Much of New York will be 6 feet underwater if we don’t act with urgency to address the climate crisis and champion a Green New Deal. We must electrify everything, build a 100% zero-carbon electricity grid, and explore a wide range of sequestration technologies that will support carbon drawdown. That means strategically investing billions and creating millions of jobs in every form of clean energy: hydro, wind, and solar. We must also invest heavily in adapting to climate change even as we fight to reverse it, weatherizing homes and building coastal infrastructure that protects us from increasingly extreme storms and weather events.

Our country is a uniquely special place, not just in the world but in history. If we lose our democracy, nothing else will matter. We must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act to ensure free and fair elections. We must address election subversion head on, reform the Electoral Count Act, and hold those who assault our democracy accountable to the fullest extent of the law.

Americans across the income spectrum have been crushed by a series of economic shocks over the last two decades, and we need to relieve the financial stress that has crept into every household. We must make the child tax credit permanent, raise the SALT cap to help middle class and first-time homeowners, and we need to build enough housing to keep rent costs and home prices affordable.

Our children deserve the best, and their education must be a key priority. We need to create universal pre-K to support working parents, and deliver funding for schools and teachers to ensure they can open – and stay open – safely. We need to reign in the absurd costs of higher education.

We must embrace the possibilities of technology and innovation, and insist that industries of the future be built in New York, and in the United States. That means reshoring high tech manufacturing, increasing high-skilled immigration and investing in emerging technologies from robotics to personalized medicine to space manufacturing. It means ensuring we have proper digital infrastructure like broadband in place in all of our communities. And it means passing the PRO Act and Workplace Democracy Act to strengthen organized labor, which has been the backbone of middle class prosperity for decades.

Abortion and contraception are health care. The right to an abortion is under attack. We must repeal the Hyde Amendment, pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, and ensure the United States treats abortion as health care and a fundamental right for people seeking to make the best reproductive choices for themselves.

Women’s rights are human rights. We must protect reproductive rights, ensure access to child care, and stand against any type of abuse and assault– including sexual harassment and domestic violence. Congress must pass federal paid sick leave, work toward pay equity for all women, and pass the Equal Rights Amendment. And we must protect trans women from violence.

We need to dismantle the false choice between a just criminal legal system and public safety. Democrats in Congress must stand up to the NRA and get guns off our streets to fight the wave of violence facing America. We need to decriminalize marijuana federally, and focus our police forces on reducing gun violence, domestic violence, and other violent crimes.

Good healthcare is a human right. Every American deserves affordable, quality healthcare that meets their needs. As a State Senator, I’ve been a proud co-sponsor of the New York Health Act, and in Congress, I will proudly support Medicare for All. The Affordable Care Act was a critical first step, and we should still work towards creating an effective single-payer healthcare system.

We need to dismantle the false choice between a just criminal legal system and public safety. Democrats in Congress must stand up to the NRA and get guns off our streets to fight the wave of violence facing America. We need to decriminalize marijuana federally, and focus our police forces on reducing gun violence, domestic violence, and other violent crimes. We must pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and ensure a fair, accountable criminal justice system.

We must expand Title VII and rewrite its standard to protect women in the workplace from sexual harassment, ban the harmful practice of conversion therapy on minors and pass the Equality Act and the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act (banning conversion therapy on minors) immediately.

Immigrants of all statuses and backgrounds are a crucial part of our community. Many of them helped New York through the pandemic, filling essential jobs to provide healthcare, food, and other frontline services that allowed New Yorkers to stay home. We must pass a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented people who have been waiting for Congress to act for decades. It is far past time for Congress to protect undocumented youth, immigrants with temporary protected status, and essential workers from the daily fear of deportation. Only Congress can provide the security needed for our undocumented friends and neighbors to finally be able to seek permanent legal status.