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Values & Vision

Housing is a Human Right.
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We need to decommodify housing. We need to build a system in which every single person in our community has dignified housing.

 

As your County Commissioner, I will fight for all of us and ensure that we:

 

  • Build deeply affordable housing at and below 30% AMI

  • Fully fund and push for low-interest loan programs that rehabilitate & repair homes and businesses to remove lead, improve energy efficiency, and install solar panels

  • Build a pipeline for people who are homeless to obtain long-term, sustainable, and dignified housing 

  • ​​Ensure that the development of affordable housing includes training and employment for low-income residents

  • Support strategies to increase permanent, affordable, and accessible housing, particularly in high opportunity areas connected to public transportation

  • Partner with community land trusts

  • Seek to create tiny house villages

  • Work with mission driven non-profit housing providers to ensure access to truly affordable housing

 

Housing justice also means ensuring tenant rights, which is why I will:

 

  • Support community-based programs that educate renters about their legal rights and assist them in defending those rights

  • Promote and enforce county laws and policies that prohibit housing discrimination and support the right to publicly-funded legal representation for residential tenants facing eviction or termination of subsidized housing (a.k.a. right to counsel) 

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I strongly support public housing remaining public. Public housing serves a critical need in our communities, providing homes for our neighbors with the greatest need, and preventing them from being displaced or facing a cost burden that they can’t bear.

 

We know that the federal government has, for decades, been falling short of the commitment it made to public housing. The County could step in and partner with both the City of St. Paul and the Saint Paul Public Housing Authority to create more deeply affordable housing on the East Side.

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As County Commissioner, I will:

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  • Direct staff to track vacant property and prioritize the building of publicly owned housing on these lots for people without homes

  • Support efforts to increase federal funding for housing vouchers, creatively implement strategies to increase voucher utilization in our community, and seek to create a locally-funded voucher program

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We care for one another and our environment.

No one can escape the impacts of climate change, but we do know that its effects disproportionately impact Black, Brown, Indigenous and working class people.

 

From being in the streets protesting for climate justice to chairing powerful organizations like TakeAction Minnesota that are at the frontlines of climate justice work, I will continue building a future that’s sustainable, clean, and rooted in people. When we heal our planet, we heal our communities.

 

The future I will co-govern with you to build is:​

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  • Streamline recycling and composting and make this convenient and accessible to working families and Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color

  • Stand against burning and advance toward solar and zero waste

  • Protect and honor Indigenous land

  • Champion clean air, water, and energy

  • Prioritize building and redesigning our county roads for bikers, mass transit, & pedestrians

  • Work to reduce the county’s carbon emissions to net neutral by 2040

  • Push to require developers who work with a county HRA to have energy efficiency standards

  • Favor recycled, recyclable, locally produced, environmentally friendly, sweat-free and energy efficient goods in County purchasing policies

  • Steer the County to fully fund and push for low-interest loan programs that rehabilitate and repair homes and businesses to improve energy efficiency and install solar panels

  • Implement a Green New Deal for Ramsey County that leads on the climate justice, creates high-quality jobs, grows local sustainable food systems, improves and increases the affordable housing stock, and reduces economic inequality

  • Work to ensure that any vehicle owned or leased by the County be electric, hybrid, or as fuel-efficient and non-polluting as practicable

  • Increase the production and purchase of clean energy, including by installing solar panels and other renewables on County land and buildings

We co-govern together.
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I believe in the power of collectivity. Together, we know and are capable of more.

 

I envision co-governing with all of you to continue working towards our hopes and dreams and holding each other accountable to make it happen.

