The United States immigration system is broken, period. Currently, there is no pathway to citizenship for more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, and over 3.5 million immigrants have been deported from the United States, tearing apart families and communities. Sponsoring a loved one can take up to almost 25 years. Meanwhile, many undocumented immigrants remain permanently separated from their family abroad, as undocumented immigrants who leave the United States are barred from re-entry. Stories about undocumented immigrants being unable to attend their parents’ funerals, or their cousins’ graduations are heartbreakingly common. Even intercountry adoptees, who were brought to the U.S. to be adopted by U.S. citizen parents, are being deported. 

Our vision of an equitable immigration system will provide citizenship for ALL 11 million undocumented immigrants.. We recognize the unique ways in which immigration impacts Black, Asian, Latinx, Brown, and all communities of color and that citizenship alone will not provide full recognition or protection of one’s dignity and humanity (i.e. for descendants of Black enslaved people). We must also fight for citizenship in a way that recognizes ultimately, indigenous nations are the true stewards of this land. In 2018, NAKASEC embarked upon a 36-day bike tour from Seattle to San Diego, and created a femmifesto from speaking to impacted communities along the way, which encompasses many of our demands. See here for femmifesto. 

Our Demands:

1.  An immediate, unconditional pathway to citizenship now for all 11 million undocumented immigrants, including formerly and currently incarcerated immigrants; 
2.  An end to all detention, incarceration and deportation through the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and police; and
3. Reunification of all families and communities who have been forcibly separated through detention and deportation.

The United States is currently the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare coverage for its residents. Incredibly, we fail to provide healthcare for all and still somehow spend the most per person on healthcare in the world, only to produce worse health outcomes. 

We consistently rank lower than other industrialized nations in life expectancy, and hold the highest infant mortality rate of all industrialized nations. Put more bluntly, we die premature, preventable deaths in the United States because our healthcare system is expensive, inefficient, and unnecessarily complex. Black folx, people of color, immigrants, trans folx, women, and other marginalized groups feel the effects of a profit-driven system most acutely.

As the wealthiest nation in the world, we have no excuses. The United States must join every other industrialized nation in the world in providing universal healthcare to its residents. There is a menu of options to finance universal healthcare. We have the potential to save trillions of dollars, and most importantly, human lives by implementing a single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All, wherein every single United States resident, regardless of income, employment status, or immigration status, would have access to quality, comprehensive healthcare.

Our Demands:

1. Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.
2. No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills.
3. Medicare coverage will be expanded and improved to include: dental, hearing, vision, and home- and community-based long-term care, in-patient and out-patient services, mental health and substance abuse treatment, reproductive and maternity care, prescription drugs, transgender-inclusive care, and more.
4. Stop the pharmaceutical industry from ripping off the American people by making sure that no one in America pays over $200 a year for the medicine they need by capping what Americans pay for prescription drugs under Medicare for All.

Education is critical to upward mobility. College graduates earn over $30,000 more than folx who only have high school degrees. And yet, for many people, student loan debt makes this impossible. Today in our country, 45 million people hold some $1.6 trillion in student debt. The average college student in the U.S. graduates with close to $30,000 in student loans that are near impossible to repay. After five years, only 43% of public two-year college students and 34% of for-profit college students who began repaying their loans in 2011 had paid even a dollar toward their loan principal. This is unacceptable. Black folx are especially impacted since the Black-White gap in student loan debt more than triples after graduation. This has real effects on people’s ability to start their lives post college, their financial ability to start businesses, rural ‘brain drain,’ and college drop-out rates. 

We need tuition- and debt-free public colleges and universities for all because education is critical to upward mobility. All student loan debt should be cancelled for people currently owing student debt, and student loan interest rates should be capped moving forward. Guaranteeing higher education for all and cancelling all student debt will cost an estimated $2.2 trillion. There is a menu of options to make that possible. For example, even a modest tax on Wall Street speculation would raise an estimated $2.4 trillion over ten years. Everyone should be able to access higher education without entering massive student debt, regardless of race, socioeconomic background, immigration status, and more.  

Our Demands:

1. Guarantee tuition and debt-free public colleges, universities, Historically Black College & Universities (HBCUs), Minority Serving Institutions and trade-schools to all (regardless of immigration status, income level – is there other factors to explicitly mention??).
2. Cancel all student loan debt for the some 45 million people in the U.S. who owe about $1.6 trillion and place a cap on student loan interest rates going forward.
3. Invest $1.3 billion every year in private, non-profit historically black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions
4. End equity gaps in higher education attainment. Ensure students are able to cover non-tuition costs of attending school by: expanding Pell Grants to cover non-tuition and fee costs, tripling funding for the Work-Study Program, and allowing undocumented students to be eligible for state and federal aid.

