LONGFORM QUESTIONS

What do you value most about the district you are running to represent and why do you want to represent it in Harrisburg as State Representative/State Senator?

When I look at the 1st Senate district—this surpassingly dynamic area that stretches from the arenas in the south to Polish bakeries in the north, from the steps of the art museum through the pasta shops and tortillerias of the Italian market all the way to the banks of the Schuylkill—I see an ongoing story of urban renewal and destruction, of exclusion and growing inequality: the destruction of rowhomes by runaway development, and the displacement of Black and brown people from their neighborhoods; the booming restaurants that now jostle alongside struggling fabric shops. State money has been funneled by legislators to remediate lead and asbestos for non-union, luxury hotels in this district—and somehow we cannot find the money to do the same for our schools. It is a district where some people thrive partly because other people struggle: they struggle with rising rents and crumbling schools, with police brutality and the looming shadow of the prison, with the cost of healthcare and daycare and elder care, with pollution and asthma and the summer heat that, each year, is more punishing than the year before. I decided to run for state senate because these are crises that we can no longer ignore, and whose root causes it is incumbent on us to address. We cannot wait, and it is time we said: enough is enough. I come to this campaign with a belief in the power of mass movements. I am an Indian, whose ancestors were part of one of the great struggles of this or any century—the immense upheaval that led to the end of the British empire. That fight was not confined to South Asia. In the 1920s, near the Liberty Bell, Indians marched in the streets demanding an end to British rule. That march is linked to the moment in 1965, when Martin Luther King Jr, himself inspired by the Indian freedom struggle, addressed a crowd in Hawthorne, in the heart of the district; he was given to speaking then about the intersection of race and poverty, civil rights and workers’ rights. Those visions and moments and convergences have fueled my work in the district and my desire to represent social movements and their ideas in Harrisburg. I also love South Philadelphia, and cannot imagine living anywhere else. My wife, Shannon, a historic preservationist, and I are proud to be raising our 1-year-old son, Ishaan, in South Philly; he goes to daycare on Fabric Row, and music class at Settlement Music School, and when he is of age he will attend George W. Nebinger Elementary School, two blocks down the street from us. In 2016 I was a leader in the Bernie Sanders campaign in South Philadelphia, and along with other volunteers and staffers I co-founded Reclaim Philadelphia. In 2018, I organized campaigns to fight for change in the Democratic Party and became elected as ward leader of the Second Ward, the first Asian American to hold the position in Philadelphia. If elected, I would be the first South Asian elected to state office in Pennsylvania. I am committed to justice for working people, whether Black, brown or white. I will fight for a Philadelphia and a Pennsylvania that works for the many and not the few.

Do you regard basic needs of Pennsylvanians, including food, housing, health care, and education, as human rights or as commodities most efficiently distributed by economic markets? How would this look in a truly just world? How would you begin to fight for that world in your first 100 days in office?

