Candidate, Michigan State House of Representatives, District 79, 2020

No committee memberships found.

No caucus information on file.

Financial Aid Assistant, Lake Michigan College, 2018-2019

Youth Task Force Leader, Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus, 2020

Awards:

Spirit of Detroit

Priority Issues:

My legislative priorities are healthcare, education, criminal justice, and bringing jobs back to Southwest Michigan.

Reason for Seeking Public Office:

I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to a pharmacy technician and a construction worker. My parents left Benton Harbor to chase after the American Dream. The story gets a bit blurry after I was born, but my earliest memories are from Atlanta, Georgia where I got my first taste of public education, a middle-class lifestyle, and what that fabled American Dream was all about. That came to a grinding halt when the housing market crash ensued, and we had to leave a place I was beginning to call home once again. It reminded me of going back to New Orleans and seeing what damage Hurricane Katrina did to the city I call home. We moved back to Benton Harbor, a place where generations of my family were born and raised; only to find the same American Dream hiding away from so many working families across this community.

Something occurs when you are a little kid, watching what is happening around you to all the people you love and who look like you, and you are thinking to yourself, this is not right. I have watched families like mine - folks who are working hard, trying their best to do things right, and getting doors slammed in their faces, facing adversity after adversity, and sometimes making the wrong choices because the hill just never seems to crest.

A lack of affordable housing is the greatest crisis families and individuals face in Michigan and throughout the country, and that has become an only more pressing issue due to the global pandemic. People living in inner city neighborhoods are already at the highest risk for housing insecurity - leaving them without a home, without a sense of place or belonging, and being cut out of the American Dream, we are all guaranteed by the constitution of the United States of America.

Understandably, some people just get angry. Some people give up. I got motivated to run for office. Such memories are not unique to just me, they are a pervasive part of so many people's stories across the United States. We cannot keep electing politicians without any lived experiences of hardship. It helps everyone when we elect public servants who know what it is like to struggle.