Our public education system is the pillar of our democratic society; protecting it is essential.

More students than ever before are worried about housing and where their next meal is coming from. We need to be approaching our students through a multi-tiered system of support. This includes addressing basic needs like hunger, housing, and mental healthcare.

When students are acting out or misbehaving, we need to move to a more restorative approach. What is the cause of the behavior? Can we address that? Let’s teach you better ways to get your needs met? This is your consequence/what you need to do to restore the relationship.

Our history is not always beautiful. As a nation, we have made choices and created systems that have caused multigenerational harm. This is not history we should be proud of, but it is also not history we should hide from.

Our children need to learn our true history. School curriculum needs to be redesigned to be culturally and historically responsive.

We can have these hard conversations. We can grow and teach our children empathy.

We can do better.

We are in a housing crisis. We have more people than we have housing units. This has created significant and overwhelming inflation in our housing market and an unprecedented increase in our unhoused population.

Regardless of the state of our economy, housing is a basic human right.

We need more housing, but we also need policy that ensures housing that is built is going to the people of our community. We need policy that ensures housing is affordable and attainable.

I’ll get right to the point. Healthcare is a human right.

The United States is the largest economy in the world. California is the 5th largest economy in the world and 72 other countries provide universal healthcare to their citizens. This means that countries much smaller than ours have figured out how to provide healthcare to their citizens.

The idea that the United States, or even California, cannot afford to implement a universal or single-payer healthcare system is an outright lie. Research has shown us over and over again that it is far more expensive not to insure our people.

We need to implement a universal healthcare system in California and prove to the rest of the nation that it can be done.

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in the United States of America. Gun violence is a disease and an epidemic.

We need stricter gun laws, mandatory waiting periods, and a nationwide universal background check system.

We need ongoing gun buyback programs that offer opportunities to get guns off the streets.

We need to outlaw semi-automatic rifles. These weapons of war have been modified just enough to be considered legal for purchase by civilians in the United States. They are still weapons of war. The damage they cause to the human body is far greater than a handgun. We need to stop allowing the NRA and gun manufacturers to put all of our lives at risk. Too many innocent lives are lost to these weapons.

Enough is Enough.

Women have been second-class citizens all over the world for far too long.

Women are equal citizens. We deserve everything from equal pay to bodily autonomy.

Growing up, I never thought bodily autonomy would be on the ballot. Oh, how naive I was.

When my grandmother passed at the age of 91, I inherited many things. The most valuable and yet priceless thing of hers that I hold is her Planned Parenthood t-shirt. It probably seems silly because these t-shirts are not hard to come by. Knowing that I am continuing a fight that my grandmother started gives me a feeling of female solidarity that transcends age and time.

Should we still be fighting for access to reproductive healthcare and bodily autonomy? No. Of course not.

Science has provided evidence over and over again proving that access to reproductive healthcare saves the lives of women.

I am the daughter of two career US Forest Service Employees. I have been taught to care for the environment since before I can remember.

We need bold climate action and we needed it yesterday.

Clean Energy:

I support the idea of the Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal will create millions of jobs in new clean energy and train people for them. It also sets a deadline for completion by 2030. This deadline is aggressive and ambitious, but if we aim for 2050, we will not meet that deadline either.

I have heard my parents talk about things being done on “government time” my whole life. This adage has long been used by government employees to describe the time it takes for our government to get things done. This is not because people are lazy and don’t want to work, but because the bureaucracy of the government, especially the Federal Government, causes things to move incredibly slowly.

If we aim for 2050, we will not meet that deadline. We are likely to have an entirely new congress by then. Who knows how many shifts in policy or government shutdowns we’ll see between now and then? We need to aim for 2030 so that we make the 2050 deadline. If we make serious efforts and commitments to meet a 2030 deadline, we likely reach carbon neutrality before 2050.

Public Transportation:

We need to expand our public transportation greatly. It currently takes too long to get places using public transit. If public transit takes an hour to get somewhere, but it’s only 15 minutes by car, there is little motivation for people to opt for transit.

Water:

We need to be bold and creative in our efforts to supply water. We need to invest in desalinization, recycle wastewater, and policies that prevent the overuse of our groundwater.

We need to incentivize drought-tolerant and native landscaping, agricultural production that is sustainable and water efficient, and stop putting giant green lawns and golf courses in hot, arid climates.

Life cannot be sustained without water. Our drought conditions are over, but California is constantly in a drought cycle. We must continue operating as if we are still suffering drought because we will undoubtedly be under drought conditions again soon.

Conservation:

Generally speaking, we must protect native species, prevent and control invasive species, protect habitats, protect watersheds and river corridors, and ensure our natural environment is preserved.

We need comprehensive immigration reform now.

We need to protect and defend DACA.

Today we have a massive influx of migrants and refugees caused by war, the climate crisis, gang and cartel violence, and the unintended consequences of US intervention in Central and South America from decades ago.

Refugees have a legal right to seek asylum under international law. We must provide them refuge and treat them like people.

As a pansexual woman with a transgender daughter, I know just how important it is to protect all of the progress we have made in the LGBTQIA+ community.

The hate that we are seeing across the nation is gross. We must fight back. We need to support candidates and policy that protect LGBTQIA+ rights. We need to show up in support of affirming policy. We need to show up and speak out against oppressive and hateful policies.

We need legislation that prevents book bans and ensures affirming texts are available in all public and school libraries. We need to be able to see ourselves in the books we read and the television we watch.

If we spent more time affirming each other as our authentic selves, we would all be happier.

Love is Love.

Labor unions are the backbone of America. They are why we have weekends, a 40-hour work week, and safe working conditions.

Income inequality has steadily increased over the last four decades. This became glaringly obvious during the pandemic. The rich only got richer while everyday families waited for hours in food lines.

We must protect unions and workers’ rights to unionize. The Supreme Court Janus vs. AFSCME decision weakened union power and lowered union membership in some professions. Non-union employees benefit from the negotiating of Unions without contributing. This decision also created a situation where certain employers are not giving permanency to employees who join their union.

We need to protect unions, their power to negotiate labor contracts, and their right to strike. They ensure better wages, benefits, and better working conditions.

Minimum Wage:

I support a minimum wage equal to the average minimum hourly pay needed for a person to live within a state or region.

Prevailing Wages:

All projects with public funds, on public lands, or through public/private partnerships must pay prevailing wages.

We need criminal justice reform and stronger accountability measures for our police.

Research has proven that community resources and restorative measures build stronger communities and stronger adults. We need to invest in our people and the communities they come from.

Despite stronger accountability measures, hundreds of people die at the hands of police each year. We must end this. Our police need far more training, including cultural bias training and more training in less-lethal weapons and forms of restraint.

I have done my best to state my policy position on major issues. If you have questions regarding my stance on an issue that I have not listed on this page, please reach out using the form below.

Thank you for the opportunity to earn your vote.