The inevitability of the climate crisis is inescapable with our current economy, and vulnerable communities will be hurt most- through storms, droughts, flooding, pollution, wildfires, heat stress, and other byproducts of climate change. Climate “change” will not be sudden; the crisis is already happening; it is impacting low-income families living next to toxic waste, and millions of forced refugees who are forced to migrate due to their current living environments becoming inhospitable.

The Green New Deal – a 10-year plan that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Markey introduced – recognizes the inextricability of environmental, social, and economic justice. The solution that the Green New Deal proposes is a reimagined economy and social ecosystem that transitions our society away from an unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels, coal and natural gas industries, and other factors driving us on the road towards inevitable destruction. The Green New Deal strives for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions over 10 years through decarbonizing the economy. We must transform food and vehicle production; create new jobs, industries, and economies; shift away from coal and natural gas industries; and protect the people as we transition industries through provisions like universal healthcare and training and education expansion. 

The Goals of the Green New Deal are:

1. to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
2. to create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States;
3. to invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century;
4. to secure clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all people of the United States for generations to come; and
5. to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, de-industrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth.

Reproductive justice–a term coined by Black feminists in 1994–goes beyond “reproductive rights” as the term captures the holistic justice that marginalized communities need and deserve. Reproductive justice recognizes that holistic justice is about “the right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.” Reproductive justice is important because, as Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ) states, “controlling a [person’s] body controls [their] life, [their] options and [their] potential- and thus, controlling [individuals] becomes a strategic pathway to regulating entire communities.” 

The right to choose whether one will have a child or not or have an abortion- the right to control one’s own body and future- is a fundamental human right. The Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade in 1973 ensured that this choice is a constitutional right. When a person’s right to choose is threatened, so is our equality. There are no laws that regulate cis-gender men’s bodies, and there should therefore not be laws that regulate the bodies of women, trans and nonbinary people. 

Ultimately, the regulation of marginalized trans, nonbinary, and women’s bodies is a form of social control. This social control spans the medical field’s regulation of Black women’s fertility during slavery, historical sterilization in indigenous communities, and barriers of access (including social stigma) assigned to abortion.  The Supreme Court noted in 1992 that “the ability…to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” 

Reproductive justice is also about access, not just choice.  People of color face raised barriers in access. As SisterSong, creators of the term “reproductive justice” write, even when abortion is legal, many women of color cannot afford or travel the hundreds of miles to access abortion. For Asian American women, who already use inexpensive and less effective contraceptive methods at higher rates than other women, insurance coverage is critical to ensuring access to effective contraception.  A high number of Asian American women die from breast cancer because they lack access to healthcare. (25.5% Korean Americans and 19.8% Vietnamese Americans are uninsured, with women more likely to be uninsured than men.)

Reproductive justice is also about equal access to contraception, comprehensive sex education, STI prevention and care, alternative birth options, adequate prenatal and pregnancy care, domestic violence assistance, adequate wages to support our families, safe homes, and so much more. Marginalized folx who choose to have children deserve governmental resources and programs to support them. Trans and nonbinary folx–who face barriers from forced sterilization to discrimination in healthcare access–deserve access to trans-competent healthcare (including transition-related care; screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and breast, cervical, and prostate cancers; and contraception provision), as well as economic security and the ability to live free from violence. Everyone deserves power over their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction.  

Our Demands Include but are Not Limited to:

1. Protecting and preserving the right to choose and equality for all people
2. Ensure free reproductive healthcare at the point of service, including safe and legal abortion, for all, regardless of immigration status 
3. Expand support for organizations such as Planned Parenthood
4. Ban ineffective abstinence-only sex education
5. Provide culturally and linguistically competent care 
6. Provide trans-competent care (including transition-related care; screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and breast, cervical, and prostate cancers; and contraception provision) as well as economic security and the ability to live free from violence so trans and nonbinary folx also have the “economic, social, and political power to make healthy decisions abut their bodies, sexuality, and reproduction” (See: National Women’s Law Center, National LGBTQ Task Force, National Center for Transgender Equality)
7. Provide government resources so everyone, particularly low-income and people of color, can parent the children they have in safe and sustainable communities.