the candidate
Why choose me to represent VA-03?
the campaign
Seven Phases. One goal.
the district
Virginia’s Third Congressional District.
Phase 003:
Post Election Analysis
Phase 004:
FrontLine Issues
Affordability &
Cost of Living Crisis
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Skyrocketing rents. Declining food quality and increasing prices. Vehicle maintenance. Ballooning insurance premiums. Tariffs.
For decades, corporations have consolidated power and weaponized the economy. Their goal: maximize profits, minimize costs.
Rather than use economic models that benefit everyone, corporations rely on slave labor and price gouging to ensure record profits. In the end, the suits get richer and the working class gets screwed.
Our needs are not commodities.
Addressing the Cost of Living Crisis requires building a new economic model that divorces our needs from profit margins. Main Street must be our economic foundation if we want sustainable, long-term economic stability.
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Sufficient affordable housing in a district like VA-03, where we’ve run out of land, is difficult, but not impossible, to achieve.
Cooperative housing via Urban renewal is an essential ingredient to regulate the housing market and drive down costs.
Waiting years to secure landmark legislation to reorganize and fund the Department of Housing and Urban Authority is not enough. We must organize our communities to raise the capital and build affordable housing units ourselves.
Proposal:
Start a community fund to develop affordable housing.When corporations own housing there is no incentive to stabilize prices for community development. We cannot continue to let housing be a luxury for the highest bidder or wait for the government to do something about it.
Example:
250,000 residents donate $20 a month to fully fund the development of a 200 unit apartment. Stabilized rents would then pay it forward to convert more housing. After several years, hundreds of units across VA-03 will be owned and operated by the community and not landlords. -
The Hampton Roads experiences some of the highest food insecurity rates in the state. Yet, the Hampton Roads contains enough farmland to build a sustainable, self-sufficient food network.
We must build and invest in resiient, local food infrastructure by partnering with local farmers, installing community gardens, building out urban agriculture, and placing our region on the path to food sovereignty.
Goals to address Food Insecurity:
Establish community gardens in each of the 184 precincts in VA-03
Secure 10 year funding for local community gardens
Expand green spaces in VA-03 and transition them into food forests
Partner with cities to add greenhouses to schools, community centers, and libraries
Build a robust network of small businesses, restaurants, and grocery stores to minimize food waste
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Most people in VA-03 commute to work alone for less than 30 minutes. 64, 664, Jefferson, Mercury, Tidewater, High Street, Military Highway. The corridors already exist for robust rapid transit.
Traffic is worsening, lane expansions are scientifically ineffective, and the Hampton Roads’ future development has a ceiling without comprehensive public transit.
The 64/664 corridor is perfect for high speed transit. Major roadways like Tidewater, Mercury, Jefferson, High Street, Military Hwy, and Turnpike are perfect for light rails and trolley cars. Neighborhoods and communities within close proximity to major through-ways can utilize buses and bike lines for transport to transit stations.
A comprehensive mix of buses, bike lanes, trolleys, and trains would revolutionize transit in the 757, open up more business to traffic, save money, and lower emissions.
Plus, Virginia’s $70 million tunnel boring machine needs to keep spinning.
Proposal:
Work with city leaders, residents, and federal agencies to build a comprehensive public transit plan across the 757.
Secure funding for research, development, and construction at Hampton Roads Transit to make public transformation a reality by 2040.
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Dominion, and all monopolized utilities, are playing games with our with us while funding millions of dollars in overcharges to political campaigns to ensure their hold on power.
It’s legalized corruption.
We must begin to develop and deploy microgrids across the Hampton Roads to ensure energy resilience, independence, and reliability.
The gains made through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the now gutted Inflation Reduction Act were phenomenal first steps. Now, we must go further.
Military
Industrial
Complex
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“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” - President Dwight Eisenhower
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VA-03 is too dependent on Defense and federal dollars to support its economy. As we’ve seen with the government shutdown, when Washington enters gridlock, so does our local economy.
That's a problem.
If the impossible happened tomorrow and the world declared peace and committed to disarmament, our economy would crash.
What does that say about our regions legacy?
We must become more than the most militarized region in the world.
We cannot and should not eliminate the Defense budget overnight. However, we must make strides to diversity our economy if this region wants to survive another 400 years.
Hampton Roads residents are divided between those who work in defense, those who service those who work in defense and the federal government, those who service federal workers, and those who don’t interact with the Military Industrial Complex at all.
Our economic prosperity cannot be tied to our ability to make war.
Proposal:
Invest in industries to diversify and bolster our economic resiliency for decades to comes.
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Nearly every military base in the Hampton Roads is a Superfund site, an EPA designation for the most polluted places in the United States. The environmental impacts of these locations have irrevocably damaged the regions ecology, but we can fight to restore some of what was lost.
