foundation of our democracy. But some want to suppress our voices because they know our votes are a threat to their power. Republicans in Georgia have attacked voting rights for years, even attempting to steal the 2020 Presidential Election. We must defend our voting rights and fight for everyone to have a seat at the table. As your representative, I'll advocate for same-day voter registration, easier access to mail-in and dropbox voting, ranked choice voting to eliminate runoffs, and an independent commission to create fair election maps in Georgia.
We need a multiracial democracy based on the principle of one person, one vote–not one dollar, one vote. I'm the only candidate in this election who's committed to not taking any corporate money, because I’m here to represent you, not major corporations. We must get money out of politics, and fight for democracy of, by, and for the people of Georgia.
Public Safety
Georgia has one of the highest incarceration rates of any Democracy in the world. We over-criminalize our population - especially people of color - and to what end? Our current justice system has failed. We need a new approach to public safety that focuses on solving the root causes of crime – poverty, and lack of resources and opportunity. We need to prioritize investing in our neighborhoods because the safest communities are those with the most resources, not the most police. This includes investing in housing, education, healthcare, and economic rights. And when it comes to public safety, I'll campaign for legalizing marijuana and ending the failed war on drugs, investing in safer infrastructure like bike lanes, street lights, and usable sidewalks, and regulating guns to get them off our streets, including a ban on assault rifles.
Reproductive Justice
Everyone should have an absolute right to control their own bodies and to decide for themselves when and how they want to have children. Right now, our reproductive rights are under attack nationwide by far-right, anti-choice extremists. As your representative, I will fight to repeal Brian Kemp's abortion ban and pass the Reproductive Freedom Act to guarantee abortion rights for all Georgians. I will also advocate for true reproductive justice where Georgians are empowered and supported to have children on their own terms, through free contraception and birth control, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, and free public pre-k and childcare for all.
LGBTQ+ Rights
I stand with LGBTQ+ Georgians who deserve to live free from discrimination and harassment. As your representative, I will advocate for queer and trans rights in Georgia's state house by fighting to lift the bans on gender-affirming healthcare for queer youth, protect gender expression and discussion of queer issues in our schools, defend LGBTQ+ Georgians' rights in employment and housing, and expand queer- and trans-inclusive healthcare for all.
Racial Justice
I grew up in an immigrant family where we fought against adversity and discrimination every day. When my high school classmate Trayvon Martin was murdered simply for being Black, I saw that our society is truly broken. In 2020, I joined with hundreds of thousands of Georgians of all races and backgrounds to protest and make it clear that Black Lives Matter. Georgia is one of the only states in the nation not to have its own statewide Civil Rights Act. The struggle for civil rights and racial justice isn't over: We need a radical new Reconstruction to end systemic racism and oppression. As your representative, I will fight for a Georgia Civil Rights Act that protects minorities and oppose any policies that perpetuate systemic racism, like the war on drugs and maternal mortality.
We must also not forget about our immigrant communities, who are legally treated as second-class citizens in this state. I will fight for in-state tuition for any Georgian regardless of immigration status, driver’s licenses for ALL regardless of immigration status, and putting an end to Georgia’s collaboration with ICE.