Elementor #662

RAMONA'S PRIORITIES

I have a transformative vision for Kentucky, one that brings our state into the 21st century and prepares our people, government, and infrastructure for the future.

  • Workers & Economy
  • Education
  • Healthcare
  • Equality
  • Crime, Addiction, & Poverty

Workers & Economy

I support improving the lives of the working class in every industry, including:

  • Improving and future-proofing the minimum wage

  • Repealing Right-to-Work and strengthening unions

  • Increasing worker protections in low-wage, high-turnover industries

  • Finding new revenue to fully fund public worker pensions and repair our infrastructure, including raising taxes on the wealthiest people in our state

  • New work programs as an integral part of our infrastructure projects

Education

I believe that teaching is the most important profession in the world, and it’s time to treat education with the respect and honor it deserves, starting with:

  • Instituting minimum salaries for teachers at all levels

  • Overturning HB520, ensuring that for-profit charter schools are not allowed to operate in Kentucky

  • Implementing a statewide peer tutoring program to help all students struggling to get the help they need from other students in a judgment-free manner

  • Securing our teacher’s retirements, so they can focus on improving the minds of our future generations

  • Increasing our funding per-student to beat the national average, and focus that spending on initiatives that directly benefit students

  • Establishing a universal free lunch program and make “Lunch Debt” a thing of the past

  • Ensuring that students in poor areas have access to the same quality of education as students in the wealthiest parts of the state

  • Adding Gender and Sexuality education to sex education classes throughout the state

Healthcare

Healthcare is a human right, and for too long we have had a system where it is treated as a luxury good, rather than something that is necessary for all people to live.

  • Re-expanding Medicaid, and work toward a universal healthcare system for everyone living in the state

  • Making healthcare truly affordable for people to both carry coverage, as well as use their coverage

  • Blocking all efforts to limit or deny coverage. Treat all aspects of healthcare as a human right

Equality

As a part of the Queer community, I will always fight for and support comprehensive equality rights, and oppose any form of discrimination. For far too long, we’ve not done nearly enough to eliminate racism, xenophobia, and sexism from our society. These tools have been used to control and divide us, to keep us from uniting and progressing

  • Protecting LGBTQ+ people in the commonwealth by passing a comprehensive statewide fairness bill and passing legislation to protect youth from conversion therapy

  • Including all transgender medical and surgical procedures as part of the Medicaid expansion and remove legal barriers for transgender people to change their identity documentation

  • Prohibiting insurance companies from limiting or denying coverage to transgender patients, or gatekeeping coverage behind outdated medical science

  • Equal pay for equal work – Ensure that there is no wage gap between men and women in the same job

  • Automatic voter registration and ensuring that voting rights are protected for all members of our community

  • Increasing community programs in minority-based neighborhoods

  • Ensuring that minority communities are never again unfairly targeted for brutality and violence

  • Ensuring that every woman has the absolute right to control what happens to her body, including during pregnancy

Crime, Addiction, & Poverty

Almost all crime and addiction have ties to poverty. It’s time to address the root causes as well.

  • Establishing more resources for homeless people to get off the streets and into a safe, secure, and permanent home

  • Creating community outreach and enrichment programs to ensure that our neighborhoods are safe and welcoming, day or night

  • Ensuring that everyone living in Kentucky has easy, affordable, and reliable access to healthy food

  • Revising our criminal statutes to make all forms of domestic violence a felony, including all violations of Protective Orders

  • Legalizing cannabis, and freeing and expunging the records of people convicted of cannabis-only crimes

  • Making drug addiction counseling and treatment services available statewide

  • Holding pharmaceutical companies accountable for their involvement in the opioid epidemic

  • Restoring the voting rights of current and former inmates