Healthcare should be a right not a privilege. I support expanding access to quality healthcare. In the longer term, Medicare for all should be our goal, and it is certainly mine. However, I understand that we have a lot of work to do to reach that goal. I am ready to champion that fight in Washington, but in the meantime, we have to focus on protecting the strides we made with the ACA and work to improve that legislation until we can realize our common goal of healthcare for all. 

2. What is your position on immigration reform and securing our borders? Do you support a path to citizenship for Dreamers? What about the other 10 million immigrants?   

I support meaningful immigration reform that fixes the flaws in the current system, and includes a path to citizenship for those already here and working hard. I also support Dreamers and the DREAM Act. 

Immigrants are an important part of our culture, our national identity and our economy. As we all know, we are a nation of immigrants. While keeping our nation secure is important, inhumane policies that fail to recognize our values and our identity as a nation are not the answer. 

Meaningful immigration reform means supporting the immigrant community, the agricultural community and our economy. Providing a path to citizenship, particularly for Dreamers, means respecting our values and our history. 

3. How will you address economic inequality? Include in your answer your position on raising the federal minimum wage and the impact of the recent tax legislation passed by Congress.  

Economic inequality is one of the most pressing issues facing our country. I am focused on addressing these issues in every way I can. From focusing on investing in education and expanding educational opportunities post high school, to investing in innovation, infrastructure and economic development and revitalization to create more opportunities for Americans to build careers capable of not only sustaining a family, but building a better life. 

We need to make all of those investments to address income inequality in the long term and create an economy where prosperity is broadly shared. At a time when economic inequality is as bad as it has been in several generations, we need to take action to help people in the here and now. I am committed to supporting efforts to establish a modern federal minimum wage requirement that keeps citizens at all levels out of poverty if they work 40 hours a week and also takes into account cost of living differences between economic and business climates. 

We need to roll back the Trump tax reforms and pass real reform that gives relief to those who need it while ensuring that corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share. 

I have had to contend with racial injustice first hand and often in my daily life. 

If there’s anything that being a black woman working in the Obama administration taught me, it’s that that representation truly matters. 

I am often reminded of the words of Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and with that as my guiding principle I will use my position as Congresswoman to insure all persons regardless of sex, race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation have a voice on Capitol Hill that reflects their stake in this country’s future. 

If elected I would be only the second person of color and the first woman of color elected to the House of Representatives from the state of Pennsylvania. 

5. What is your vision for gender justice? Please address women’s issues and LGBTQ rights.  

Gender and LGBTQIA+ justice issues are deeply important to me. My campaign team is composed of members from the LQBTQIA community, and as a woman of color, ensuring equality in both my campaign and policy agenda are central to my running as a representative for Pennsylvania’s 10th district. 

Ensuring strong legal protections against discrimination for members of our LGBTQIA are maintained and strengthened, and I will fight for paid maternal leave for both men and women. I will also reach out to thought leaders and activists fighting on the front lines of gender issues every day and listen to their needs and translate their voice into legislative action at every turn. 

It is not enough to offer better representation for the LGBTQIA+ community than the current anti-LGBT+ representative Scott Perry. I want to bring contemporary perspectives from the community directly to Congress, a place where I find many outdated notions on LGBT+ people dominate. I have been, and will continue to serve as a strong ally to this community. Before I vote on any legislation. 

I will always take into consideration it's impact on the LGBT+ community, along with other communities that have historically and currently face discrimination. I actively live my life by the words of MLK "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." 

As a Congresswoman, I will fight for LGBT+ rights, uplift first-hand experiences of members of this community, and guarantee that your voices are always represented on Capitol Hill. 

Climate change is an existential threat facing our country and the globe, and the devastation of the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency lead by Scott Pruitt, combined with their withdrawal from Paris Climate Accord are causing damage to our environment that will take a generation or more from which to recover. 

No candidate running as a Democrat in the 21st century should accept money or donations from the fossil fuel industry, as those donations clearly carry with them expectations of favors or legislative remuneration later. 

I believe a 21st century Pennsylvania is one that embraces green energy in policy and action, and I’ll make it a part of my mission to see that future realized. Investing in clean and renewable energy is not just about protecting the environment, it is an economic necessity for our country and community. For example, clean and renewable energy represents a real opportunity to revitalize agricultural communities like those right here in PA-10. 

