WHERE I STAND
ON THE ISSUES
So many issues matter. And frankly, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a fair amount of agreement across Democratic candidates in this race on preserving our democratic institutions, providing a social safety net, protecting our natural resources, championing women’s reproductive freedom, and actually freeing ourselves from the terror of gun violence. But you deserve to know my priorities—what I’d do first, as well as the things that are non-negotiable.
The link HERE will take you to my specific economic policy proposals. But first, what is non-negotiable:
COMMON SENSE GUN SAFETY
Nothing makes me feel more like this country is failing than to see the headlines, over and over and over again, about another school, church, synagogue, mosque, concert, or home town parade slaughter. We are failing to protect our citizens, our children. Government at its very core is supposed to keep people safe, and while that has historically been envisioned as meaning safe from foreign entities, it’s a bloody war on ourselves from assault rifles that is unforgivable.
In this arena Illinois has been a leader; eight other states agree and have implemented a statewide ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. And as the 1994 bipartisan Assault Weapons Ban recognized, firearms cannot really be well-regulated across state lines, so it’s actually exactly the role for federal government. Mental health crisis—certainly. But at the very least, and I mean at the very least, we need that law back.
WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM
Women’s reproductive rights are not a state issue. There is no acceptable legal, economic or moral construct—equality, efficiency, fairness, safety, you name it—that can justify turning our backs on women and their families. Here, too, a woman’s right to her own body cannot be different in different states. Not only is that nonsensical, it produces dangerous outcomes for women and their doctors.
Of course the legal and political battle to restore Roe v. Wade is crucial. But since community-based healthcare is likely to be bankrupted in many places from cuts to Medicaid, getting to comprehensive sex education, maternal healthcare, and safe abortion services must also remain vital policy objectives.
climate responsibility
Climate change makes it on to my priorities list not because of its urgency, but in spite of it. No, we don’t feel the immediate effect of global warming and pollution like we do a mass shooting, or a woman in reproductive crisis. But that is the slippery slope of long-term irresponsibility. And it’s not just time that matters. The geography of pollution does not stop at the border; carbon emissions half way around the world are our problem too. We need continued carrots and sticks around investment in clean technologies, and a reduction in dirty ones.
Closer to home, if Trump’s cuts to the NSF and the EPA are allowed to continue, then the health of 21 percent of the entire planet’s surface freshwater will be jeopardized. Lake Michigan itself, literally touching the 9th District from Irving Park though Uptown, Edgewater, Rogers Park, Evanston and into Wilmette, will absolutely be affected as will be drinking water throughout the watershed. Elevating that reality is very very important.
FOREIGN POLICY
I grew up in a house where foreign policy and nuclear proliferation conversations were almost as frequent a topic as the Bears and Bulls (Chicago sports, not market forces). And having been born in India and then living there and in Japan as a kid, I was heavily influenced very early on to learn that America has no monopoly on talent—actually unsurprising when you think of America as a nation of immigrants. What I worry about currently is the de-emphasis on expertise and on diplomacy. It is ludicrous, as has been demonstrated in Trump’s dealings with North Korea, in the Middle East, and in Ukraine, to think that the Art of the Deal is what will strengthen our national security. Let’s return to professionalism to our foreign policy, where we put in place advisors with serious, hard-earned policy credentials.