In 2020, during the midst of the pandemic my family faced an eviction. Since then, I have dedicated the last four years of life to educating and advocating for tenants and their right to a safe, affordable home. That experience taught me that the way to win was to fight together with my neighbors, and I began focusing on organizing with my community. I have now worked as tenant and community organizer, and as a leader in the housing movement that won historic tenant protections in 2023.

While we won right to representation in 2023, there is still a lot of work to be done to make the promise of housing as a human right a reality for all Delawareans. 

Here is a preview of the legislation and policy changes I will fight for: 

• Support Homeownership & Assist Existing Residents to Maintain and Improve Their Homes.
  • Expand grants for assisting low-income homeowners with house renovations, as well as removing any potential barriers for existing residents from accessing such services. 
  • Incentivize the repurposing of derelict and vacant proerties in the West Side to create more opportunities to help qualified renters become homeowners, including through Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and Land Banks. 
• Create mixed-income housing opportunities to stabilize families and neighborhoods.
  • There is a shortage of affordable housing being developed in Delaware. We must require that developers seeking the 20% cash back on construction expenses in the Downtown Development District (DDD) reserve at least 40% of units for families making less than 60% AMI (Adjusted Median Income). 
• Tax Relief for Low-Income Homeowners
  • As we see the Downtown District Develop and property values skyrocket, low income homeowners are struggling to keep up with with tax bills. We must enact equitable property tax reforms to protect low income homeowners.
• Expanding Basic Tenant Protections, including rent stabilization and restricting evictions without cause. 
  • I will fight for the passage of Good Cause Eviction, which expands basic protections – like lease renewals, reasonable rent increases, and evictions for good cause only – to cover all apartments regardless of building size, age, or location.
• Massively increase funding for public housing and social housing. 
  • Fully Fund Public Housing – our public housing buildings are falling apart. Where the federal government fails us, the State of Delaware must act to protect its people. We must raise revenue, and invest in preserving our crumbling public housing. 
  • Provide Rental Assistance to Low Income Delawareans – I will propose legislation for the state to pay the difference between public assistance and market rent to make Delawareans rents affordable for low income households who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. 
  • Expand grants for assisting low-income homeowners with house renovations, as well as removing any potential barriers for existing residents from accessing such services. 
  • Incentivize the repurposing of derelict and vacant proerties in the West Side to create more opportunities to help qualified renters become homeowners, including through Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and Land Banks. 

Every child and young person has the right to a high-quality education, regardless of zip code. We need to ensure that state funding is spent supporting our public schools through smaller classroom sizes, social and emotional supports, arts and music offerings, and after school programs. We need to make college free for all and bring back the trades to high schools.

As your State Representative, I would: 

• Support equitable funding models ensuring fully funding for strong public schools.
• Support legislation expanding and making multi-year investments in summer youth jobs. 
• End the school to prison pipeline by investing in counseling and peer to peer support structures, not suspensions and policing.

Gun Violence is prevalent in many U.S cities, particularly in historically underfunded neighborhoods, such as West Center City & the Westside. It spreads through social networks and intensifies long-standing inequities and public health disparities. 

Everybody deserves to be and feel safe. For too long, we’ve relied solely on policing for everything while at the same time underinvesting in public housing, infrastructure, schools, and healthcare – which has caused decades of harm in Black and Brown communities. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can create real safety by fully funding our communities and addressing the root causes of instability and structural violence. We have the solutions. 

Here is a preview of the legislation and policy changes I will fight for:

• Cracking down gun trafficking and straw purchasing laws to keep guns off our streets. 
• Investing greater resources in underfunded gun violence intervention programs and youth services, such as street outreach and hospital-violence intervention programs. 
• Use Victim of Crime Act (VOCA) assistance funds to help reduce gun violence and support gun violence survivors.
• End the criminalization of undocumented communities, prohibiting all local law enforcement and state agencies from conspiring with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). 
• Holding police accountable for their violence and violating the public’s trust.

I will advocate for:

• Calm traffic to increase pedestrian safety – through actions such as implementing traffic-calming improvements, improving street labeling, and temporary curb bump outs.
• Improve public transit access and mobility – make DART free for all, transition to 24-hour bus routes, increasing ADA accessibility on crosswalks, driveways, and intersections.
• Increase curb appeal through beautification, cleaning, and public art.
• Make it safe and easy to bike in the West Side.

