Kevin Powell

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• KP for Congress 2010

1. Working through the Financial Crisis as a Community
   
   Our community and country face a multitude of financial hardships as a result of the continuing financial crisis. While the federal and state governments work to right our economic ship, we, as a community, must rally together to help our neighbors, our families and ourselves by focusing on local needs, keeping our families in their homes and supporting sustainable businesses. Together, we are going to right Brooklyn.
   
   Homeowners nationwide and right here in Brooklyn are facing the prospects of foreclosure. We support innovative, fiscally responsible efforts made to provide financing for foreclosure rescue. In addition, we recognize that unethical lending practices have targeted made Black, Latino, and low-income communities. As our families struggle to deal with loans made by such unethical lending institutions, we have been unable to keep up with monthly payments. As a result, our credit scores have been damaged, thus making it virtually impossible to recover from an already difficult situation.
   
   The credit report is currently used to establish everything from apartment applications to car insurance. The same scenario can be applied to those who have unexpectedly loss income. We will draft a bill that proposes our neighbors whom have had their credit reports impacted due to subprime or predatory lending practices should not be penalized by being subjected to the same seven year credit reporting law. We suggest those who have lost employment due to a faltering economy and have been the victim of predatory lending be subjected to a negative credit reporting term of six months to a year.
   
   We believe that the role of government is to provide assistance and solutions for those in need. Removing negative credit reporting will make it easier for individuals to re-establish themselves financially and put our communities on the road to recovery.
   
   In addition, new ideas for the economic model of a local area, such as Brooklyn, are needed and must be implemented with the best interests of Brooklynites at its core.
   
   Economic justice as well as a "bottom-up" approach to a local economy ultimately creates positive benefits for us all. There are aspects of a local economy in which both private enterprise and government intervention are unnecessary, costly, and inefficient. That is where a de-centralized, locally controlled model of economics, in which local owners, through co-ops and local agreements, can provide citizens with certain services at a benefit to both consumer and business owner.
   
   An example of this is the credit union. Credit unions provide a locally-run banking system which can help people directly, quickly, and cost-effectively, all while keeping the credit union itself viable.
   
   If you expand this approach to other areas, such as locally-owned grocery stores, clothing stores or food banks, you can create a local economy that is not as dependent on outside factors, can serve people directly, provide competitive yet fair prices, can enact a list of rules and practices that are fair to business owners, workers and customers, and ultimately sustain us in difficult times. These businesses can continue to provide high-quality goods and services, and help employ our members of our community at fair wages.
   
   It won't be easy. It won't come about quickly. But if we are willing to come together, as a community, in an effort to improve our local community's economy by making Brooklyn more self-sustaining, we all win.
2. Building an Education System that will cure Cancer
   
   Now that our health care is in the process of being reformed to benefit all Americans, we must now turn our attention to our education system. If we are to create the next wave of innovators, skilled laborers, and entrepreneurs, we must revamp the education system to take us into the future.
   
   There are many movements afoot in the education field. Some experts are calling for a return to traditional practices and public district schools with increased funding. Others are calling markets and choice and public charter schools. Some believe school vouchers for faith-based schools are best. Still others decry the lack of technology in our classrooms. Many push for new teachers and a new curriculum. Smaller schools, larger schools, art and music in the classroom, gym, more classroom time, standards, standardized tests, more freedom in the classroom…
   
   To all of them, we say yes. Absolutely. Yes. The time has come to end the turf war bickering in the American educational system by introducing a lodestar, a focal point, for all of our debate and talent: we are going to cure cancer.
   
   Just as Sputnik drove American innovation in the 1950’s and 1960’s, cancer will drive us today. All innovation, all debate, all funding will focus on fostering the generation that will end cancer for all time. And as we cannot guess where the child lives who will cure cancer, we will foster creativity, technology and opportunity throughout our nation, including right here in Brooklyn.
   
   If it helps us cure cancer, it’s a good thing.
3. Securing Access to Health Care for All
   
   Congress has battled over health care since the early days of the Obama administration with the results still not determined. However, regardless of the outcome of this debate, when we arrive in Washington many Brooklynites will still not have insurance. We do not accept this. Our neighbors, our communities and our people deserve health care that does not financially break us or cause us to fear seeing a physician.
   
   We will push toward universal coverage by examining any proposal, on the federal level or right here in our own Brooklyn, that expands coverage and care.
4. Revising the Current Welfare to Work Program
   
   We support efforts to motivate and increase the workforce in our communities and develop self-sufficiency in our families. However, the current welfare to work program is demeaning and ineffective. We will solicit creative solutions that allow us to provide for the needs of our community without debilitating the human spirit and separating parents from their children. We will support efforts that increase work that qualifies under the current system that can be done from home and for non-profits that serve our local communities, using collegiate work-study programs and our own proposed school to work program as inspiration.
   