Human rights are moral guarantees. But they are often more honored in the breach: we claim those rights most fiercely when they are ignored or violated. We ought therefore to think of these fundamental requirements—sustenance, shelter, care, and learning—in terms of practical guarantees, outlined in legislation and law; we ought to make them more firm than mere, rhetorical “rights.” We should reclaim the language of freedom from the political right, and think of these guarantees as forms of freedom: the freedom from want, the freedom from fear. A just society would provide, at a minimum, this form of liberty. Such is the basis in turn for a more positive idea of freedom, in which we make and remake the society that we wish to live in. This is why I am proposing universal family care, a homes guarantee, and a Green New Deal for Pennsylvania. First, we must guarantee a society that cares. In a society that claims to value children, we do not provide for childcare; in a society that is aging, we do not take care of our elderly. We must create a social insurance program that guarantees access to child care and long-term elder care, regardless of employment status, and we should establish a period of paid care leave that allows anyone to take twelve weeks leave to care for a child, an ailing relative or friend, or an elder person. We also must guarantee access to shelter. The current housing market in Philadelphia is characterized by gentrification in the urban cores, and severe disinvestment in the urban peripheries. In both areas, people struggle with rent and home ownership burdens. I am therefore proposing that we seek to build, preserve, or convert 1 million units of affordable, no-carbon social housing. This can be accomplished through the use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Redevelopment Assistance Capitalization Program (RACP) grants, and New Market Tax Credits, among other funding sources, as well as through giving municipalities the explicit authority to acquire units and dispose them as rent-restricted or limited-equity properties to community land trusts, while helping finance green upgrades to eliminate fossil fuels and increase energy efficiency. Philadelphia, for example, has 25,000 vacant homes, which we estimate could provide housing to 125,000 people. The supply of affordable housing is also severely hampered by NIMBYism. We must end exclusionary zoning, which has had the effect of exacerbating sprawl and racial segregation, and prioritize that multifamily affordable housing is built in wealthy neighborhoods, in commercial corridors, and near transit. At least 10% of all units in each municipality must be deemed affordable; in cases where a municipality fails to meet this standard, developers should be permitted to exceed local density limits significantly, provided that at least 25% of the new units are affordable. In addition, we must protect the rights of renters, through universal right to counsel in eviction proceedings, “just cause” for eviction, and rent control. A Green New Deal for Pennsylvania would guarantee us our future. We must set swift and responsible targets, including eliminating coal-generated electricity by 2025, and achieving 100% clean electricity by 2035. We should change the building code to ensure all new buildings are fossil-free and efficient, including eliminating the use of natural gas in new construction. I will seek to reduce SEPTA fares to $1 per ride, with a path to free service (dependent on federal funding) in place; SEPTA should be immediately free for low-income users and everyone under 18 years of age. Improving service and enabling access will require hiring more drivers and operators, and the purchase of more vehicles—putting more union drivers to work and providing more Philadelphians with a reliable, low-carbon option for their commute. Finally we must transform our agricultural policy to promote sustainable ecology, long-term soil health, food security, extreme weather resilience, broad land ownership, and labor rights. We should also recognize the human and natural value of our public lands, by investing in restorative forestry management and state parks, and gradually transform lands used for livestock grazing into new growth forest for carbon capture. In Philadelphia, state grant money can be used to support urban agriculture, expanding community gardens and farms, which can be centers of community resilience where Philadelphians care for each other and the natural world. We should recognize that Democrats are likely to be in the minority in the near-term. My immediate legislative priority under any circumstances would be to stabilize our school infrastructure, through emergency funding legislation, and also by looking at revising RACP money as a source of potential funding; currently this money largely fuels luxury development, with few guarantees of high-wage employment or long-term sustainability. (Though RACP requires that school districts be subgrantees, rather than direct recipients, of state aid, the sheer existence of millions in grant money being given to substantially less needy cases than our schools should provoke a reason for public scrutiny.) This should be paired with a long-term view of school funding and education: we should raise teacher and paraprofessional salaries; greatly reduce the testing standards that have hamstrung teachers across the state; and channel all school funding through a more robust fair funding formula to address structural inequalities. We must recognize that the current method of funding education in Pennsylvania is unconstitutional and racist. We must also end our system of mass incarceration, and seek the end of the prison system. We can begin by putting a cap on sentencing for felonies and misdemeanors, and ending mandatory minimums in sentencing. We ought to eliminate any violations connected to fines and fees. I would seek a moratorium on all new state prison construction. I would eliminate the use of cash-bail, seek to abolish the death penalty, end life without parole, and revise legislation that allows juveniles to be tried as adults. I have outlined my priorities as regards the labor movement in question 5.

In recent years, Pennsylvania has had enormous trouble passing a budget. What are your budgetary priorities, what revenue sources would you seek, and how would you move these measures through the Republican-dominated legislature?

In addition to the major legislative goals outlined above, I would seek to reform the current state tax code, to support jobs and wage-growth in Philadelphia, to fund our public goods in the city and statewide, and above all for the cause of equity, solidarity, and justice. At once the simplest and the most difficult solution would be an end to the uniformity clause, which essentially mandates a flat tax, and hampers any form of progressive taxation. Repealing the uniformity clause would make the goals of our movement more realizable. Within the strictures of the uniformity clause, however, I support the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center’s (PBPC) “Fair Share Tax” plan. The Fair Share Tax would create two separate taxes: one on wages and interest, and one on wealth. By increasing the tax on wealth, the PBPC estimates we can reduce taxes for the vast majority of Pennsylvanians, and bring in $2.2 billion in new revenue. There is another immediate budgetary need: our public transit system, both of which face growing crises. SEPTA in particular faces a debt level of $11 billion. In order to deliver more revenue, Pennsylvania should consider regional tax swaps. This would take a portion of the local tax base and put it into a regional fund which is then redistributed back to our area based on some criteria other than their contributions to the pool. There are also sources of funding in our existing budget that we should look to free up. The state offers subsidies in the billions to the fossil fuel industry, something that must end. We should also put a moratorium on all new prison construction, at once a failed project of the neoliberal era to bring jobs to rural communities, as well as one predicated on inhumanity and racism; a system that profits off the destruction of families, communities, and the holding and disciplining of disproportionately Black and brown people. Similarly, we ought to have a moratorium on new highway construction, which subsidizes sprawl, drives segregation, and dooms our climate. We should end tax credits for private school education, and revise the school charter law, which currently makes it nearly impossible to close revenue-draining charters. We should also look into ending the Keystone Opportunity Zone program, whose mixed record of growth seems to have come at an enormous cost in revenues.

