Housing is a human right

Housing is an essential need of every human being, yet many of us are severely burdened by the cost of housing. Worse still, families and neighbors who can't afford housing are criminalized simply for trying to survive. Whether you're sleeping in a tent, a vehicle, on a couch, or in your own house, housing is a human right, and I will fight to make sure that it is treated like one. Establishing a right to rest, renter protections, and lifting the prohibition on local rent control will be my highest priorities.

Healthcare is a human right

Oregon has made significant improvements to our healthcare system by making it both more accessible and more affordable. Still, so many in our community do not have the care they require. Whether people are uninsured or underinsured, our profit-driven healthcare system leaves hundreds of thousands of Oregon families to suffer needlessly. Even during this horrific pandemic, about eight percent of all Oregon families still don't have any health insurance. This is devastating and could be completely resolved by switching to a single-payer – Medicare for All style – healthcare system, where everyone is completely covered and no one is left out. I will not compromise on access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion. I will not stop fighting until everyone has the care they need including vision, dental, and mental healthcare.

A Habitable Planet is a human right

Climate change is no longer a problem of the future. We are living through worsening heat waves, historic wildfires, droughts, and many other extreme weather events that are only going to get worse unless we make a just green transition away from fossil fuels now. This means regulating big polluters while creating good jobs and ensuring that we have a safe landing place for workers currently employed in fossil fuel industries. We need everything from regenerative agriculture to renewable energy production, climate smart transportation to waste management, and a focus on environmental justice for our society to be sustainable. 

Unionization is a human right

Everyone deserves dignity and respect on and off the job, and unions help with that. However, laws protecting the right to form a union leave out domestic, agricultural, construction and contract workers. Although unions are the best organizations to bring better wages and working conditions to all workers, we must address the exclusion of groups from this process and make it easier for workers to form unions free from intimidation and harassment. We can improve our laws and reduce inequality here in Oregon by extending our state protections of workers' right to form a union to thousands of workers who don't have that now. 

Education is a human right

Education is the foundation of a well-functioning society and having a highly-skilled workforce provides immeasurable economic benefits. In Oregon, our education system has been hampered by a lack of funding from the state. We need to make Pre-K and Higher Education equally available to everyone, not just the well-off. We also need more funding to pay our teachers what they deserve and keep the promises that we've made to our students. 

For too long big corporations have not been paying their fair share, while making billions in profits even during a pandemic. If we want a quality education system for Oregon, we need those who can most afford it – and those who have profited most from it – to pay it back to the community. One of the major ways that big corporations have been able to avoid paying their fair share to fund Oregon schools, colleges and universities, is that they're able to hide how much profits they truly make in the state. We could fix that and see how much these mega-corporations are profiting in Oregon with a simple disclosure law, modeled after the 2018 Corporate Transparency and Accountability petition.