   Welfare to work that serves our communities is a win-win for all of us.
5. Ending Violence Against Women, Girls, Men and Boys
   
   Violence against women of all ages is stifling our homes, our communities our country and our world. We support increased funding of the Violence Against Women Act and an increase in the allocation of financial resources to communities of color. We will provide both crisis prevention and preventative education to end violence in our community. By providing conflict resolution training for our communities that focuses on empowering women and educating men by addressing the violence that is unnecessarily linked to masculinity, we will provide a continuum of care that treats violence at its source.
   
   By ending violence in our communities, we will create healthier families and a healthier Brooklyn. Only when our sisters and brothers stand on equal footing absent violence and discrimination, working together to create the community that we know is possible, will we succeed. Together.
6. Creating a Resource Guide for our Community
   
   Too often our neighbors in need simply don’t know where to turn as they don’t know what services are available to them. A resource guide that lists and details all the social service programs available to our constituents will be the first step in ensuring all our citizens are properly informed and educated. We will never again hear “I didn’t know where to turn” in the 10th Congressional District. Not here. Never again.

Policy Outline

• Immediate relief for those hit by the current recession
• More targeted job creation in the private and public sector
• Develop and invest in our communities through funneling local and state aid into community banks and credit unions charged with financing “paycheck plus projects” that not only put people back to work, but help rebuild Brooklyn
• Reduce red tape, operating costs, taxes and tariffs that disproportionately hinder the lifeblood and creative incubators of our communities, our small businesses
• Create partnerships between small business assistance programs and local banks and credit unions to create an obvious and easily accessible pipeline for members of our community to obtain the funding necessary to start businesses, make capital improvements and retrofit their existing facilities with green technology and more community and disabled friendly spaces
• Repeal the Graham-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act to bring back banking reforms of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933
• Repeal the Bush Tax Cuts for the super rich that have unfairly increased our national debt and caused a massive reduction in human services
• Increase the Capital Gains Tax that currently rewards short term speculation rather than long term investment
• End predatory lending and demand full prosecution of any and all individuals engaged in the process
• Help build credit in minority communities
• Prevent credit card companies from “double dipping” into our local communities by charging exorbitant transaction fees from our small local businesses and then charging excess fees to their customers
• End ATM fees on withdrawals that keep people from using local banks and credit unions and give large multinational banks an unfair advantage

• Complete commitment to fair trade policies that protect American jobs, the environment and the non-American workers from exploitation at the hands of multinational corporations with no respect for human rights
• Repeal free trade policies that have hurt American families, including CAFTA, NAFTA and other agreements that failed to address environmental concerns and workers’ rights in Brooklyn, the United States and abroad

• Push any and all green building and refitting projects within the district and throughout the nation to assure that our new homes are green and our existing homes are greener as such programs create jobs that cannot be outsourced from our communities and spur local spending, coupled with reducing our environmental footprint
• Create public/private partnerships that teach and certify builders, electricians, plumbers and other construction trades in green technologies and LEED expectations so Brooklyn leads in green construction
• Clean up Superfund sites and Brown Fields in Brooklyn
• Ensure Safety at the Nuclear Transfer Way Station in Williamsburg
• Support legislation and programs to reduce toxic materials and toxic consumer goods entering Brooklyn and provide effective ways to contain and dispose of those that do come into the community
• Reintegrate the U.S. with the Community of Nations on climate change– Help the U.S. lead the way to prevent the global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius
• Support a national cap-and-trade program or carbon tax to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2020
  • Under a cap-and-trade program, require energy producers to purchase their carbon emissions allowances, rather than giving the allowances away. Use the revenue generated from these purchases to invest in more renewable energy production and to reimburse lower-income citizens for temporarily increased energy costs
  • Under a cap-and-trade program, support national carbon offsets, which reduce global greenhouse gas emissions much more than sub-national carbon offsets (both the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer climate bills currently include only the inferior sub-national offsets)
• Support a strong national Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) that requires all utilities within each state to produce 25% of their electricity from renewable sources of energy by 2020
• Support advanced Feed-in Tariffs (FIT) on a national scale, which encourage businesses and homes like those right here in Brooklyn to install renewable energy generating capacity. Under an FIT, these generators can sell clean energy back to the grid at a guaranteed rate
• Do not limit the EPA's existing authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act
• Continue to increase the investments in high-speed rail that were included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
• Support increased investments in local public transportation, including subways and above-ground rail, hybrid buses and more bicycle lanes
• Support increased fines for companies that violate federal environmental laws, and support more vigorous federal prosecution of serious environmental crimes
• Reward federal contractors who abide by local and national environmental laws, and penalize those who flout them; ban the most egregious and consistently delinquent companies from receiving federal contracts altogether
• Support urban farming in our own community by converting unused space to community gardens, encouraging rooftop and vertical farming and providing opportunities for our residents to obtain locally produced food throughout all of the 10th Congressional District