Philadelphia remains the most impoverished major city and about 75% of our residents lack bachelor's degrees. What policies would you implement to ensure that decent, high-paying jobs created here are accessible to the majority of our population, not just the relatively well-educated and already well off?

As a scholar of the history of work, and someone who cut his teeth in organizing in the labor movement, I believe the strongest path to higher wages is unionization, and increasing union density. No one should have to work two or three jobs to get by; one job should be enough. As a correlate to that, enlarging the public sector and establishing a culture of low-carbon public affluence. In the answers to questions 4 and 5, I believe I outline the paths to greater revenue for public goods, and how we can improve working conditions and wages for all workers, whether Black, brown or white, and whether service-, construction-, or manufacturing-sector jobs. One other way to enlarge employment in the region is through a Green New Deal. As part of my Green New Deal for Pennsylvania, we would, among other things, invest heavily in a rapid transition to electric vehicles around the state a fleet-wide conversion of all state and local government vehicles to EVs by 2030, a PennDOT-led charging station construction program that builds out a statewide system for EVs and puts more Pennsylvanians to work; clean up every single brownfield and toxic site in Philadelphia with union labor; retrofit schools, libraries, and recreation centers; and increase operational funds to public amenities to offer wrap-around services (child care, basic medical care, and emergency relief) all across the state.

What policies would you introduce and/or sponsor to expand and strengthen the labor movement in Pennsylvania? How would you fortify existing unions in the event of a state or nationwide right-to-work law? How would you expand worker representation and power in sectors with low union density?

My organizing background is in the labor movement, and I am grateful to the members of UNITE HERE in particular for teaching me the power, dignity, and beauty of workers fighting for justice in the workplace, and how its effects go much farther and more deeply than the shop-floor. The US is out-of-step with other countries in the sheer lack of job protections it guarantees for workers, and in the terror its workers suffer in the country’s workplaces. The lack of those protections also makes it more difficult for workers even to consider organizing; employers fire workers seeking to form a union and are slapped with labor violations that barely affect their business. For those reasons, I would seek to end at-will employment in Pennsylvania and moving to a "just cause" standard for discipline and discharge. This would not only create stability in people’s employment lives, but make it easier to organize. We should also enact laws that deny state contracts to employers who violate state employment laws, increase the damages available to employees whose employers violate state employment law, increase the civil penalties the state can seek for violations of state employment laws, and increase the budget for enforcement. The Attorney General should also be prosecuting more employers; a Public Attorney General Act would encourage the AG to increase enforcement of state employment laws. Worker misclassification is a problem across industries—from those who drive for Uber and Lyft to building trades workers on construction sites. It is a way for employers to deny workers benefits, overtime compensation, and job security. It also targets and disenfranchises undocumented workers, and helps to divide workers against each other. For this reason I would propose legislation that would guarantee direct employment status, similar to California’s Assembly Bill 5, to workers that are actually employees, and ensure that workers receive their fair share. Existing labor legislation is also patriarchal and racist. Many workers who are largely women, and largely women of color, are not protected by current legislation. I would propose legislation to allow reasonable accommodation for pregnant and breastfeeding workers on the job, allow home healthcare aides (what will soon be the largest sector of the workforce) to organize, and create a Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, similar to the one passed in Philadelphia, for the state. In addition to making the climate of organizing easier, I would want to make financing that can encourage solidarity. The use of RACP funding to development in particular should have stricter requirements on job creation and payment of prevailing wages; currently developers can receive RACP money by virtually making up numbers with regard to numbers of jobs, and there is zero accountability in the case of non-delivery. In addition, in the case of a firm going bankrupt, employees should be granted the right of first refusal to buy the company and run it as a co-operative. I would also support a public bank, to encourage the creating of worker-owned cooperative enterprises. Finally, I would increase the minimum wage to a living wage ($15 an hour as a floor), increase overtime eligibility and threshold number of hours for more workers, and support Representative Elizabeth Fiedler’s statewide “Fair Workweek” law to enact fair scheduling.

Philadelphia’s immigrant communities are threatened by increased ICE deportation efforts, police brutality and misconduct, and discriminatory treatment by our criminal justice system. What will you do to ensure that Pennsylvania residents are safe from ICE?

