Platform

Over the last several decades, we have seen increased wealth inequality, skyrocketing costs for basic needs, and good-paying jobs have been leaving Delaware. In the last few years, we have raised the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 and passed Paid Family and Medical Leave, but there is more we can do to protect working families.

• We support the tying of minimum wage to the cost of living to make sure it increases regularly.

• We support eliminating sub-minimum wages for tipped workers and guaranteeing a fair minimum wage for all workers.

• We support paid sick and safety leave legislation, which would set a paid sick days standard and make sure people seeking shelter after facing domestic violence get time off.

• We support making the Personal Income Tax more progressive by adding additional high-end earner brackets at increased rates.

• We support the expansion of purchase of care and the lowering of barriers to child care assistance.

• We support increased support for caretakers and seniors to allow people to age with dignity.

Delaware is increasingly facing an affordable housing shortage. Generations of racist policy have locked people of color out of opportunities to build family wealth, and now all but the wealthiest young Americans are completely cut out from the prospect of ever owning a home. Meanwhile, tenants and homeowners who do find housing are often placed in precarious positions for reasons outside their control.

• We support a right to legal representation for low-income tenants facing eviction in housing court.

• We support tenant protections, “just cause” eviction laws, and rent stabilization to protect tenants from unfair evictions and rising costs.

• We oppose discrimination in housing based on race, gender, sexuality, nationality, disability, or source of income.

• We support the removal of restrictive zoning which generates sprawl and perpetuates segregation.

• We support the expansion of funding to the creation of affordable housing.

We support the tenets of the Green New Deal, which calls to bring the US to carbon neutrality in a way that creates and maintains good-paying jobs and justice for our most affected communities.

• We support state Green New Deal legislation to create jobs and invest in local resilience and sustainability.

• We support the assurance of every Delawarean's right to clean air, pure water, and a healthy environment.

• We support the use of union and local labor to create and expand clean infrastructure.

• We support the use of community benefits agreements between large projects and local communities to ensure that benefits are going to local people and not large corporations.

• We oppose the construction of new dirty energy infrastructure in Delaware.

• We support the planning of a just transition for workers in dirty energy before shifting away from existing infrastructure.

• We support the reduction of greenhouse gasses in energy production, transportation, and housing.

• We support cumulative impact assessment on industrial projects to reduce the risk of deadly air, water, and soil pollution in affected communities.

In America, we have a private health insurance system which takes more money than other countries and generates worse results. In Delaware, there’s only so much we can do to fix the whole system but there are some clear changes that can be made.

• We support legislation to create a Public Option or single-payer healthcare plan in Delaware to create more affordable health care for all.

• We support efforts for rate-setting that can reduce the cost of treatment.

• We support legislation providing more funding and support to programs that support mothers and families, especially Black mothers and families, in the birthing process.

The promise of a democratic society is visible in few places more than public schools. And yet in the United States today, the grim reality is that public education is a driver of inequality, not a weapon against it. In Delaware, school segregation and student outcomes are worse now than they were 30 years ago.

• We support efforts to increase the amount of funding going to low-income, non-English speaking, and disabled students.

• We support providing universal free school meals for all students.

• We support replacing school resource officers (police officers in schools) with actual counselors.

• We oppose new state funding to privately run charter schools and also oppose steps to facilitate the expansion of charter schools.

• We support legislation to increase transparency in how the University of Delaware and other state-funded universities spend money.

We believe that a strong labor movement is essential to the economic well-being of working people, and a bedrock of democracy. We support comprehensive and aggressive measures to shift the balance of power from bosses to workers.

• We oppose “right-to-work” laws and similar measures that create barriers to or undermine the rights of workers to form a union and collectively bargain.

• We support the enforcement of Community Workforce Agreements which make sure that large state-funded projects have a certain level of union, local, and minority hiring.

• We support requiring the payment of prevailing wages to service workers employed on public contracts and subsidized projects, or to support the continuation and effective enforcement of such requirements where they are already in place.

• We support the right of working people in Delaware to negotiate and withhold their labor if they feel it to be necessary.

Delaware is part of a national reckoning around the harms inflicted by policing and the criminal legal system. We believe that our resources should be going to programs that actually reduce crime and suffering and that our criminal apparatus is transparent and being held accountable.

• We support expanding alternatives to incarceration and detention.

• We oppose the creation of new crimes that create the opportunity for charge stacking and disparity in sentencing outcomes.

• We support reforming Delaware’s Law Enforcement Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) to allow police misconduct records to be public.

• We support the reform of our probation system to reduce the immense pressures and restrictions put on the formerly incarcerated.

• We support the creation of community review boards that have the power needed to properly investigate police misconduct.

• We support the legalization of marijuana and the investment of revenue into communities that were impacted by the war on drugs.

• We support the elimination of cash bail and its replacement with less discriminatory pre-trial processes.

• We support the allocation of more resources to social services and community support over law enforcement.

Reforming our elections to protect the right to vote, ensure fair representation and redistricting, and reduce the influence of money in politics has always been an urgent necessity for a functioning democracy. While Delaware’s Supreme Court struck down same day registration and vote by mail, we still need to fight to expand access to voting.

• We support the creation of a public financing system to reduce the influence of money in politics.

• We support the banning direct corporate donations to political campaigns.

• We support common-sense legislation that expands the ability of citizens to participate in all elections, including

  • Vote by mail

  • Same-day voter registration

  • Automatic ex-offender re-enfranchisement

Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, women, minorities, and other historically marginalized groups in our communities persists in spite of recent advances in equality. We believe that all people are created equal and that we need to actively work to right historical wrongs.

• We support non-discrimination protections on the basis of gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

• We support universal access to abortion care and the ability to fund abortion care through Medicaid.

• We support the increased representation of women, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and other other historically marginalized groups in legislative, executive, and judicial positions.