Ending the school-to-prison pipeline is not a small task and requires detangling the myth of white superiority from our entire education system.Collection: Education
The care economy impacts all of us: our children, elderly loved ones, family members with disabilities, child care workers, home health aides, nurses, and so many more. Care is something we all need, at different stages in our lives.Collection: Family
I support defunding the police - particularly the militarization of our police force and reallocating those resources toward public health. And not just health care but mental health support, affordable housing, education, alternatives to incarceration, non-emergency responses to those who might be in mental distress.Collection: Education
We need to rebuild our nation with a new foundation. A foundation rooted in love, and care, and equality. Where justice is truly real for all of us, regardless of race, class, gender, orientation, or religion. I fully believe we can.Collection: Equality
Our schools, like so many parts of our infrastructure, are crumbling across the country. Healing our schools can and should be central to our fight to achieve environmental, racial and economic justice.Collection: Environmental
I was suspended and discarded. I was told to go to hell by administrators. I was placed in classes far beneath my intelligence. I even had a teacher tell me my life was ruined.Collection: Intelligence
We will continue our work to uphold the values within our families, communities, and institutions that our service members have fought to protect: equality, justice, opportunity, freedom, and a shared responsibility to each other.Collection: Equality
Yes, we need a substantial investment in our hard infrastructure like roads and bridges. But roads and bridges can't serve people if they don't have the child care they need in order to go to work or the health care they need to stay healthy and participate in the workforce.Collection: Health
The school-to-prison pipeline - the disproportionality that exists in handing out school discipline in schools to Black and Brown students for simple infractions - pushes kids out of classrooms and into our ever-growing system of mass incarceration.
Our foreign aid to other nations should never be used to harm.
My background is: I'm a Black man in America, victim of police brutality, victim of institutional racism, working-class from working-class roots.
We must work together to unlearn the biases that make our foundation week, and rebuild a foundation of collective care, love, and cooperation.
It's important for Muslims and non-Muslims to stand together against hate in all of its forms, particularly against Islamophobia because quite often Islamophobia is almost like the forgotten '-ism' and the forgotten phobia that is always present.
I believe with all my heart that bold, public investments in care for people, communities, and the environment can anchor the rebirth of our country and secure our future.
Violence begets violence, and hate begets hate. Both hate and violence beget a society that harms, and makes impossible the healing necessary for us to reach our full potential.
We must hire more social workers and counselors in our schools than police officers.
I would never try to fill John Lewis's shoes. I can only be myself - my authentic self.
When I look at American history, I see how it has been driven by resistance and protest against a system that has been oppressive to not just Black people but to women, to members of the LGBTQ community.
I see myself as a person who is pushing back and fighting against oppression in all its forms, centering racial and economic injustice very explicitly.
Once an educator, always an educator!
I've been locked up for not having insurance, only to be released. I mean, this sort of thing is just par for the course when you're Black or brown in America.
I've been arrested for 'stealing' my own car, only to be released.
I'm trying my best not to raise my children with fear of the police.
I'm a sponge, man. I'm a learner.
Congressman Engel had a reputation quite frankly for being absent from the community, being disengaged and not being a leader or fighter on the issues that matter most, and that's not just rhetoric.
I remember being a young black kid in high school, I didn't think the establishment or the political system was for me. I didn't think the system was for me, and I know a lot of kids feel that way.
Being a candidate who doesn't take corporate PAC money forced me to be accountable to the people I serve and to meet them where they are.
I am endorsing Joe Biden. He has to be our president. Donald Trump is a racist and a fascist, and we have to do everything in our power to make sure Joe Biden wins.
I deeply love the students that I serve. I tried to do anything in my power to give them additional resources and support so they could do well in school and beyond.
I talk about the politics of love over the politics of fear... Fear is rooted in institutional racism. It's this fear of what's different, fear of the unknown, and looking at something that's different as deficient. It doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be a zero sum game.
We can have a political system that works for the people and allows for the economy to thrive. It doesn't have to be either.
The impact of poverty on our kids and their learning. That's something I've understood pretty intimately throughout my career as an educator.
Many elected Republicans know that ensuring that people of color can vote freely would spell bad news for them and their agenda, which privileges corporations and the wealthy.
Our democracy is falling apart - we can't just let that happen.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed and enabled a doctrine of obstructionism that's prevented Americans from seeing the help and progress they desperately need.
Climate change is ravaging our cities - we can't just let that happen.
You know what Donald Trump is more afraid of than anything else? A Black man with power.
I was 11 years old when I was initially brutalized by the police, just for horse-playing with my friends and not responding to the police in the way they wanted me to.
I'm going to be the kind of congressperson where I'm going to be at rallies with the people, fighting for justice and being present and showing them that they have a fighter and a champion in Congress with them and for them.
I believe our current system of capitalism is slavery by another name.
Defund the police does not mean abolish the police. It means a dramatic reduction in the number of police in our poor communities and particularly our poor Black and Brown communities.
Congress has the authority to authorize spending and investment to historically neglected and marginalized communities.
My second year of teaching I was chosen to be a crisis intervention teacher. Our school was a kindergarten through fourth grade school with 1,500 kids, largely recent immigrants from Africa and South America. And it was in one of the poorest zip codes in the country. The classes were too big, the school was underfunded.
Whoever becomes Education Secretary has to have a love and passion for public schools. Not charter schools, not vouchers, but public schools.
All my kids do is make fun of me.
I'm a Black man who was raised by a single mother in a housing project. That story doesn't usually end in Congress.
If you look throughout American history, it has been protests and mass movements and the people rising up that has moved to this country forward.
So, I started teaching in 1999 in the South Bronx.
We need to stop sending federal military equipment to local police departments.
We need to end qualified immunity at the federal level, where police can violate a person's civil rights with impunity, which we've seen happening time and time again.