ISSUES
Our Democratic majority in Colorado means nothing without bold, relentless, creative leaders who will fight for progress.
Protecting Public Education
Tim will stand fiercely in support of strong public schools in every community and resist efforts to privatize education in Colorado. He is a member of an entire generation of Colorado students who never received a fully funded day of their K-12 education. As a teacher himself, he has had to ask for community donations to fund classroom book sets for students.
It’s past time we fully fund our public schools, invest fully in our teachers and their workplace conditions, and transform the educational experience of our students to ensure they receive a quality, truthful, and empowering education regardless of where they grow up. We must invest in our children because our communities depend on their growth and success.
Policy Approaches:
Completely eliminate the Budget Stabilization factor that divests from the education of all Colorado students
Resist efforts to expand the influence of charter schools, innovation networks, and other forms of non-public education
Advocate for tuition-free higher education in the state of Colorado
Stand in solidarity with CEA priority bills relating to teacher contracts and pay, bargaining agreements, improving workplace conditions for teachers, and the rights of all teachers to unionize
Develop policy approaches to incentive and retain BIPOC teachers
Expand access to and bandwidth of trade programs and technical programs for all students in Colorado
Housing Justice
Housing is a human right, the rent is too damn high, and there is no end in sight. The Northside of Denver is the most gentrified Latino neighborhood in the country, and as Tim began his teaching career at North High School during the pandemic, he witnessed his students take his class from their bathtubs and become the primary breadwinner responsible for their family’s housing at 15 years old.
To keep our communities together, especially our most vulnerable, poor, and working class communities, we should expand access to attainable, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing across the city of Denver and the state of Colorado. Nearly half of all Colorado renters are housing burdened and paying an unsustainable amount of their income on rent (including Tim), and we still lack renters’ protections. Having access to consistently available, attainable, and affordable housing is foundational to the success and opportunity for all in our community.
Policy Approach
Repeal the statewide prohibition on rent control for local municipalities
Implement just cause eviction to prevent dehumanizing and unjust evictions for Colorado residents
Invest in anti-gentrification housing expansion that allows us to build directly after and/or with protections for communities that are poor, working class, or have cultural connection to their neighborhood
Mandate that a designated threshold of all new development in Colorado must be permanently built as affordable housing/units
Expand mortgage programs and homeowner programs for any state worker or worker on a public salary
Gun Violence Prevention
Tim’s generation is the generation of mass shootings, lockdown drills, and our country leading the world in gun violence. He has sat with students on the floor of his classroom and deescalated their anxiety attacks during a lockdown drill and marched with his students on the Capitol to demand common-sense gun violence prevention policy from our state legislators.
But, mass shootings and school shootings are microcosms of gun violence prevention because school shootings only account for 2% of all gun violence in the United States. Gun violence is a problem in schools because schools are a reflection of society. While Tim supports responsible gun ownership, our societal response to harm in communities following a direct path to guns remains a widespread, layered issue.
Policy Approach
Use data-driven approaches to prevent gun violence, like investing in housing, education, wages, etc. and distance ourselves from “school hardening” measures (arming teachers, armed SROs, etc.) as blanket solutions to gun violence
Pass an assault weapons ban in the state of Colorado, no matter the trajectory, action, or inaction of the federal government
Support legislation that passed the State House this year, like extreme risk protection orders (red flag laws), extended waiting periods, etc.
Expand gun violence prevention law to apply directly to law enforcement officers in Colorado
Hold gun manufacturers and sellers liable and accountable for the enforcement of gun laws
Criminal Legal System
As an abolitionist, Tim understands that our criminal justice system is not a just system because it is predicated on systemic racism and the criminalization of poverty. The school-to-prison pipeline is real, oppressive, and built to disproportionately police, sentence, and incarcerate black and brown youth.
Colorado imprisons more people per capita than Mexico, and our prisons are built to institutionalize, exploit, and degrade incarcerated community members, not heal them. We must identify ways to decrease unnecessary law enforcement contact, dismantle the prison-industrial complex, and build humanizing approaches to harm that address the root causes of crime.
