Sade is committed to issues of equity, access, and solidarity to transform Los Angeles’ underserved communities.

Priorities

Housing as a Human Right

Housing insecurity has threatened scores of Angelenos, including Sade’s family—most recently as her college-age foster child aged out of the foster care system and had government assistance terminated.

To Sade, housing is a human right, and no one should live without a safe, affordable place to call home. Sade supports a Housing First model for all and strongly opposes incarcerating or punishing people facing houselessness.

In the Assembly, she intends to deliver on the commitment to create affordable housing and keep people from becoming displaced by:

  • Working in close collaboration with City and County governments to ensure the most effective use of resources.

  • Developing non-market housing, subsidized housing, and adaptive reuse zoning and providing greater incentives for first-time homeownership.

  • Looking at innovative solutions, including the dismantling of regulations to allow for faith-based institutions to utilize their property for affordable housing, or expanding options like SHARE collaborative housing.

  • Expanding protections that keep tenants from eviction and homeowners from foreclosure.

  • Blocking gentrification by giving Black and Brown communities a voice in development decisions made about their neighborhoods.

  • Employing more street outreach teams to build trust at encampments and shelters and deliver necessary resources to our unhoused community—including connecting people to mental health care and substance use treatment.

Healthcare for All

Sade’s district includes some of the poorest areas in Los Angeles County, where too many people avoid seeing a doctor because they don’t have adequate health insurance.

Sade believes healthcare should always be a top legislative budget priority, because when we protect peoples’ long-term wellness, they’re able to work, pay for housing, and live independent of government resources.

Sade will stand up for:

  • Universal access to quality care.

  • Fully funding community clinics and health centers that service low-income areas and the unhoused population.

  • Cutting prescription drug costs.

  • Establishing mandatory standards for public reporting of healthcare data to identify and solve disparities.

Expanding Mental Health Resources

A top priority for Sade is the delivery of comprehensive mental health care and substance use treatment to transform the lives of millions of Californians who currently suffer grave consequences from the overall lack of mental health care.

She intends to amplify this issue and speak up about it often to combat the stigma of mental illness and Substance Use Disorder in Black and Brown communities and to normalize the act of getting help.

In the legislature, Sade will work to:

  • Address chronic workforce shortages of mental health professionals

  • Integrate mental health services into primary care and reduce high out-of-pocket costs.

  • Partner with mental health providers in efforts to develop, maintain, and expand access to proven treatments, interventions, and other recovery support services for our communities.

Environmental Justice and Bold Climate Action

Everyone has a fundamental right to clean air and water, nutritious food, and safe, sustainable homes and transportation. Not everyone has equal access to these things.

Sade will work to target resources to environmental justice communities to:

  • Phase out oil drilling and remediate existing and abandoned wells.

  • Reduce health disparities.

  • Green and cool neighborhoods (parks, greenspace, tree canopy, cool pavement).

  • Upgrade water infrastructure.

  • Expand emergency management.

  • Increase access to solar and wind energy.

  • Electrify truck fleets and public transit.

  • Create pathways to careers in urban sustainability fields.

  • Reclaim urban space for sustainable food purposes.

Strong Public Schools And Youth Programs

Sade has spent her entire career with the goal of improving communities by uplifting our youth. She has served as a college counselor, high school teacher, youth organizer, and project director for Freedom Schools.

To explain why she became a high school teacher, Sade says, “Being a product of urban schooling, I saw the constant and seemingly overwhelming challenges students in these settings face. So I wanted to unlock the secrets normally withheld from these kids. I wanted to shatter the barriers that keep immigrant kids, poor kids, Brown, Black, and Indigenous kids from dreaming big and pursuing college.”

As our Assemblywoman, Sade will use her deep-rooted knowledge of—and respect for—young people to help them achieve brighter futures. She’ll work to:

  • Improve our public education system by greatly increasing per-pupil spending creating smaller neighborhood schools in walking distance from homes in low-income areas; supporting and mentoring teachers; training all school staff in cultural competency; protecting the right to teach Critical Race Theory; diversifying teacher workforce; increasing pay to attract teachers to the field and decrease turnover; expanding school health, counseling, and guidance services; offering free public college for in-state students; and canceling student debt.