As the children of immigrants, whose parents fought to acquire documentation for refugees, and someone whose neighbors were recently taken by ICE, hospitality and sanctuary are paramount for me. I was the victim of an anti-immigrant violent assault in recent years, the direct result of a growing discourse of anti-immigration in American life. ICE is an agency that should not exist, and which, like the carceral system more generally, should be abolished. I believe we urgently need statewide legislation that ends law enforcement collaboration with immigration authorities. State troopers have been known to violate the law by acting as immigration officers, and it seems likely that ICE currently has access to the Commonwealth Law Enforcement Assistance Network (CLEAN). Pennsylvania can follow California’s Senate Bill 54, which formally cuts off this relationship. More generally, I would want to draw public attention to the existence of ICE detention facilities, such as Berks Prison, within the Commonwealth, and advocate fiercely for their closure, and to uplift the work of organizations, such as Juntos, that train neighbors in “know-your-rights” work, to foster solidarity and community cohesion.

What is your opinion on privatized infrastructure and/or public–private partnerships for development or maintenance of public infrastructure, such as roads and water works?

I completely oppose the privatization of public infrastructure, and generally oppose the use of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in the maintenance of public infrastructure. We should recognize the root causes of the rise of PPPs, their partial utility for maintaining public infrastructure within the era of neoliberalism, as well as their harm to overall economic and racial equity, and attack those root causes. Park infrastructure is a useful example. In an era in which federal funding to municipalities has dried up, it is understandable why public-private partnerships of this kind arose; the existence of institutions such as Fairmount Conservancy are partly why we have been able to maintain the public park system in Philadelphia to the degree that we have; these parks are still enjoyed as public goods. But the result has nonetheless been profound inequity among public goods (of the sort we also see within our public school system), with parks in urban cores receiving more attention and funding than those in urban peripheries and semi-peripheries. The effect and nature of such PPPs is ultimately racist, as neighborhoods that are largely populated by working-class Black and brown people come to have poorer local park infrastructure than those in white neighborhoods. We have also seen well-funded PPPs in infrastructure remediation projects, such as the Rail Park, fuel gentrification and displacement in the surrounding neighborhoods. In the absence of federal funding, which is the surest solution, one solution to this issue could be a state public bank would make it easier to make low-cost loans for infrastructure improvement. Cities or counties would deposit tax dollars and other revenues into a local public bank, which would partner with community banks, credit unions and loan funds to support affordable housing and park improvements. Ultimately we require a sustainable and equitable system of infrastructure and housing development that does not rely on private sources of funding or governance.

Pennsylvania faces a rental housing crisis. According to the 2017 American Community Survey, 22.3% of Pennsylvania homeowners are cost-burdened and 44.8% of Pennsylvania renters are cost-burdened. Given the housing crisis in Pennsylvania in general, and in Philadelphia in particular, what meaningful measures will you take and push for so that all residents have access to safe, affordable housing?

My Homes Guarantee plan would establish a statewide system for rent control. The rate of rent increases would not be allowed to exceed cost of living increases in municipalities, and rent increases between unit turnover would be minimized. We also should increase the number of house inspectors at the municipal level, particularly for cities with an aging housing stock and increasingly rent-burdened populations, and increase funding for home repairs, prioritizing subsidizing repairs for low-income, elderly, disabled, and family households in areas where disinvestment is greatest and household income is below municipal-wide averages. Finally we should mandate funding and legislation for tenants to have a right-to-counsel in eviction cases, with local 311 and statewide agencies advertising and connecting tenants in need to these resources (replicating Philadelphia’s Housing Resource Center initiative).

Given the reality of the climate crisis, do you support a Green New Deal (GND) for Pennsylvania? If so, please outline how you will craft this, what would be included, and how adaptation measures for communities most impacted will be centered.

I have already described in large measure my GND plan, but will add, specifically addressing the adaptation measures part of the question, that I would base all tax incentives, subsidies, contracts, procurement, and loans on project labor standards. For example, a clean energy project could receive a 50% tax exemption for meeting minimum program requirements (contracting with businesses that have a history of labor law compliance, are owned by women and minorities, and have local workforces and apprenticeship programs); a 75% tax exemption for additionally meeting prevailing wage rates determined by collective bargaining; and a 100% tax exemption for being governed by a community workforce agreement or project labor agreement. As we raise up the clean energy sector in Philly, it’s vital that these jobs (all of which pay well and are shovel-ready) provide an off-ramp for oil and gas industry workers.I also believe we should make sure that remediated sites stay under the control of community residents, who in Philadelphia are often largely Black and brown, in co-operative ownership, so that they can exercise self-determination over the future of these spaces.