Policy Approach
Expand funds for approaches that address the root causes of crime in our communities, such as mental health, harm reduction, restorative justice, youth, workforce training, and adult education programs
Demilitarize Police and institute accountability measures, public reporting, and community oversight systems for all instances of use of force for Police Departments in Colorado
End solitary confinement, orange collar labor, and economic exploitation for incarcerated community members in prisons
Meet drug abuse as a health crisis, not a criminal choice
Oppose wealth-based detention, incarceration of unhoused community members, and other norms of the criminal justice system that further criminalize poverty
Healthcare & Reproductive Justice
We live in a healthcare system that works for those who can afford it, and doesn’t for those who can’t. That’s unacceptable. Tim has been on Medicare, and he knows that healthcare is a human right. More than that, our communities deserve to have access to safe, affordable, affirming, and reliable healthcare experiences that humanize their pain—not profit from it.
This means that we must hold accountable the groups, moneyed interests, and companies seeking profit instead of healing for our community. We must also ensure that our conversations surrounding healthcare in Colorado actively include mental health, abortion care, and gender-affirming care so that we may one day have a single-payer healthcare system.
Policy Approach
Explore a single payer system for healthcare in the state of Colorado
Cap the prices of direly needed and necessary prescription drugs by holding pharmaceutical companies accountable for price gouging
Expand protections for healthcare workers in the state of Colorado
Strengthen access to gender affirming care for all people in the state of Colorado who want it, including students in schools
Enshrine the right to bodily autonomy when it comes to healthcare decisions about abortion and birth control in the state of Colorado
Migration Justice
Migration is a human right, and borders are an invention to justify violence over stolen land using imaginary, colonial lines. The immigrant students in Tim’s classroom often share their fear and anxiety about their present and their futures because of their immigration status. That’s intolerable.
Immigrants who come to our city deserve dignity, respect, care, and welcoming beyond their school and into our community. Instead, our communities are forced to endure the systemic violence, intimidation, and fear of a broken immigration system. Immigrants make our communities great and all people should have access to basic paths of participation in a democratic country and to a path towards citizenship that is not exploitive.
Policy Approach
Work to end state and local cooperation with ICE, including ending contracts with detention centers in the state of Colorado
Fight for investment in immigrant legal defense funds
Ensure that immigrants in our community have access to safe, protected, and accountable job sites that prevent their exploitation
Allow immigrants in our community have access to a driver’s license, healthcare, and basic human resources, regardless of nationality status
Develop alternative state policy that meets the needs of the 13,000 DACA recipients in Colorado to sustain unfettered access to education and workforce participation for DACA reciepients
Environmental Justice
Wildfires rage more widely, water rights become more restrictive, and polluters continue to profit every day that we are not boldly addressing the existential threat of climate change in Colorado. Climate change will impact all of us, but those most disproportionately impacted by it now are low-income communities and communities of color.
Tim believes in addressing climate change now so that we may ensure that all people in Colorado have the right to access clean air, drinkable water, fertile soil, and healthy foods. Small scale solutions like a recycling bin in Tim’s classroom isn’t going to stop a climate crisis exacerbated every day by the non-renewable energy industry and profit.
Policy Approach
Hold polluters (like SunCor) accountable and liable for the threats they create to our air, water, and land
Enshrine sovereignty for Indigenous peoples over sovereign lands, especially with regard to water rights endowed to Indigenous peoples over the Colorado River
Expand zoning laws to slow the production of raw materials and nonrenewable resources
Develop and invest in a sustainable industry transition that puts workers first in a green economy
Advance the just, ethical, and necessary path to a 100% renewable Colorado by 2040
Economic Justice
Alejandro Jimenez says “Mexican boots don’t have straps.” He’s right. “Picking ourselves up by our bootstraps” is a myth created to justify our exploitation and blame us for our own poverty. But, poverty is a policy choice. Tim has lived in poverty, still lives in poverty, and works in schools with young people who experience levels of poverty that are inhumane and overwhelming for students, families, and communities. Meanwhile, the wealth gap only widens between the rich and poor.
Tim will fight to dismantle systems intentionally designed to criminalize, exacerbate, and systemize poverty in our communities, fight for an economy that ensures the rights and dignity of all working families, and work to ensure that the rich pay their fair share in Colorado.
Policy Approach
Abolish the Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR)
Stand with workers against all forms of exploitation and expand the right of all workers to unionize, collectively bargain, and call for expanded worker protections across Colorado
Fight to pay a thriving wage and to end wage theft in the state of Colorado
Ensure that people in Colorado who make or own a home over $2,000,000 pay their fair share
Advocate for the right of workers to have a fair work week with clear, communicative scheduling that is given in advance