  • Develop a statewide Workforce Innovation and Opportunity task force for vocational rehabilitation, employment, training, and literacy programs specifically geared for youth.

  • Build leadership and entrepreneurship programs for young people of color and pathways that invest in their growth.

  • Increase after-school programs and create spaces that serve as safe havens to prevent and avoid violent environments.

  • Promote meaningful civic engagement for high school and college students.

  • Enact stronger protections and support for high school pushouts, transitional-age youth, and aging-out foster youth.

Reproductive Justice

As we face the nation’s full-force attack on reproductive justice, Sade represents the new generation of leaders fighting back to make sure California provides the full range of reproductive services—including abortion care—to everyone in need.

Sade’s early life was guided by her activist mom, who served on the Planned Parenthood board of directors and was an outspoken champion for civil rights.

Additionally, Sade knows from personal experience how important safe, legal abortion is in not derailing your future. That’s why she won’t back down in the struggle to protect access and help California become a bigger player in getting people the care they need.

Safe Neighborhoods

To make our communities safer and keep people from entering systems of punishment, we need to heavily fund prevention-based social programs such as education, mental health, jobs, housing, and healthcare; we need to devise innovative ways to get guns out of our neighborhoods; and we must put an end to over-policing as our public safety response.

Sade supports community-led alternatives to policing, a community safety model that prioritizes balanced and restorative justice, discipline reform, workforce innovation, cultural wellness, and civic engagement.

And she believes in making the deepest investments in disadvantaged communities disproportionately targeted by police brutality and mass incarceration.

In the Assembly, Sade will work to:

Equality

Sade is deeply committed to the movement for social justice and liberation, and she works every day to tear down systems of oppression.

She’s a staunch protector of those who face hatred and discrimination due to their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, orientation, income, abilities, or age—including her own Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ communities. Sade battles the culture of silence that keeps people held down and sustains cycles of poverty and suffering.

In the Assembly, Sade will:

  • Invest deeply in programs that open doors to the middle class.

  • Decriminalize poverty and keep folks from entering the legal system for crimes stemming from conditions of poverty.

  • Further the policy goals of Care First, Jails Last to put a stop to incarcerating people with mental illness and substance use needs.

  • Develop education programs within carceral facilities.

  • Promote gang intervention as a legitimate career path and altogether create pathways for rehabilitation and healing, which in turn furthers neighborhood safety.

  • Reform our system of bail and pretrial detention.

  • Take on the powerful gun lobby and expand laws to reduce firearm-related homicide.

  • Work to expand family leave, affordable childcare and elder care to put those who traditionally serve as caretakers on track for successful careers.

  • Prioritize equal pay and apprenticeship programs designed to give women, and particularly women of color, opportunities at high-road jobs.

  • Help end domestic violence with laws protecting victims and also working with perpetrators to address and heal the trauma that causes them to hurt others.

  • Pass and enforce powerful anti-hate legislation for LGBTQ+, Black, Brown, Indigenous, AAPI, Jewish, Muslim, and other communities.

  • Support reparations for descendants of enslaved people.

Protecting Immigrants

Sade believes it’s the responsibility of all branches of our government to do much more to ease the transitions for our immigrant/undocumented communities, to make them feel safe, valued, and significant, and to unlock opportunities tailored to their unique needs.

She is dedicated to provide a strong support network to help our immigrant and undocumented residents thrive by:

  • Supporting legislation at the federal level to enact comprehensive, thoughtful immigration reform that creates a clear, expedient path forward for citizenship.

  • Increasing safety-net access to food and housing assistance for immigrants.

  • Ensuring programs for public services are staffed by caring, bilingual, culturally competent workers.

  • Extending unemployment benefits to undocumented workers who lose their jobs or get their work hours cut.

  • Expanding health care coverage to undocumented residents who earn too much to qualify for Covered California and whose employers don’t provide health insurance.

  • Promoting the health, safety, and welfare of street vendors, farm workers, and fast-food employees.