What measures can be taken by the Pennsylvania legislature to put an end to overpolicing, militarization of police, police brutality, and lack of police accountability, especially in black and brown communities that are unfairly and disproportionately targeted? How would you support these measures?

Justice should make us safer, and the vigilante methods used by police derive from a deep culture of racism, that are inextricable from the history of policing in this country and its roots in trying to stop the liberation of Black people during Reconstruction. It will take a movement of millions to change it, and we should have representatives elevating that movement, elevating the lives lost, and and elevating the direct threat Black and brown people face, everyday. Much of the culture of overpolicing also derives from their monopoly on the legitimate use of violent force; legislatively, we should find ways to diminish that legitimacy. I support legislative efforts by the Black Lives Matter network to put serious restrictions on the ability of police to use violent force. We should revise statewide standards so that the municipal police use-of-force standard is deemed “necessary,” rather than “reasonable”; require de-escalation by police officers; and hold officers who violate these principles criminally liable. In addition, we must stop any attempt by a municipality to enforce “stop-and-frisk” and “broken windows”-style policing, which create an aura of terror around entire neighborhoods and lead to mass incarceration. We should also pass series of bills that will end the war on drugs, through full decriminalization of marijuana, and ensuring that jobs created in any related industry go to those most impacted by the violent and terrible history of American policing and incarceration around narcotics. I support safe consumption sites, which will reduce deaths and also encourage diversion and treatment, rather than policing and incarceration. See also my answer to question 2, regarding the abolition of the prison system.

YES OR NO QUESTIONS

1. Will you support legislation to provide universal child and elder care for Pennsylvanians? Yes

2. Will you support legislation for single-payer health care that covers all individuals, regardless of documentation status? Yes

3. The average student loan debt in Pennsylvania is $33,935, one of the highest in the country. Will you support legislation to make the PASSHE system and Commonwealth colleges tuition and fee free and provide cost of living stipends to students who are residents of Pennsylvania? Yes

4. Do you support a moratorium on all new charter schools? Yes

5. Do you support the use of public school vouchers to pay for private school tuition? No

6. Should all state educational revenue streams be funneled through the Fair Funding Formula for our public schools? Yes

7. Do you support the Keystone Opportunity Zone program? No

8. Do you support tax breaks to lure or retain businesses? Yes

I do not support tax incentives in the form of “giveaways” that privilege large corporations with already substantial reserves for investment, and that fund the construction of corporate headquarters, but I do believe there is a place for tax incentives for small- and medium-sized businesses, especially those that are Black-, minority- and women-owned, and for Green New Deal-related initiatives. Tax credits for historic preservation and affordable housing construction are also reasonable ways to fund both within the current system. See also my answer to long-form question 9 above, where tax credits are tied specifically to labor rights.

9. Do you support the use of eminent domain by corporations and businesses? No

10. Do you support a ban on fracking in Pennsylvania? Yes

11. Will you support legislation to mandate that pensions increase each year to match with the average increase in cost of living expenses? Yes

12. Will you commit to introducing/sponsoring legislation to expand Medicaid to fully fund medically assisted treatment, mental health, and community-based programs to support people struggling with addictions and their families in Philadelphia? Yes

13. Do you support the permanent loss of a distribution license as the penalty for overproduction and overprescription of opioids? Yes

14. Will you support legislation to ensure that medically assisted treatment is readily available to people who are incarcerated? Yes

15. Will you commit to supporting safe-consumption sites in Pennsylvania? Yes

16. From the moment a landlord files a claim in landlord-tenant court, a tenant is saddled with an eviction record that makes it nearly impossible to obtain safe and decent housing. This is true regardless of the outcome of an eviction claim. Will you support legislation to:

a. Expunge all eviction records that do not result in a judgment against the tenant? Yes

b. Seal all open eviction cases upon satisfaction of the judgment? Yes

c. Expunge all eviction records five (5) years from the day of filing? Yes

17. Will you support legislation to create a state-wide tenant bill of rights, including but not limited to a right to legal counsel, full funding for tenant legal aid, and just cause eviction laws? Yes

18. Will you support legislation to enact rent control in Pennsylvania, limiting yearly increases in rent to 3% (including in the case of vacancies). Yes

19. Do you commit to enshrining in law employment and discrimination protections for the LGBTQIA+ and immigrant communities? Yes

20. Will you support an end to the death penalty in all cases? Yes

21. Will you support an end to all felony disenfranchisement in Pennsylvania, in accordance with the laws in Maine and Vermont? Yes

22. Will you support the decriminalization of sex work, for both sex workers and patrons? Yes

23. Will you commit to protecting reproductive rights, by supporting an end to the Hyde Amendment? Yes