Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives - New York 6th Congressional District in 2020 New York Regular and Presidential Primary Election.
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Get StartedAll contraceptive services must be cost-free, including prescriptive consultations, contraceptive products, and surgeries. Learn more
Mel supports the unrestricted right to reproductive health care. Conservative state legislatures have stretched the boundaries of federal law and unleashed a cornucopia of impediments to make it functionally and materially impossible, if not technically illegal, to obtain essential healthcare. Mel will work to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade, and use federal legislation to protect pregnant people and healthcare workers. Mel will work to repeal the Hyde Amendment, and supports the EACH Woman Act of 2019, which aims to ensure affordable abortion coverage and care for all. Learn more
Mel believes ending cash bail must be a national priority to ensure that those that have not even been convicted of a crime are not further punished simply for being poor. Much needed reforms must be instituted to end cash bail without furthering the surveillance of individuals while awaiting trial. Learn more
Mel will fight to ensure that the VA is properly funded, reverse legislation that makes it easier to fire VA employees, and strengthen programming that does outreach in order to provide mental health services to servicemembers. Mel will also fight to legislate permanent protections for members of the LGBTQIA community who wish to serve. Learn more
Legalized marijuana revenue should be reinvested in the communities that have been most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs and racist broken windows policing. African-Americans are four times as likely to get arrested for marijuana as white Americans, despite both populations having similar rates of marijuana use. This has been a tool of mass incarceration, and a boon to the prison industrial complex. Corporations have profited off of the destruction of lives and communities through the criminalization of marijuana, and are now looking to profit off of its legalization. Impacted communities should be the first to benefit from legalization and the first in line to receive licenses and small business loans. Learn more
Mel will fight for public colleges, universities, and trade schools throughout the country to be tuition-free. He also supports a one-time policy of all student debt cancellation, including both federal and private sector student loans. Mel will support legislation the requires the Department of Education to forgive loans guaranteed by the U.S. government, while the federal government directly purchases private student loan debt from private banks and lenders. Learn more
Mel believes, like the U.N. does, that education is a human right. Tuition and fees at public universities have ballooned over the past 30 years, leaving an entire generation of young people with an unfair choice: sacrifice higher education or take out tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. The promise of higher pay has created a vicious cycle in which students take out increasingly larger loans only to realize that median hourly wages for college graduates have not kept up. Learn more
If elected, Mel will champion federal investment in our public schools, work to increase Title I funding to ensure underserved schools get the funding they need, fully fund the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, work to end student lunch debt and make sure all of our kids have the nourishment they need to learn, increase access to vital to ESL education, and fund school transportation. Learn more
Charter schools lack accountability and have drained funding from our public education system, having a disproportionate negative impact on communities of color. Mel supports a ban on for-profit charter schools as well as the NAACP’s moratorium on public funds being used to expand the charter system, until their impact has been fully audited. Furthermore, non-profit charter schools should comply with the same oversight requirements as public schools, increase parent involvement, and support efforts for teachers to unionize. Learn more
High quality, sex-positive, consent-based sex education is essential to building a community able to make informed decisions. Learn more
In Palestine and Israel, we must take special responsibility for the harms caused by decades of one-sided US support for Israel. We must stop fueling the conflict and end all military aid to Israel, and instead work for solutions that guarantee security, justice, and full equality to Israelis and Palestinians, so that Israeli and Palestinian children alike can live in peace and have the chance to grow and prosper. Learn more
Mel supports strict gun control legislation, universal background checks, regulating gun manufacturers, and a ban on assault weapon sales. Additionally, he supports the Violence Against Women Act and federal Red Flag legislation, which can temporarily remove firearms from individuals who pose a clear danger to themselves, their families, and their communities. Learn more
Gun violence is a threat to the safety of those in our communities and our schools. We must hold the firearms industry accountable to federal regulations instead of protecting it from liability. It’s time to take actions, not offer thoughts and prayers. Learn more
Mel supports Medicare for All — a federal universal single-payer program. No longer will our health be weighed against the balance sheets of massive corporations; with a single-payer program, all residents of the United States will be covered for their medical services, including doctor, hospital, preventive, long-term care, mental health, reproductive health care, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Eliminating co-pays, premiums, and deductibles means that lower- and middle-income Americans will no longer have to weigh the cost of paying for life-saving medicine against feeding their families. Learn more
A housing guarantee affirms Mel’s belief that housing is a human right. While an improving economy has benefited real estate and land development corporations, wages are not keeping up with rising housing prices and rent. In Queens alone, countless working families are being priced out of their neighborhoods, and the number of people experiencing homelessness is increasing. When the scales are tipped in favor of wealthy developers, a new vision for social housing in America is necessary. Mel will introduce legislation to create 25 million new social housing units by 2050 building upon recommendations by the People’s Policy Project and The People’s Action Homes Guarantee. Learn more
Mel understands that we need to act against the atrocities being committed in our country. Asylum seekers should be fast-tracked and given the chance to build the better life that they came here seeking. America should be a beacon of hope, not a stage for cruel and inhumane acts against refugees and immigrants. Learn more
Undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children only know America as their home. These children have grown up in America and are woven into the very fabric of our community. Mel will fight to secure DACA and DAPA, creating a path to citizenship for our DREAMer friends and neighbors. Mel is the descendant of immigrants who understands that America can and must do better for families. Learn more
To start, he will fight for public ownership of utilities to ensure critical access to basic utilities are not at the mercy of for-profit corporations who continue to hike rates while our communities face outages. In an ever-digitized world, access to the internet is a necessity. Mel will fight for a public option to the internet to end the stranglehold monopolies have on Queens’ residents on-line access, creating new jobs for local labor and providing high internet access to all communities. Learn more
Mel believes that everyone deserves to live out their golden years in dignity and will introduce the Golden Years Security Act to make sure that the basic needs of our elders are met: from preventing discrimination of LGBT elders in nursing facilities to addressing the specialized medical needs that our current infrastructure fails to. The Golden Years Security Act will also subsidize and expand home care services, increase the number of union nurses and caretakers, provide resources to train caretakers, meet the challenges of end-of-life care, and help families that must choose assisted living facilities. Learn more
Mel will lead on policies to ensure workers can transition into new sectors and working families can earn a livable wage. He supports a federal jobs guarantee and jobs training for workers to transition into the new economy, because workers are at the heart of our economy and should be valued as such. Learn more
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