Our Platform
- Education
- Healthcare
- Criminal Justice
- Working Families Plan
- Housing
- Economic Justice
- Green New Deal
- Worker Power
- Corporate Accountability
Education
Madinah attended middle school in the district but her parents opted to send her to a charter high school. Her husband graduated from a public high school, and their high school experiences differed immensely.
Their different experiences were due in part to Delaware’s current funding system, which is outdated and fails to direct more funds to students in poverty even though these students experience greater challenges in the classroom.
- Reform the education funding system to adequately meet student and community needs
- Modernize the funding formula so that funding is tied to the needs of students, not the property value of their neighborhoods.
- Provide extra funding for low-income students, English-language learners, and students with disabilities, who make up over half of students within the Christina School District.
- Move funding away from the local level and to the state level to reduce disparities between school districts.
- Ensure that every child has access to quality education outside of the K-12 system
- Ensure that every child has a quality early start by enacting universal pre-k.
- Expand programs that help students obtain a debt-free degree like the SEED and INSPIRE scholarships.
- Expand career and technical education, including apprenticeship programs and credential programs.
- Make sure that our schools are safe
- End “zero-tolerance” policies that begin the school-to-prison pipeline.
- Pass common-sense gun control that reduces the possibilities of school shootings.
Healthcare
Madinah believes that healthcare is a human right and supports Medicare-for-all. In Delaware and throughout the country, healthcare costs continue to rise while health outcomes continue to get worse. Our nation’s healthcare system is fundamentally broken and repairing it requires structural change.
- Guarantee that every Delawarean has quality, affordable healthcare
- Establish a public health care option in Delaware.
- Implement all-payer rate setting to reduce the cost of medical care.
- Lower the prices of prescription drugs directly in order to keep costs low for people who need them.
- Eliminate disparities in healthcare outcomes
- Secure funding for programs that decrease maternal and infant mortality, like providing doulas for Black, Hispanic, and low-income families.
- Support the creation and maintenance of community-owned hospitals and clinics.
- Confront the opioid crisis by investing in treatment and prevention.
- Reduce Delaware’s overdose rate, which is currently one of the highest in the nation, by increasing access to addiction treatment.
- Expand funding for overdose reversal medicines like Narcan.
- Work to end the stigma of addiction in our communities.
Read the full plan here.
Criminal Justice
Madinah knows that our criminal justice system is not always focused on justice. America has the highest prison population in the world per capita, and Delaware is one of the worst in the country. While we have made some progress in recent years, there is much more that we need to do in order to build a true criminal justice system here in Delaware.
- Refocus our legal system around restorative justice
- Abolish mandatory minimum sentencing.
- Keep the death penalty out of Delaware in all cases.
- Legalize marijuana, use funds to give reparations for those who were arrested because of it, and expunge all records of non-violent drug charges.
- Ban solitary confinement, and work on releasing low-level non-violent offenders.
- Decriminalize poverty
- Remove the onerous fines and fees for civil and criminal proceedings.
- Abolish the cash bail system.
- Increase the burden of proof on law enforcement required to seize property with civil forfeiture.
- Make sure that law enforcement is accountable to the people
- Create a funded Civilian Police Review Board within each police agency that has subpoena power.
- Expand the use of body cameras for police officers at all levels of policing in Delaware, require them to be on at all times, and make the footage publicly accessible.
- Demilitarize all police departments in the State.
- Abolish use-of-force laws that can lead to violent escalation.
- Require law enforcement to publicly account for its forfeiture activity.
- Amend the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights so that police officers are not above the law.
Working Families Plan
It is becoming harder to start a family in America. In the 26th district alone, 1 in 10 families are living in poverty, and even those making more money find themselves without access to basic services. Madinah plans to raise a family in the district, but in Delaware that is becoming harder than ever. The Plan for Working Families works to make sure that all families in the state of Delaware prosper.
- Paid family and medical leave
- Ensure 16 weeks of paid family leave for all workers.
- Increase Medical and Family Leave to 12 weeks.
- Extend benefits to independent contractors and prosecute employers that discriminate based on age, sex, marital status, pregnancy, or children.
- Universal child care
- Expand the Purchase of Care program with a higher threshold and a sliding scale instead of a hard cutoff.
- Create a public option for child care.
- Reduce the costs of parenting
- Create a “baby box” program that provides basic supplies to parents.
- Eliminate school lunch debt.
- Expand services for financially needy students at schools.
- Universal child healthcare
- Expand the Healthy Children Program to cover all families.
- Reduce cost-sharing for the Healthy Children Program.
Read the full plan here.
Housing
Madinah believes that everyone deserves a safe place to call home. But for too many people in the 26th district, their access to housing is constantly under threat. In manufactured housing communities, like Glasgow Courts, tenants own their homes but not the land it rests on. This means they can be evicted any month if the landowner sells the property to a developer. In other rental properties, leases can be changed unexpectedly leaving families in dire situations.
To make sure that everyone has a roof over their head, we need to expand protections and make sure that everyone has the opportunity to either own their home or own their neighborhoods as a community.
