Priorities
Ensure Safety in Our Community
Everyone in our community deserves to be safe and secure.
In my day job as a child welfare attorney, we continue to support-plan for access to food, medical care, health care, documentation, legal counsel, court proceedings, and ultimately survival for the immigrant children and families we serve.
As a community, we continue to stand up for our neighbors and oppose Operation Metro Surge’s overreach. Neighbors continue to protect neighbors. Parents are helping one another. Community members continue to line up to volunteer for food drives, escorts, protests, and more. I am inspired and awestruck by the love, bravery, spirit, and support we as Minnesotans provide for each other every day in these most challenging times. This is our country too!
Operation Metro Surge’s impact on our state has also been profound. In January alone, ICE ignored at least 96 court orders in Minnesota. Two months later, we still don’t have justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The tens of millions of dollars in economic damage done to our local businesses and families by Operation Metro Surge has also not been remedied. Making matters worse, some community members who were already struggling to make ends meet now face eviction because they could not work during ICE's occupation.
In the last few weeks, ICE has become more discreet in Minnesota. And yet, we know that ICE is still very active in our neighborhoods – with four times the pre-surge amount of ICE officers still patrolling our streets.
We still have so much work left to do! In addition to continuing to stand up for our neighbors, we also need to reform our laws to help ensure this never happens again.
As your state legislator, I will fight for the following reforms:
1. Require personal and agency identification for all law enforcement officers: All law enforcement officers engaged in public enforcement must be identifiable both individually and by agency – wearing a visible uniform, ID, badge, and agency name.
2. Assert the necessity of judicial warrants in state and federal actions: Judicially-signed warrants or homeowner permission are required to enter private spaces including all homes and businesses.
3. Protect the constitutional right to protest: Our Constitution ensures our right to peacefully observe, record, communicate, and protest. We need to expand civil liability for any federal officers who violate our civil rights to engage in these actions.
4. Allow urgent access to medical care onsite: In any state or federal enforcement action where a person is in need of emergency medical care, all officers must immediately and safely provide for access for the person to emergency medical care.
5. Provide for notice, access, and medical care for detained persons: All persons detained by any law enforcement agency in Minnesota must be publicly identified within eight (8) hours of detention. The public identification of detention must include the location of detention, contact information for the detention facility, and means of access to the detained person. Any change in location for a detained person must be publicly identified at least 24 hours in advance of the change in detention location and include: contact information for the new detention facility and means of access to the detained person in the new detention facility. Any detention of persons in Minnesota must immediately provide to the detained person required medical care, sufficient food, clean water, appropriate bedding and toiletry care, access to cost-free phone calls for the detained person, and secure retention of any personal property of the detained person. Any release from detention must provide for the immediate return of the detained person’s personal property, access to cost-free phone calls for the detained person, and cost-free transportation for the detained person to the detained person’s home or to the place of original detention for the detained person. Any violation of these requirements may subject the detaining authority to civil liability and damages.
6. Provide for local oversight and BCA investigations: The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and local jurisdiction officers shall have full access to all evidence to conduct investigations into all federal officer-involved shootings.
7. Restrict immigration access to schools and churches: In line with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security 2011 Sensitive Spaces Memorandum, repealed by the current administration, immigration officials shall not enter “sensitive locations” like schools and churches unless in extenuating circumstances.
Minnesotans have demonstrated incredible courage in the face of overwhelming force and intimidation over the last several months. Our state needs legislators to show the same amount of courage and leadership to help protect Minnesotans from continued federal overreach. I ask for your vote and your endorsement on April 11th to fight for these reforms, to stand up for our neighbors, and to help protect each other. Thank you for your time and consideration, and I would love to talk with you further about this or any other issue at any time as well!
Support Affordable Lives
All Minnesotans should be able to afford their own lives. The cost of health care, daycare, and groceries continues to rise. Our families struggle to make ends meet.
Health care costs had already been rising before the expiration of ACA subsidies. As a state, we need to ensure our community has lower premiums. We can accomplish this through expanding preventative care and Medicaid benefits, providing limits on prescription drug prices, and promoting healthy, fair competition among providers.
