Environment Protections

The destruction of ecosystems, fires, explosions, air pollution, lung problems, toxic groundwater, and contaminated faucet water affects us all. Having safe food allows you to be free to eat, not worry constantly about whether you’re going to be poisoned. Private enterprise is not designed to self-regulate for the betterment of society; it is designed to make money for its owners. Protecting the environment is more important now more than ever.

Immigration Reform

 Our state has been at the frontlines of the fight to protect American immigrant families. With years of working in civil rights defense, Deedra is committed to continue her work to defend attacks from the federal government to lock up, break up and ban immigrant families. She strongly believes that Arizona’s values of compassion and justice can lead the country to commonsense immigration reform.  

Arizona’s history is rich with contributions from generations of immigrants who have long made Arizona their home.  A legal means must be provided to recognizes people brought to this country as children are not criminals and see themselves as Americans. For those who did violate the law, we should develop a pathway to legal status, at minimum for those without criminal convictions, so people living in our state are no longer hiding in the shadows.

Healthcare

Now more than ever the fight to ensure that Congress can improve the Affordable Care Act, not repeal and replace it with a plan that could strip away healthcare for families and crush the economy.

Deedra believes in listening to the will of the people, and working towards a solution that will strengthen the Affordable Care Act: lowering premium costs, improving accessibility, safeguarding care for those with preexisting conditions, ensuring reproductive health services for women, expanding Medicaid, and protecting Medicare.

Healthcare for all Americans is a goal that will improve the entire medical system. Eventually the insurance, pharmaceutical, and medical industries will have to be managed in order to bring costs under control.

Reproduction

Using religious interpretation as a foundation, across the country we are seeing: attacks on women’s sexual freedom, defunding of programs allowing women to receive vital health care services and information - even when they cannot afford them and giving employers rights to determine the reproductive choices available to their employees.

Highly personal decisions should be made by individuals without any interference from the government and should never be based on religious interpretation.

LGBTQ

The LGBTQ community and their allies have fought long and hard for equality in Arizona and the United States. Marriage equality is the law of the land but many discrimination laws stop short of actual protection. We are also seeing, once again, more religiously based rhetoric and laws targeting the LGBTQ community across the country.

Highly personal decisions should be made by individuals with a minimum of interference from the government and our elected leaders should never base their representation on religious interpretation alone.

Right to Protest

The right to peacefully assemble, petition, and redress grievances with the government is within the very first Amendment to the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has upheld these 1st Amendment rights while giving the government permissible time, place, and manner restrictions that “are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech,… are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and… leave open ample alternative channels for communication of information.”

The inclusion of rights in the very first Amendment are the most crucial to a democratic free society and must be defended and safeguarded at all levels of the government.

Education

All parents want their children to receive the best education Arizona can offer, preparing them for the challenges ahead whether they seek to pursue higher education or career opportunities. Unfortunately, many Arizona parents do not have early childhood education options to give their children the start they deserve. Not only does childcare become more expensive, but oftentimes inaccessible.

Public investments must be used to support public schools. Public schools are an institution of democracy and no country has prospered when the majority of its population is uneducated.

The vast majority of our public schools are succeeding. School administrators and teachers must not all be painted with a brush indicating failure. From early childhood education through K to 12, public and charter schools are in need of stronger support and accountability.

The voucher program is a deliberate attempt to dismantle public education. Those who already send their children to private schools will get a discount while the vouchers will not cover the tuition and costs for those who cannot afford private schools. Public schools will lose what little funding has not already been robbed by state legislatures and private schools, which are primarily religious schools, will receive public money. Public money used to support religious institutions is a clear violation of Separation of Church and State.

Privatization of our public education system is a threat to our very democracy. Neither our children nor their education is a commodity that can be traded on the open market or a boon for corporations more interested in profits than our children’s future.

Deedra believes we must work diligently to provide Arizona parents and their children championed schools to provide teachers the tools and resources they need to equip children for their future.

Our state institutions of higher education must also be made affordable again.

Free Press

The backbone of any democracy is an independent, professional, and responsible media. Their role is to inform, criticize, and stimulate debate.

History has shown that the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulations but only through the freedom and competition that he First Amendment sought to guarantee.

Marijuana

Arizona, like many states, has passed voter referendums allowing for legal medical marijuana distribution. Some states have gone further to allow access to marijuana by the adult population at large.

Citizens and states have clearly mandated the desire for marijuana to be an issue better left to the discretion of each state.

Banking Protections

During the last banking crisis, Arizona experienced the worst housing crisis in our history. Private enterprise is not designed to self-regulate for the betterment of society; it is designed to make money for its owners. The Banking industry is no different. It is time to re-enact the Glass Steagall Act or something very similar that keeps bankers out of the stock market and other forms of speculation/gambling that causes the taxpayer to have to pay when their bets fail.

Social Security

Social Security was a promise made by the US government to every citizen of this country many years ago. People have not only depended on that promise for several generations, but paid their hard earned money to the government for safekeeping so that promise could be kept. Not keeping the promise is bad enough, but breaking the promise because Congress has continuously borrowed from the fund is a slap in the face to every working person.

Police

Law enforcement history in the United States has had its ups and downs but the one method that has consistently worked is community policing. Knowing the community municipalities serve helps decrease crime and de-escalate tensions. Adequate resources need to be provided for our police departments so that community policing can be reintroduced across the nation in order to avoid the situations we are hearing about all too often.

Human Rights & Discrimination

Matters that involve human rights and discrimination should never be left to private companies whose main focus, generally, is gaining profit for themselves and their shareholders. Governments on all levels have a responsibility to uphold laws and protections of all people they serve. That responsibility has been mandated by public investments in the form of taxes that pay the salaries and expenses for all levels of government bodies and officials.

Corporate Welfare

Private enterprise is a beneficiary of public investments. Through our investments, government pays for the infrastructure on which private industry and everything else is built. Roads, bridges, public education, national banks, the patent office, the judicial system, interstate commerce, basic science for drug development are financed by taxpayers. Yet, the majority of corporations do not pay any taxes at all, much less ‘their fair share,’ and are often still beneficiaries of corporate tax breaks and bailouts.

Free enterprise works best when it competes in the market with new ideas creating new industry to serve the needs of people that individuals are willing to pay for.

When private enterprise feeds at the public trough, competition is erased along with creativity and innovation. Small businesses, backbone of our economy and job growth, are hurt the most because they are rarely the beneficiaries of ‘tax relief’ or bailouts.