Public education is the bedrock on which our nation’s future is built. Without modernizing and improving our public education system we stand no chance at maintaining a highly skilled, modern workforce equipped to keep us competitive in the ever changing landscape of a global 21st century society. 

I believe shifting federal resources away from bloated defense spending and injecting those funds into public education is a clear, common-sense means of paying teachers more, affording higher quality educators, and education infrastructure. I believe public money in private education has a limited role in some communities where education options are limited at present, but that the focus for federal spending needs to be centered on public education, period. 

We also have to support our teachers. I believe not just in public schools, but in public school teachers. We must restore a culture of respect for those who teach in public schools and pay them according to the value we place on our future. 

Address the student debt crisis and keeping college affordable is also critical to our future. In addition to allowing graduates to renegotiate interest rates, and working to bring down the cost of college and the cost of borrowing for current and future students, we must create more educational opportunities for those who wish to continue their education beyond high school. I support a stronger investment in community colleges, as well as training in the skilled trades. Labor unions of all stripes provide free apprenticeship programs. These programs provide a wonderful path to a career capable of helping a family build a great life without needing a college degree. We need to have more educational options for everyone so that Americans are able to pursue careers according to their talents and abilities, while giving everyone the opportunity to build a good career and a prosperous life. 

We need to start approaching gun violence in the U.S. by calling it by its name: epidemic. There are so many steps that can and need to be taken as soon as possible to ensure our children no longer have existential dread every time they head to school. 

Funding CDC research following the rider attached to the recent omnibus spending bill, banning bump stocks and extended magazines, increasing the age allowing citizens to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, expanding our system of background checks, and ensuring those processes in place work as designed, all necessary, but we need to take even more proactive steps to ensure firearms have no place in our schools and do not fall into the hands of those that would seek to commit mass shootings. 

Some steps that need to be taken immediately, include training on gun safety and safe gun storage, enforcing existing state laws, and instituting universal background checks to close the gun show loophole.

The overwhelming influence that huge sums of money from special interests and industry groups have on our country is a direct obstruction to the will of the voting public, and I believe played a significant role in allowing governments and hostile actors from overseas to spread their influence in American elections. I would support all credible action and legislation to repeal Citizen’s United and promise to do all in my power to ensure a supreme court nominee committed to it being overturned 

Criminal justice and how it disproportionately affects minorities and persons of color is an issue that is dear to me. Here in Pennsylvania we have been fortunate to have elected officials like Philadelphia's new District Attorney Larry Krasner on the cutting edge of criminal justice reform, and I would like to see his policy influences translate to Central Pennsylvania. 

Getting rid of cash bail, decriminalizing marijuana use and possession, and providing better training and guidance to police on non-lethal response techniques are steps toward addressing the most urgent concerns of criminal justice inequality today. 

But we also need to look closely at how systemic issues throughout our criminal justice system fail to address rates of recidivism and reentry. If we want to ensure that those reentering society do not reoffend, we need to provide them with opportunities for stable employment and stable housing. Sometimes the simple things, such as getting the proper identification, can be the difference between reoffending and finding a job. 

We need to focus on post-disposition services, like expungements and pardons. We also need to think about what kind of programming we offer people while they are incarcerated. Incarceration costs thousands of dollars per inmate. A strong GED program and skills training does not and this path will save taxpayers untold money in the long run. 

The hollowing out of our state department is the most critical issue facing U.S. foreign policy today. The void in our foreign policy establishment in the wake of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s disastrous tenure of head of the U.S. State Department must be addressed. 

As of now many top diplomatic positions at the Department of State are empty. We do not have the ambassadors and diplomats we need to put our best foot forward on the global stage, and the Trump Administration appears to have no plans to fill those vacancies with qualified foreign policy professional anytime soon. This is a clear threat to our national security that we must address now. 

This threat is eclipsed only by the prospect of his incoming replacement, former GOP Tea Party representative from Kansas and head of the Central Intelligence Agency Mike Pompeo and incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has been vocal in advocating a preemptive military strike on North Korea at a time when diplomatic efforts between North and South Korea have shown progress. 

Diplomacy should always be our first option when dealing with threats abroad.