A Voice for the People

I believe in creating inclusive policies to build systemic change.

I am a longtime community activist and advocate that has focused on protecting small businesses in times of need and organized mutual aid for workers in crisis. The child of immigrants, mother of two, sister, niece, art lover, yoga teacher, and circle work and restorative justice practitioner, I will work tirelessly for our city so that all folks can not only survive, but thrive.

I co-founded Seattle Restaurants United during the COVID-19 crisis, helping local businesses survive by securing policy changes that protected workers, capped delivery fees, and secured funding. As co-chair of the Independent Restaurant Coalition, I helped pass legislation that delivered $28.6 billion in relief to the restaurant industry.

As National Director of RAISE High Road Restaurants, I fought to raise the minimum wage and eliminate the subminimum wage, while launching programs to increase racial and gender diversity in leadership.

As the Director of Community Engagement at Northwest Harvest, I worked to bring together community support and responsiveness to address emergent challenges, along with addressing systemic injustices, namely poverty and racism, to build policy to support food insecure folks.

I am a part of the Seattle School Meals & Food Education Working Group and served two terms on the Seattle Labor Standards Advisory Commission, In this work, I saw how important it was for community minded people to be involved in government to make real changes for the people that don’t have the access or voices that the privileged among us do.

This is why I am running for Seattle City Council.

We need to get jeanie on the ballot. She needs 150 signatures and 150 contributions of a minimum of $10.

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A Seattle We Dream Of

Seattle is a city that lauds its progressive values, but have we truly been following through with this? We live in a city with upside down tax rates that favor the rich, has a police force with no accountability, and an administration that continuously sweeps our unhoused population.

In Seattle, it is important to have elected officials that stand up for the progressive values that the people vote for, and follow through with making them real.

That is why I am running for this position.

If elected, I plan to bring a vision of Seattle brought to life by the community with a resolve to make it a reality. Performative politics has held this city back for far too long, it is time to start following through on implementing the policies we preach because that is what real community leaders do.

Housing

When we say housing is a human right, what do we mean by that? It means that everyone deserves to come home. Our unhoused population are a part of our community and should not be treated as a nuisance or demonized.

Brave volunteers fought to bring social housing to this city, that fight is not over. I plan to keep up that fight by ensuring that Proposition 1A is properly funded and protected in city hall. I will end the sweeps to our unhoused residents, and bring humanity back to our government.

If we are to help the people among us that are struggling the most, it is important to regain trust with them, so we can actually deploy the services they need. A fully housed city benefits us all, it is time to stop just talking about it, the community has already provided us with solutions, it is time to elect someone that will follow through and actually do something about it.

Public Safety

How do we expect public safety when we are not safe from the people that are supposed to provide it? With a looming Trump administration, I fear that everything we’ve fought for to increase accountability will be rolled back. We can’t let that happen. We need a council that is not scared of our police, and will not seek to punish its citizens for simply existing in the wrong part of our city.

Our current mayor keeps pushing policies focused around sweeps and jail, but these have not and will never solve this problem. In fact these false “solutions” have cost taxpayers millions every year and have made the problem worse. Moving people around via sweeps costs the City in law enforcement and Parks Department expenses, puts an additional strain on already threadbare social services, and continues to cost the City massive amounts of money in litigation. Jail is not a housing alternative. Jail costs a minimum $240/bed per night. Even short stays in jail have been shown to make it harder for individuals to secure stable housing, keep employment, and negatively impact health. Individuals are more likely to remain unsheltered if they become incarcerated.

Labor Rights

On day 1 in office, I will propose new policies around wage theft to start the process of holding our large corporations accountable. Conservative institutions love to talk about street crime only to distract us from the millions of dollars our biggest corporations steal from their own employees. Instead of investing in pursuing these crimes, we focus on civil violations and crimes of poverty. If we are going to support workers in this city, we need to start by showing them where we stand.

Support Prevailing Wage Laws in Seattle to establish a wage floor on any project that receives a public subsidy; these laws protect paychecks, defend taxpayers, and create jobs.

Refuse to contract with businesses that routinely commit wage theft, or use subcontractors that steal from their employees.

Ensure the use of Labor Harmony Agreements (LHAs) and Community Workforce Agreements (CWAs) on public infrastructure projects. These agreements allow workers to form unions without employer coercion, and make it possible for a new generation of workers from disenfranchised zip codes to be trained for high wage careers in construction.

Prioritize affordable housing for Seattle workers and prevent further displacement. The Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development found that over 34,000 workers in jobs paying less than $40,000 per year commute more than 25 miles from their homes to jobs located in Seattle.

Being a more inclusive city and bringing more people to the table to participate in our budget not only makes us a stronger city, but a more efficient one.

Bring Back Affirmative Action to Seattle

In 2022, Governor Jay Inslee issued Executive Order 22-02, which eliminated the ban on affirmative action in state and local public institutions. This means the city of Seattle has been able to do affirmative action for over 3 years, but has simply refused to do so. The “merit” based system is a myth I-200 has harmed POC owned businesses for over 2 decades, by turning our government contracting process into an old boys network favoring bias and cronyism.

If our contracting was truly based on “merit”, than many of our projects would be done sooner and cheaper. Instead, since I-200 passed in 1998, Seattle projects such as construction and transportation have only gotten more expensive and more time consuming, resulting in budget shortfalls across the board.