Fundraiser at the Decatur Lounge, May 25

Issues

As your Senator for District 5, I will be your voice for issues at the heart of a just community. Good paying jobs, healthcare as a right, affordable housing, fair taxes, and equal rights.

The short answers:

Local Job creation: We need the vision to invest and build on Rhode Island’s strengths: Innovation, convenience of size, farmland, and coastline. Our tax dollars must prioritize local sectors including renewable energy, technology, organic farming, and local manufacturing. Clearly, a strategy of subsidies to lure in industry that depletes our tax base isn’t working for our community.

Health Care: Massachusetts’ recent health care legislation in an attempt to cover its uninsured is a step in the direction of healthcare reform. How can Rhode Island improve upon this plan and insure all Rhode Islanders? It's time to revisit the basic guidelines of comprehensive health care as recommended in the Single Payer Rhode Island task force legislation of 2003. It’s also time to pass fair share legislation, that would require big business to pay a percentage of their profits to insure their workers. We can cover all Rhode Islanders, improve the quality of life, and save money in the process.

Housing: Why do we lack affordable housing in Rhode Island? Political will and vision. We need to make sure that enough new homes are affordable – truly affordable – to working families. We also need leaders with the vision to advocate for affordable and attractive housing and creative projects to transform abandoned and blighted property.

Education: In 2006, how do we define education? What kind of education model do Rhode Island’s youth and adults need to succeed? Does our education system create leaders or followers? As art, music and sports programs are cut from our schools budgets, and many schools are in dire need of repair, we need solutions now. We need equitable funding for our school districts, an increase in state resources for adult education, a civic education curriculum, programs that teach innovation and creative thinking, and leadership training to empower our youth and adults alike.

Fair Taxes: Our state’s economic development strategy features incentives to wealthy companies, giveaways to developers, and tax breaks for the rich. Who pays for the lost revenue? We do. It's time to reverse these trends and eliminate loopholes, tax breaks and giveaways to those who don’t need them.

Equal rights: Rhode Island was founded as a “lively experiment” religious freedom and separation of church and state. The hope was to create a community of acceptance and justice. As your State Senator I will honor this tradition by advocating for the end of all forms of discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.

The organizations listed are done so solely for the purpose of informational reference. No endorsement, support, affiliation or association is evident or implied.