- Create a new Tenants’ Bill of Rights
- Expand the rights of tenants in order to provide more secure housing.
- Increase resources to enforce tenant protections.
- Ban discrimination by source of income, including Section 8 vouchers.
- Extend the Delaware Housing Assistance Program to prevent an eviction crisis in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
- Address manufactured housing issues
- Pass laws enforcing more accountability for landowners who rent to manufactured housing residents.
- Increase funds for the Manufactured Home Owner Attorney Fund without increasing the burden on homeowners.
- Promote access to the resources needed for residents to organize and move towards a resident-owned community.
- Push for more affordable housing and opportunities for homeownership
- Encourage the creation of more community land trusts.
- Guarantee civil legal aid for tenants.
- Expand opportunities to rent-to-own homes.
Economic Justice
Madinah recognizes that we are living in an unprecedented time of income inequality in Delaware and throughout the country. The time has come to bring fairness to our tax code and make sure the wealthy pay their fair share. This also means making sure that every person receives a fair wage and is able to support themselves and their families.
- Pay every Delawarean a living wage
- Raise the minimum wage to at least $15/hr, and then index it to the cost of living.
- Get rid of the “youth and training wage” that encourages exploitation of younger or temporary workers.
- Create a progressive taxation system
- Reform Delaware’s income tax brackets so that the wealthy pay their fair share.
- Reassess property taxes to account for changes in property values in the last forty years.
- Bring back the estate tax.
- Make sure that corporations are paying their fair share in corporate taxes and franchise fees.
- Make sure economic protections remain in place during the recession
- Protect social services from being cut during budget negotiations.
- Extend unemployment for those who are unable to find work during the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Green New Deal for Delaware
Madinah realizes that our collective failure to protect the planet is going to affect generations to come. And it’s not just that; today, many Delawareans are exposed to toxic pollutants and unclean water, while the companies that are responsible for the damage are rarely held accountable.
Every Delawarean deserves clean water and air. Madinah believes in investing in green job creation to both protect our environment and revitalize our economy.
- Move to 100% renewables by 2050
- Maintain and expand the solar carveout to bring more manufacturing jobs to Delaware.
- Create a comprehensive plan for clean energy and clean transportation that takes input from the groups most affected.
- Make sure the benefits of the green economy go to everyone
- Create a Green Bank to finance new renewable development, especially in low-income communities.
- Expand grants and subsidies for community solar projects.
- Expand and fund programs to retrofit old buildings.
- Create a healthy environment for every Delawarean
- Pass a Green Amendment to make clean water, clean air, and a health environment a constitutional right.
- Require cumulative health risk assessments for new industry.
- Strengthen complete communities legislation to ensure walkable/bikeable infrastructure and reduce sprawl.
Read the full plan here.
Worker Power
Madinah recognizes that working people produce the goods, services, and profits that create economic prosperity. But too many workers don’t have a say in the workplaces that they keep running, both in Delaware and around the country. Companies are free to cut corners and even move overseas without input from workers.
It’s time to give workers more power over the companies in which they work. Both American and Delaware history show that worker power ultimately results in higher pay, better working conditions, and a more productive, resilient economy.
- Support and protect the formation of labor unions
- Protect workers by strengthening labor unions and fighting the “right to work” laws that make it hard for workers to organize in their workplaces.
- Make sure that government projects prioritize unionized, local workforces.
- Create and sustain employee-owned companies
- Assist with financing and support for companies to transition to employee-ownership, in the model of W. L. Gore and Associates, one of Delaware’s greatest economic success stories.
- Facilitate the creation of worker-run committees to resolve disputes and voice concerns to management, even in unorganized workplaces.
- Reform Delaware’s influential corporate law to create worker power throughout the country
- Impose a fiduciary duty to workers on management, rather than just shareholders.
- Require codetermination, giving workers the ability to elect members to the company’s corporate board.
- Require a supermajority on the board for those decisions which impact workers most heavily, especially decisions to move production out of the state or overseas.
Corporate Accountability
Madinah believes that Delaware’s political leaders should represent the people of Delaware. But for too long, our government has done more to protect corporations than working people. The time has come for a government by and for the people, not the corporations.
Delaware has a unique responsibility to reign in corporate power. Corporations choose Delaware as their home state due to its lax corporate laws, which makes our state a haven for corporate abuses but gives us the opportunity to use our hugely influential corporate law to hold corporations accountable.
- End corporate welfare
- Stop giving taxpayer money away to corporations without any guaranteed investment in our community.
- Require agencies arranging corporate welfare be subject to FOIA to increase transparency.
- Increase accountability over public-private partnerships to make sure that residents get the benefits that they are promised.
- Increase corporate transparency
- Increase transparency by requiring beneficial ownership disclosure, and push for a national database.
- Get rid of the holding company loophole to end Delaware’s international reputation as a haven for tax evasion and money laundering.
- Push our delegation to pass the 28th amendment
- Clarify that money is not speech and corporations shouldn’t drown out the people’s voice.
- Confirm that corporations aren’t people.