• Declare “Curing Cancer” as the lodestar we currently lack in our educational system to give our educators the anchor they require in national and local policy decisions, much like we had in response to Sputnik’s launch where our national focus became science and math in order to put a person on the moon. In other words, if it helps us cure cancer, it is a good thing
• Change an educational system that has focused on training our children to work in an industrial economy that no longer exists in our communities to one that focuses on developing fields such as computers, health care, green energy, science and finance
• Fix and fund No Child Left Behind so it serves our schools, teachers and children and not self serving standardized testing companies and politicians who like to claim graduation rates rather than actual learning
• Restore and expand after school programs to give our children healthy, safe and productive spaces to thrive
• Guarantee access to Pre-K and daycare throughout Brooklyn and the rest of the country
• Ensure that services and programs are in place to educate and support students with learning disabilities and special needs so they too can achieve success in school and life
• Embrace technological innovations in all of our classrooms that assist in teaching and learning such as educational gaming, internet instruction, web 2.0 tutoring, distance learning and classes in computer use and technological design
• End the paradigm of charter schools in competition with traditional public schools and replace it with a focus on expanding freedom in the classroom in all public schools so teachers may best determine what works on a classroom level
• Demand that the Department of Education analyze the positive teaching and learning techniques that charter schools were intended to produce when they were introduced as incubators to improve traditional public schools
• Increase parental involvement in our schools because what is taught in the classroom must be valued and understood in our homes
• Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that an experienced teacher has the most significant impact on learning; more than teacher to student ratio, more that the most up to date textbook, even more than funding. Explore new incentive programs to attract and retain experienced teachers in our lowest income classrooms, such as providing discounts that increase annually for their own children to attend college in New York State

• Create four pilot community centers throughout the district that house community education, public health initiatives and allow open public space for dialogue about the future of our district. These centers would host classes on issues such as financial empowerment and responsibility, how to create a healthier diet, exercise classes, language learning, hot to get back into school, recycling, tax preparation, the immigration process, and how we create a community that shuns violence and learns to heal, together
• Increase innovative anti-gang initiatives
• Restore and expand after-school programs, including sports, music, art and tutoring
• Expand access to adult education to equip Brooklynites for a changing economy
• Anti-violence and conflict resolution education
• Age appropriate sexual education programs for children and adults
• A resource guide for our community that lists and details all the social service programs available to constituents to ensure that all our citizens are properly informed and educated. We will never again hear those heartbreaking words, “I just didn’t know where to turn”

• Increase access to health care by immediately rolling traditionally uninsured and vulnerable populations into Medicare until we finally secure universal healthcare under a single payer system
• Expand the concept of health care, currently seen as only a problem of physical health, to include wellness, preventative medicine, psychological care, dental care, obesity prevention, access to healthy fruits and vegetables and any other intitiative that improves the body, mind and spirit of Brooklynites. We believe our pilot Community Centers would be the perfect location to provide these services
• Work with health care providers in the 10th Congressional District to create alternative fee for service plans for those currently not able to afford insurance and not yet covered by our Medicare expansion
• Secure funding to place a nurse in every single Brooklyn school so our children are guaranteed to have some contact with a health care professional

• Protect Medicare from any cuts in services and eligibility
• Simplify the overwhelming Medicare paperwork and red tape and provide assistance to seniors with questions on how to obtain coverage
• Increase senior housing options and improve the care and cleanliness of group homes, assisted living and hospice so every step of the way our seniors can feel confident in their community
• Prosecute and publicly shame any financial institution that takes advantage of seniors
• Provide frequent opportunities for seniors to sit down with Kevin Powell in their own homes so they can voice their concerns directly to their congressman

• Increase federal, state and local support for members of our community facing disabilities of any kind
• Punish business owners and agencies that discriminate against anyone facing disability
• Improve educational, employment, transportation and community opportunities for those with disabilities
• Eliminate the stigma facing those with disabilities by increasing education and community awareness programs

• Work with drug companies to provide inexpensive and free treatment to those living with HIV/AIDS in America and the rest of the world
• Increase education for all communities on how to prevent the spread of HIV and the importance of testing
• Eliminate the stigma and discrimination facing those with HIV/AIDS by engaging communities and creating social networks that bring individuals and families together whose lives have been impacted by this pandemic
• Increase funding for the Ryan White Act of 2009 that assists those living with HIV/AIDS in our communities

