As a member of the Rochester City Council, I will continue to organize community support for the political and economic reconstruction of our City, with a priority on people and planet rather than corporate profit.  Upon election, I will focus on implementing the following programs:

City Office for Cooperative Development

Corporate welfare as a strategy for economic development has clearly failed our communities, with an extreme lack of living wage work available to our citizens.  Instead, we must use our City's resources to create new jobs in the form of worker-owned cooperatives.  Using the Mondragon Cooperatives of Spain and the Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland, OH as models, we can rebuild our urban economy to provide living wage jobs for all that need them.  The Office of Cooperative Development will play a  crucial role by overseeing the distribution of start-up funds, providing technical assistance for these democratically-managed workplaces, and leveraging economic support from community anchor institutions such as the University of Rochester.

Neighborhood Councils & Participatory Budgeting

I will introduce a Charter revision to establish elected neighborhood-level councils that will be given authority over certain aspects of City administration.  Bringing democracy down to this level will encourage and enable more Rochesterians to be involved in our community's political processes and be more invested in their neighborhood's success.  As part of this decentralization, the neighborhood councils will administer a participatory budgeting process, in which all members of the community will be able to designate City budget funds for needed projects.

Other policies that I would support as your next Councilmember:

1. An Independent Civilian Review Board overseeing the Rochester Police Department
2. Restorative justice, that heals rather than punishes for crime
3. Guarantee quality food as a human right
4. End the use of City resources for home foreclosures
5. Introduce curbside compost pickup
6. Divest City funds from national banks
7. Prioritize mass and active transportation in all City planning
8. Encourage the use of City-owned land for urban agriculture
9. Extend existing hydrofracking moratorium to a permanent ban, and pursue legal action against New York State if fracking is allowed anywhere near Hemlock & Canadice Lakes.
10. End the profiling and criminalization of Rochester's communities of color, particularly youth, by the RPD