We should be able to swim, fish, and build our livelihood in the literal Hampton roads, the waters that birthed our country’s strength. Unfortunately, failure to heed Eisenhower’s warnings allowed the Military Industrial Complex to rob this region of its grandeur and abundance.
Policy Proposal:
Partner with local nonprofits, state and federal agencies, and homeowners to stabilize coastlines with living shores.
Hold the Department of Defense accountable for the decades of environmental harm.
Form a fusion task force to address environmental effects of military bases around the world.
Direct the Department of Defense to create environmental agencies in every military branch.
Work with scientists to remediate the environmental degradation across the region.
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The Hampton Roads is home to one of the largest concentrations of military veterans in the world. With only one medical center in the region, healthcare and services for veteran needs are grossly inadequate.
Policy Proposals:
Increase funding for Department of Veteran Affairs to include more hospital and primary care, locations across the 757
Partner with local healthcare conglomerates to create staffing pipelines in public school to ensure adequate human infrastructure to care for veterans
Expand comprehensive healthcare benefits for veterans
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First offered as a way to prevent World War II from destabilizing Europe, the Peace Through Strength Doctrine has become an excuse to fund a limitless Defense budget as an erroneous way to achieve global peace.
Every study proves that investing in institutions like USAID does far more to prevent violent escalations than a robust military ever will.
In VA-03 we must demand that we put as much effort into caring for people locally, across the country, and in the most vulnerable parts of the world before we place focus on the military as the way to achieve global stability.
Proposal:
Re-establish USAID and ensure the agency is properly funded, managed, and held accountable in its ability to save lives and prevent conflicts across the world.
Community &
Public Safety
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Poverty induces crime. Tackling the Cost of Living Crisis will directly address the root causes of crime in the region.
The carceral system does not achieve its intended goal. After decades of mass incarceration, crime continues to fluctuate independent of prison populations. .
Yes, there are some people that should not have access to a general society for a multitude of reasons. However, using a system designed to maximize cruelty achieves nothing.
We must adopt a criminal justice system that prioritizes rehabilitation, not retribution.
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Police have too much power in the United States and over the years the Supreme Court has only strengthened police powers while eliminating avenues for accountability.
Use of force isn't only police killings, it involves the way officers speak to civilians, unnecessarily stop and detain civilians, and ultimately use force in situations is isn’t warranted.
For too long we’ve asked the question, “when is it not okay to use deadly force?” Such questioning makes the standards of force retroactive, allowing harm to be done at the public’s expense.We need a standard of care that clearly defines when force will be used.
How many times can you be asked to comply before being wrestled to the ground? What are the standards for when you must exit a vehicle?
There is no clearly defined code that governs police interactions. We must create one. This will aid this application of qualified immunity as well as enable citizens to make informed decisions.
Policy Proposal:
Work with federal, state, and local law enforcement to create a set of public guidelines governing police interactions. -
Policing communities is not a task to be completed like delivering a package or advising financial decisions. Policing is about maintaining order in a community. Yet, how can officers know what “order” is in any particular community if they are not members of it?
Example:
A group of kids always hangout past curfew. The most illegal thing they do is break curfew. Parents and neighbors regularly tell them to go home. The community knows they pose no threat, but agree they should be inside after 11pm, not hanging on the street. Community policing adequately addresses the situation without severe consequences. That changes when officers outside the community are on patrol neighborhoods.
A family in the neighborhood has a domestic dispute and the police are called. An officer arrives and doesn't know these kids. When officers arrive and see them, they go investigate. Now the children are worried. They scatter. An officer sees those kids running and immediately suspects danger. We know all too well how this story often ends.
Should officers have the power to police communities they are unfamiliar with? That fundamental question is rarely addressed by legislation, but it must.
Policy Proposal:
Require police departments to integrate community outreach into their patrols and prioritize relationship building with community members. -
Gun violence is ubiquitous in the United States. Unfortunately, VA-03 is no exception.
No happy individual, content with life, knowing unconditional love has picked up a gun and committed senseless gun violence. Addressing the problem comes down to building community.
In the Hampton Roads there is an entertainment vacuum and lack of broad connections.
However, the problem doesn't stop there. Advancing technology makes printing guns easy. We need serious safeguards in place to ensure the entire gun safety schema cannot be bypassed with a printed and digital file.
Proposal:
Host weekly events geared toward at risk youth to have an enjoyable time and not;
Fund consistent gun buyback events across the region;
Institute gun safety classes for all ages -
Profiting off incarceration is diabolical. With costs upwards of $40,000/year, the United States spends more money to house prisoners than the average American makes a year.
How is that an economically viable?
More so, states across the country, Virginia included, use prison labor to manufacture a multitude of products for public buildings. The law in Virginia goes so far as to require public institutions to source items from Virginia prisons.
There are millions to be made off incarceration and it continues to occur at the expense of everyday people.
Policy Position:
Ban for profit prisons and fully abolish slavery in the United States.