As a lifelong Hudson Valley resident, I know that we must always invest in our rural communities. That’s why I’m fighting to:

• Invest in municipal rural broadband. Big Internet companies like Spectrum overcharge New Yorkers while providing terrible coverage. But there’s another option: Democratically controlled municipal broadband, owned and operated by the state. That’s why last year, New York announced $10 million to build out state-owned fiber in four rural communities. We need to go a lot farther and expand Internet access across the Hudson Valley.
• Protect farmworkers. The people who feed New York are some of the state’s most exploited workers. I’ll always stand with farmworkers against Big Agriculture to protect their rights to organize and demand better benefits, such as a lower overtime threshold.

• Fund small-town journalism. More than 20% of American newspapers have shut down in the last two decades, depriving countless rural communities of their sources for local news. The Local Journalism Sustainability Act would provide support for newsrooms and their subscribers.