The Hudson Valley Deserves Better.
I've lived and worked in the Hudson Valley for my entire life.
I grew up in a working-class family just outside Hudson. My mom worked as a speech pathologist, her family has roots in Hudson going back generations. My dad is a veteran who worked odd jobs and drove taxis for a living.
When I was a teenager, the school district closed my high school because of budget cuts. After my school closed, I dropped out, and soon after became a teen single mom. It took me three years on a waitlist to land a spot in Hudson public housing.
But I was still able to beat the odds. I earned my GED just two months after dropping out. And to put food on the table for my family, I worked countless odd jobs serving my neighbors: afterschool programs, home healthcare, domestic violence services, and more.
I know what Hudson Valley families going through because I’ve lived and worked here my whole life. This is my home, and my neighbors deserve to have one of their own representing them in the State Assembly.
I’ve put in the work and gotten things done for my community.
When I was still a teenager, I became an active leader at the SBK Social Justice Center, a local organization dedicated to serving Hudson’s Black youth. During my time at the Center, I ran summer children’s workshops as part of the Kite’s Nest Social Justice Leadership Academy and started my own weekly youth program called Space 101. I also worked to keep children in our communities by winning local juvenile justice reforms and creating alternatives to incarceration for youth.
And in 2020, I helped transition SBK Social Justice Center into the Hudson/Catskill Housing Coalition, serving as its Executive Director to advocate for affordable, stable housing for all.
Today, I’m serving my second term on the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, as the first Black woman elected to the body. In that position, I helped secure $250,000 for affordable housing and passed a criminal justice resolution with bipartisan support.
My kids deserve leaders they can look up to. That’s not Didi Barrett.
As one of the most conservative Democrats in Albany, Assemblywoman Didi Barrett has proven that she’s out-of-touch with what families in her district need. She’s spent her decade in office voting with Republicans and protecting the powerful by:
- Collaborating with the fossil fuel industry to increase air pollution by advocating for a methane bill that “delays the costs of climate change to future generations”.
- Barrett’s bill would change the way New York calculates methane emissions, pumping more pollution into the air for decades to come and completely gutting the state’s climate laws. Every major climate group in the state fiercely opposes this plan—they’ve even protested outside Barrett’s office.
- Voting against most of NY’s landmark gun safety measures, including a “red flag” law, waiting periods, the right for victims to sue the gun lobby, a ban on convicted domestic abusers from owning guns, and “Nicholas’s Law,” which requires the safe storage of guns out of the hands of children.
- Opposing basic labor protections for farmworkers by voting against their rights to unionize, one day off a week, 8-hour workdays, and workers’ compensation, as well as vocalizing her opposition to lowering the 60-hour overtime threshold.
- Supporting the evictions of families from their homes and further rent increases by voting against two COVID-19 eviction moratoriums and other pro-renter bills over the years, while refusing to support tenant protections like Good Cause Eviction.
- Siding with Donald Trump over New Yorkers by voting against protections for undocumented immigrants during his first month in office, as well as voting against legislation allowing state prosecutors to charge Trump’s associates if he pardoned them federally
I’m running for Assembly because the Hudson Valley deserves better.
I’m running to give Columbia and Dutchess Counties their first chance to decide what kind of Democrat they want representing them in Albany. Are we okay with a Democrat who votes with Republicans and works with the fossil fuel industry to make the climate crisis worse?
Or are we ready to send a new kind of Democrat to Albany—someone fighting for housing as a human right, a Green New Deal for the Hudson Valley, and a New York that’s affordable for all of us? I’m confident that we’ll make the right choice this June—because we deserve better. The Hudson Valley deserves better.