We also need to expand opportunities for affordable daycare. As parents of two young kids, we know this need very well. We need to provide streamlined licensing for providers, develop scholarship funds for families, provide tax credits as a state, and expand options to include more types of providers.
Our state also needs to level the playing field to ensure fair competition and attack price-gouging to reduce our grocery costs. We should also support our local agriculture hurt by tariffs and connect our local agriculture with our local markets to help reduce costs. We should further provide assistance and incentives for affordable groceries wherever we can.
Everyone should be able to afford their lives, and, as a legislator I will support these and other common-sense reforms and efforts to help make that happen.
Create Affordable Housing
We should all have access to affordable housing in our community.
In my role as chair of the Eagan Advisory and Planning Commission, I work with the City of Eagan’s excellent staff to review proposals for developments in our community. I also have the great privilege of serving as our local district representative on the Met Council Land Use Advisory Committee. Through these roles, I get to see first hand the work of our local officials in advocating, planning, and providing for affordable housing in our communities. I care deeply about these issues.
I believe we have a crisis in affordable housing. Whole new generations of Minnesotans can’t afford to purchase a home. I also believe, however, that we are on the cusp of a great, new expansion of building in this state. In Minnesota, we are best when we do big things.
In order to reach this goal, we need to ensure that we support fast-tracking construction, in a sustainable way, to help support a broad mix of housing options in our communities and in our state. These include supporting multi-family and multi-use developments to provide direct access for our residents and employees to work at and help grow our strong, thriving, local businesses.
As a state, we also need to further support and expand programs like LAHA and SAHA, Local Affordable Housing Aid and Statewide Affordable Housing Aid. We need to invest in affordable housing projects and help organizations provide affordable and supportive housing, especially to our most income-vulnerable residents, in existing development. Through this work, and an all-of-the-above strategy, we can further support a healthy, thriving community where everyone can afford housing in our state.
Invest in Education and Child Welfare
All Minnesota children should benefit from a robust, supportive education system.
Education lies close to my heart. Both of my grandmothers were teachers, and my mother was a Minneapolis Public School elementary teacher for her entire career. I helped her unpack her classrooms each fall and pack them up again for the summer. She sometimes had to buy her own materials to support the learning of her students. She inspired us, deep in our hearts, to love education and see the value of education for everyone.
My sister obtained her Masters in Education from the University of Minnesota, and I was a teacher for a year through the Fulbright Program in Dortmund, Germany. Each day, I would show up to students from immigrant backgrounds and watch their eyes light up as they learned something new. There was life created there.
In my work as a child welfare attorney, supporting the most vulnerable children and families in our community, I see the direct effects of lack of educational support at home, and sometimes at school, on children. I firmly believe we need to ensure that social-emotional learning remains a core of our local education curriculum. This includes providing adequate funding for children’s mental health and supportive services, with all school budget formulas matched to track inflation.
We also need to ensure that our children, families, and social services systems have the financial support they need to ensure that kids can be safe, have the nutrition they need, and can focus on learning and growing.
Investing in education and systems is key for ensuring the success of future Minnesotans, and it is critical for attracting new residents, businesses, and jobs. As a legislator, I will work to ensure a robust, supportive education and child welfare system remains in our state.
Eliminate Fraud
We should have absolute confidence that our public dollars are going to those they are intended to help. Fraud—at any level—is a serious problem, which needs to be vigorously rooted out and prevented from happening again. Fraud is particularly a problem with our government services. It is not just public theft. It undermines our trust in institutions, and it inhibits our ability to engage in good, responsive government. It is of utmost importance that we find those responsible for committing fraud, prosecute and hold them accountable, and install guardrails to ensure fraud never happens again.
If elected, I will help lead in detecting and prosecuting fraud, reforming our systems, and preventing any future fraud from occurring in our state. I fully support the new legislative fraud oversight committee, frequent service audits, new detecting technology, independent monitoring procedures, and all-electronic tracking of services provided and payments made. Good, responsive government grows in light of review.
The current fraud investigations are also being used as an excuse for federal action and backlash against our Somali and immigrant communities. This is wrong, deeply disturbing, and misguided. Our Somali neighbors are law-abiding local business-owners, employees, active community members, and students at our local schools. We will eliminate fraud in our systems and prevent it from occurring again while also standing up for all of our friends and neighbors.