I believe healthcare is a human right, and the most efficient way to ensure this is through Medicare for All. 

As your State Representative I will fight for:

• A statewide single-payer healthcare plan that provides coverage to everyone, paid for and administered by a state entity.
• Creating a public option healthcare plan to provide an affordable option for businesses, families, and individuals struggling to find affordable coverage in the private marketplace.
• Increased funding and support to programs that support mothers and families, especially for Black and Latina mothers and families, including for doulas pre-and-post partum. 
• I will support expanding Medicare to cover culturally competent mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive (including the right to an abortion), maternity care, and more.

Delaware has been a leader in pro-LGBTQ+ legislation, adopting marriage equality and civil rights protections for trans people. However, as radical republicans in other state legislatures dangerously pass laws like “Don’t Say Gay” and discriminate against LGBTQIA+ youth, we must boldly end intolerance and all forms of bigotry throughout our state.

Here is the legislation and policy changes I will fight for: 

• Make sure that transgender and gender queer individuals receive the healthcare that they need, which is why all healthcare is covered by Medicare for All. 
• Build more LGBTQIA- affirming housing and shelter programs. 
• End the criminalization of LGBTQIA+ identities, particularly the criminalization of queer and transgender black and brown women.

I believe that a strong labor movement is essential to the economic well-being of working people, and a bedrock of democracy. As a State Representative, I will support comprehensive and aggressive measures to shift the balance of power from bosses to workers.

• Oppose “right-to-work” laws and similar measures that create barriers to or undermine the rights of workers to form a union and collectively bargain.
• Support the enforcement of Community Workforce Agreements which make sure that large state-funded projects have a certain level of union, local, and minority hiring.
• Support requiring the payment of prevailing wages to service workers employed on public contracts and subsidized projects, or to support the continuation and effective enforcement of such requirements where they are already in place.
• Support the right of working people in Delaware to negotiate and withhold their labor if they feel it to be necessary.

There’s a long history of highways being purposefully built through low-income, working class communities of color in the US, routing some highways directly, and sometimes purposefully, through Black and brown communities. In some instances, the government took homes by Eminent Domain. 

Major roads like 1-95 continue to divide our community today, driving up the effects of climate change, and facilitates and ongoing public health crisis. Our state must move quickly to ensure that frontline communities, such as Hilltop and West Center City are protected from the harms of environmental racism. 

As your state representative I will also fight for:

• A Green New Deal for Delaware and ending the greed of the fossil fuel industry and hold them accountable.
• A just transition for workers and focus on protecting our frontline communities, especially under-resourced groups, communities of color, Native Americans, people with disabilities, children and the elderly. 
• Targeted investment in energy efficient housing, living wage jobs, and neighborhood level infrastructure improvements including better lighting, sanitation, parks, public transit, and even tree-planting to serve the health and well-being of our communities. 
• Enact policies that will transition our fossil fuel dependent economy to a carbon neutral economy within the next decade. 
• Ensure that any development in Delaware that has the potential of having a negative effect on our environment, must be done in a manner that includes direct community engagement & input, and utilizes instrumentation and control systems that all but guarantee the safety of our citizens and our environment.

Childcare is the number one investment we can make to increase social and economic opportunities for Wilmington’s children and parents. Without childcare support, parents can’t go to work, pursue higher education opportunities, and children fall further behind in the education system. At the same time, we can ensure strong wages, benefits, and protections for our child care workers.  As your State Representative, I will fight to:

• Expand Purchase of Care (or POC) eligibility, to cover barely middle and working-class families who make slightly over income limits.
• Advocate for more funding to develop and phase-in a guaranteed, universal childcare system that supports parents, children, and childcare workers. 
• Increase investments in early childhood education, including for 3-K and Pre-K programs. 

As of April 23, 2023, Delaware became the 22nd state to legalize recreational marijuana use. We’ve come a long way in the last few years, but we still have to complete what we started: undoing the damages of prohibition and re-invest in communities hit hardest by the War on Drugs. As your State Representative, I will:

• Advocate for revenue from legal marijuana to be reinvested in communities hit hardest by the war on drugs, especially African-American and other communities of color. 
• With this revenue we can create grant programs to focus on businesses that are at least 51% owned or controlled by those in disproportionately impacted areas or individuals who have been arrested for or convicted of marijuana offenses.
  • Allocate funds for bilingual and multi-racial outreach to affected communities, including immigrant communities, to diversify economic development.