 

I am excited to:​

  • Host community round tables and create/identify spaces for people to take action in the community, i.e. hosting litter pickups, organizing mutual aid initiatives, and engaging with each other about future development to ensure people’s voices are at the center of it

  • Build people-led community coalitions around issues we care about

  • Educate families, especially working families and Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color, on how to navigate and advocate for change to create racially equitable systems

  • Make information about the County budget more transparent and accessible, including by posting all information online, listing provider and program names in budget lines, and explaining all acronyms

  • Adopt an inclusive, transparent, and participatory budgeting process whereby the residents of Ramsey County directly determine a portion of the County's annual budgets

  • Support an automatic voter registration policy

  • Advocate for expanding ranked choice voting

  • Continue engaging with East Siders and fundraising the entire duration of my term to build a long-term, sustainable campaign. We’re here for the movement, not the moment

We dismantle racism, sexism, ableism, and classism. 
We put care and equity at the center of our systems. 

As a mother, organizer, and woman of color, I know care is the antidote to the punitive, oppressive systems we live in that have never worked for us.

 

There is no place for racism, sexism, ableism, nor classism in our communities.

 

I’m ready, more than ever, to continue leading through transformational policymaking and activism with you to:

 

  • Invest in community safety initiatives rooted in racial equity, care, mental health, and housing

  • Open a service center on the East Side for County Services

  • Ensure racial equity in current and future County Parks Plans

  • End Cash Bail

  • Work in collaboration with the city to push for demilitarization of the police force

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  • Steer the County to develop a decarceration plan, informed by the communities most impacted by incarceration, to reduce the average daily population of the jail

  • Eliminate racial disparities, and construct permanent supportive housing units in the community for persons previously incarcerated

  • Oppose all policies that criminalize poverty and homelessness (including punitive ordinances with the potential to target low-income and minority populations)

  • Invest in public social services, like Pre-K and childcare for all families, & ensure there are no barriers to entry

  • Reject state and federal funding to prosecute the war on drugs at the local level, legislate, tax, and regulate drugs and decriminalize drug use

  • Oppose the eviction of houseless individuals in encampments

  • Push for economic justice by partnering with state legislators to relieve the tax burden on working-class families

  • Close the digital divide on the East Side so that more workers and community members have access to fast and reliable internet

  • Invest in small businesses and community organizations by finding public funding and programming that will promote their longevity, sustainability, and prosperity

  • Create low-barrier jobs that pay livable wages and benefits

  • Support job resource and training programs that secure jobs for individuals, especially serving those who are from marginalized backgrounds

  • Ensure county services are central and accessible to our working families and Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color

  • Fight for resources and policies led and shaped by people with disabilities

  • Push for major streamlining of our county services and processes so that they’re user-friendly, accessible, and that we have staff members who are competent in working with people with disabilities

  • Work to ensure county laws around programming, development, transit, road redesign, and housing are shaped to center our community members with disabilities

 

I believe that healthcare is a fundamental human right, one that should be universally provided to everyone, which is why I support:

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  • Providing health insurance and living wages adjusted for the higher cost of living in Ramsey County for all county-funded jobs

  • Ensuring that we are not only fully funding County health care clinics but expanding physical access to services

  • Expanding the County’s ability to provide at-home services to meet individuals where they are

  • Increasing access to medical care for all, financial services and outreach to navigate an often convoluted, anxiety provoking system

  • Increasing funding for lead and asbestos abatement through county public health, increase access to funding and outreach to navigate the system

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Sustainable Transportation for all.

The County has an enormous role to play in mass and sustainable transportation in the form of bike and pedestrian infrastructure, buses, and trains.

Decreasing the use of personal fossil fuel based transportation, as well as creating more affordable and accessible means for working class people to get where they need to go, is not only an issue of sustainability but also one of equity.

That's why as County Commissioner I will:

 

  • Move towards free public transportation

  • Create a Ramsey County Bike Plan to ensure access and safety for pedestrians

  • Ensure that Bus Rapid Transit Lines are fully funded and stops are accessible for those that need them most

  • Invest in electric buses and cut down diesel pollution through our neighborhoods

  • Provide incentives for all County employees to use public transportation, carpool, bike, or walk

  • Support the creation of a land bridge over I-94 to connect the Rondo community and oppose projects that expand highways and increase car travel while supporting projects that create alternatives to highways that destroy communities

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