Support Organized Labor and Strong Local Business
Everyone deserves to have a good paying job and the benefits necessary to support a high quality of life.
My mom was a Minneapolis public school teacher in elementary education for her entire career, and a strong union member and supporter. My father was a local towboat deckhand and operator on a tug boat on the Mississippi River for most of his career. He is a strong Local 49 union member and supporter. I grew up watching documentaries on the labor rights movement and the civil rights movement, and I knew in my bones that I would join that work someday.
I am a strong supporter of labor. I have served 7 and a half years as an AFSCME union steward and leader. In that role, we tirelessly support excellent public service through partnership with the employer and strong, livable wages and benefits for employees, who help make the employer’s vision a reality. I will continue to stand up for labor and to strongly support labor in my time ahead.
I also support a strong local and state business community. Our businesses are our partners in building community, good-paying jobs, and ensuring the high quality of life we all have here in Eagan, Burnsville, and Minnesota. I look forward to continued partnership with businesses to meet their needs and the needs of the communities to which they belong.
Prevent Gun Violence
All Minnesotans deserve to live a life free of gun violence. We deserve to be safe in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and in our schools.
There is no place in our society, other than the military, for assault weapons. I support an assault weapons ban. If anyone wants to see the effects of assault weapons outside of the military, and I do not recommend this, simply look to the pictures of the classrooms in Uvalde, Texas, and at Annunciation Catholic Church. I believe that no child should ever have to go through an active shooter drill in their school; and yet that is today’s reality.
As a state, I applaud our DFL work to close the loophole and require private pistol and semi-automatic weapons’ sales to undergo a background check. The DFL also passed needed “Red Flag” laws that allow courts to suspend someone’s access to firearms if they are a danger to themselves or others. I see the direct need for these laws in the work that I do to support victims of domestic violence and hold perpetrators accountable, who are suffering from chemical addiction and/or mental illness issues.
I believe we can go further than this with mandatory reporting of stolen guns, safe storage requirements, better registration (eliminating ghost sales), preventing home manufacture of guns, and better identifying and treating of mental health issues.
We need common-sense gun reform to ensure that we are all safe from gun violence.
Support Government That Reflects Our Community
We celebrate diversity in our communities and among those we serve. We work to make people whole. And we include everyone in responsive government.
These principles form the core of the work both at my office and of the work that I do and care about every day. We recognize the tragic legacy, in particular on our communities of color, of discrimination, oppression, and disinvestment. Grounded in this history, we commit, with new energy and understanding, to right the wrongs of the past and create the community we hope to see.
My goals are as follows:
1. Attract and support citizens in our diverse state – and ensure we have a government which reflects the community we serve;
2. Build an inclusive community – one which welcomes, supports, and draws upon diverse perspectives from a fully-engaged, creative, and empowered citizenry; and
3. Develop intercultural expertise, understanding and responding to the diverse needs of our state. I am committed to these principles every day in my life and my work, and they will continue to form a core part of my values as a legislator at the capitol.
Ensure Clean Air, Clean Water and a Healthy Environment
I grew up outdoors. Leaving at dawn in South Minneapolis, exploring parks on my bike with my friends, and returning only when we got hungry. I also had the great privilege of going to Wolf Ridge in 5th grade, where I became a voyageur and won the outdoors award for our school class.
That early love of the great outdoors, has led to weekly park trips with our kids, camping and scouting activities with cub scouts, summers at YMCA family camp, and a proposal to my wife on an island in the Boundary Waters. I want my kids, and their kids, to enjoy the same outdoors and quality of life that I have enjoyed in my life, for even more generations to come.
As Minnesotans we must support an end to the pollution damaging our climate, speed the transition to clean energy, and create a just and healthy future for us all. This must also include all diverse voices — our Indigenous neighbors, our communities of color, and our urban and rural populations in this transition.
We have the unique opportunity as Minnesotans to lead a green revolution, with sustainable energy consumption and a high quality of life. As a legislator, I will work diligently with our state and our businesses to combat pollution, promote a healthy co-existence with our environment, develop the green jobs of our future, and maintain the great natural resources and beauty we all enjoy.