• Redirect incarceration dollars to education spending and enhance alternative to incarceration programs to lower incarceration rates. These actions will reduce the rates of recidivism, while creating opportunities for success
• Abolish capital punishment
• Address NY’s disproportionate use of the stop and frisk policy in communities of color through a multi-pronged approach
  • Target precinct-level training on the appropriate use of this policy, including a component on cultural diversity
  • Collect officer-specific data about his or her use of the stop and frisk to determine whether the officer properly utilizes the procedure
  • Educate the community about our civil liberties in order to protect us from law enforcement abuse and allow the police to more efficiently conduct their important work
• Create a task force designed to address the growing number of public trespass arrests and resulting non-violent convictions in our communities
• Expand work release, probation and community service for non-violent offenders to keep families together and allow for continuous employment
• Reform our bail system that currently keeps those not convicted of any crime in jail as they cannot afford to make bail, ultimately impacting families, employment and community ties
• Address the root causes of crime in our communities in order to keep good people with limited opportunities, education and guidance out of the prison system in the first place

• Treat drug addiction as a public health issue, not as a felonious criminal offense
• Equalize crack and cocaine sentences
• Legalize medical marijuana and revisit the practical socioeconomic and criminal justice benefits of decriminalization
• End the loss of civil liberties and educational benefits associated with drug prosecutions
• Reduce high incarceration rates with sensible sentencing
• Drug and alcohol prevention education focused on maintaining mentally and physical healthy life styles, not simply criminal punishment

• Maintain and expand rent stabilization
• Protect Title 8 (access to affordable housing) and Section 8
• Address gentrification with humane locally oriented solutions

• Create and complete concrete plans to bring troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan by 2012 and change national security policies to be wary and reluctant to intervene in local conflict
• Act as a peacemaker and not an instigator in the Middle East, including redoubling our efforts at working with both Israel and Palestine as equal partners looking for peace, security and development
• Sign on to the International Criminal Court Agreement
• Direct our foreign policy toward non-violent and multi-lateral solutions
• Propose American and multi-lateral action to end genocide in the Sudan, the Congo and the rest of Africa and the Diaspora
• Increased American and multi-lateral action aid to stem the AIDS pandemic in Africa and the Caribbean
• Work with pharmaceutical companies to provide inexpensive drugs for AIDS treatment throughout the world
• Assert the African Diaspora's firm place and role in the global economy by highlighting the positive developments and success stories in Africa and work with non-profits to sustain and support value based leadership by empowering positive leaders willing to pursue new visions for African countries
• Advocate favorable trade agreements among the U.S., Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and South America
• Implement fair trade policies with the world's two largest markets, China and India
• Debt cancellation for third world nations with an immediate focus on Haiti
• Provide more than trivial support to Haitians from transparent grass roots organizations taking the leadership in rebuilding after the earthquake’s devastation
• Greatly expand the Peace Corps as a place of youth service, training and employment. Make paid national and international service available to all who are willing to work in a respectful and disciplined manner to solve conflicts

• Help fully fund veterans assistance and domestic programs by ending the war expenditures in the Middle East
• Hold the Pentagon accountable for its consumption of three quarters of a trillion dollars each year in order to provide a real check on American military diplomacy throughout the world
• Engage in multilateral nuclear non-proliferation efforts
• Fully fund and upgrade domestic port, air and infrastructure security measures

• Repeal the USA PATRIOT Act
• Repeal the Military Commissions Act
• Support congressional action to limit the impact of the recent Supreme Court decision granting more electoral influence to corporations and their special interests and stripping it from the people
• Stricter oversight and increased education to end New York’s racially biased implementation of the “stop and frisk” police power

• Support legislation to assure equal rights to the LGBT community in all areas, including marriage, adoption, housing, employment and immigration rights
• Focus on human rights across the spectrum, on what unites us and not divides us
• Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act
• End the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy in our military

• Change immigration policy from a paradigm of protectionism and fear to one of pragmatism and the protection of families, human rights and opportunity
• Fully fund USCIS to allow our immigration service to modernize its systems, eliminate its backlogs and assist millions of Americans currently eligible for citizenship
• Create a fair path to citizenship for those inside our borders that focuses on integrating law abiding immigrants into our national fabric and strengthening our communities
• Reduce corporate America’s ability to use immigrants as economic pawns by ensuring companies pay workers fair wages
• Improve lines of communication between local government and law enforcement and immigrant communities

• Wait until the feasibility study is completed
• Examine investment alternatives and New York City transportation infrastructure as a whole

• Find alternative tort reform measures to lower costs faced by our physicians while protecting patients’ rights

• Make unionization fairer and simpler to provide strength for our families and community

• Maintain net neutrality by preventing Internet providers from speeding up or slowing down web content based on its source, ownership or destination
• Keep a level playing field so small startups can compete with larger telecom companies to improve service and spur innovation