The Policies & PlatformAbout us
Iroghama C. Omere
When you have good thoughts, no one can stand in your way…
As a first-generation US Citizen, Iroghama started from humble beginnings. She studied biology at Prairie View A&M University while working a full-time job as the Resident Director at one of the first campus housing development at a Historically Black University. During her tenure, she pioneered what would become the virtual movement of business operations which resulted in the reduction of the campus’ carbon footprint.
In 2007, Iroghama volunteered as a community organizer for President Barack Obama’s campaign for Prairie View and Waller County. She organized one of the largest voter registration drives at Prairie View A&M. When the Waller County Board of Election attempted to suppress the votes of the students, she helped mobilize the student body in protest. This led to the establishment of voting polls opening in the student center on the campus.
Motivated by change, Iro decided to pursue graduate-level studies. After working several years as a Quality Control and Scholarship Coordinator at the University of Houston, she moved to Atlanta to attend Law School.
While in law school, Iro was a full-time teacher in College Park, GA. She helped improve the community by creating academic enrichment programs that allowed students and families to learn more about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). Additionally, she advocated for global citizenship through study abroad travels.
After years of dedicated services, Iro decided to pursue her life long dream of living in New York City. Today, Iro is an educator at KIPP: NYC and teaches middle school science is Crown Heights, Brooklyn. While working in Brooklyn, she noticed the patterns of poverty, racial discrimination, rampant infrastructure degradation, and slow response to the crisis that also plagued her hometown. She decided that ENOUGH was ENOUGH.
Iro is stepping up for congress because there is a silent majority that has been forgotten by the ones charged to represent them. She intends to represent all residents of District 7 so that all people can have a fair chance to pursue Life, Liberty, and Happiness. She ultimately believes that we are “stronger together.” Being united creates a stronger New York, which yields a stronger America.
Our Guiding Principles
- Prioritizing the most vulnerable
- Lowering health care costs
- Immigration reform
- Promoting and working for democracy and diversity
- Supporting our veterans and military families
- Pre-Kindergarten – 16 Public Education
- Guaranteeing Civil Rights and Justice Reform
- Guaranteeing Women’s Rights
- Building 21st Century Infrastructure
- Fostering a Manufacturing Renaissance
- Creating Good-Paying Clean Energy Jobs
PoliciesWoman's Rights
- The right to decide if and when she has children, and to have high-quality health care
- that means she won’t die in pregnancy or during childbirth
- the right of every woman to live equally and free from discrimination, no matter her sexuality or identity
- The full support and adequate implementation Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),
- an international bill of rights for women
- requires governments to end gender discrimination
- affirms women’s rights to health services, including family planning
- To reduce poverty, including targets for increased gender equality in education, work, and representation
- Provide aid and stringent policies—from abortion and refugee resettlement to climate change— pose a direct threat to the health, dignity, and well-being of women and girls everywhere
A Stronger and inclusive Economy
- Promote economic growth through innovation
- Our nation has been built by encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation. Especially in our current economic downturn, it is crucial that we pursue national policies that promote innovation to ensure that there will be enough prosperity to carry on into the next generation.
- Strategic immigration reform
- As other countries aggressively reach out to skilled immigrants, we have made it more difficult for foreign entrepreneurs to come to and stay in America.
- Our refusal to let more highly skilled immigrants into America is costing jobs, delaying economic recovery and harming our international leadership in innovation and entrepreneurship.
- We should grant automatic green cards to STEM graduate students from U.S. universities and pass the Dream Act to allow law-abiding people brought to the U.S. as children to become citizens.
- End the war on drugs.
- We have spent billions, incarcerated millions and made the situation worse.
- Evidence shows that legalization does not add to drug use and can generate large revenues.
- Economists have estimated that legalizing marijuana would save the government $7.7 billion per year on enforcement.
- Of this savings, $5.3 billion would go to state and local governments, while $2.4 billion would be accrued to the federal government.
- Two states who voted recently to legalize marijuana, Colorado and Washington, are expected to bring in $550 million in revenue combined.
- Incentive unemployed workers to volunteer.
- By requiring those receiving checks to volunteer at a non-profit, both parties can benefit. By contributing to society, they can gain skills, contacts and references that will help them be successful in the next job they attain and in turn, we would see fewer people claiming unemployment.
- Cut health care costs.
- We will stop incentivizing doctors to use the most expensive drugs.
- Ban drug company rebates to doctors and pay by the injection rather than the cost of the drugs, then we will cut Medicare spending.
- Allow Americans to buy prescription drugs from overseas.
- Thanks to the deal that the White House cut with drug companies, we have a wall around our nation for imported drugs and every nation in the world pays a lot less for the same drugs.
- We will save billions if we can pay what any other country pays.
- Remove unnecessary and unclear laws.
- Ambiguous laws, make it harder for businesses to know if they are violating the laws.
- Unfair laws waste government resources and hurt the competitiveness of U.S. companies.
-Forbes Contributor Greg Shapiro
American Justice
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
- Stay true to the principle that individuals are innocent until proven guilty
- Outlaw the Death Penalty
- The question we need to ask about the death penalty in America is not whether someone deserves to die for a crime. The question is whether we deserve to kill.
- The death penalty in America is a flawed, expensive policy, defined by bias and error.
- It targets the most vulnerable people in our society and corrupts the integrity of our criminal justice system.
- From police officers to family members of murder victims, Americans are recognizing that the death penalty does not make us safer.
- Alternative sentencing for minors and prohibit courts for trying minors as adults.
- In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults
- Children are more vulnerable, emotional, and impulsive, and they can’t get themselves out of unsafe homes or communities
- Pass laws to protect kids from their own poor decisions and from adults who would harm or take advantage of them.
- In hundreds of ways ranging from mandatory school attendance to harsher penalties for crimes involving minors, the law recognizes that children are different from adults
- Restore Voting rights to all people regardless criminal background
- Hold prosecutors and judges accountable to wrongful convictions
- Thousands of people have been wrongly convicted across the country in a system defined by official indifference to innocence and error.
- Wrongful convictions undermine the credibility of our system and ruin the lives of innocent men and women
- Hold Court accountable for 8th Amendment Violations
- Decades of harsh and extreme sentencing have left us with the world’s highest incarceration rate.
- We support the EJI and similar organization as they challenge excessive punishment, especially for children and people living with poverty, addiction, or mental illness.
- Even after they’re released from prison, parole conditions require formerly incarcerated people to pay restitution, supervision fees, and other costs.
- End discrimination against individuals that have served sentence for past offense
- Currently individuals experience
- loss of employment and housing
- threatened immigration status
- disqualification from welfare benefits, student loans, certain licenses often condemn formerly incarcerated people and their families to lifelong poverty.
- Currently individuals experience
- Repeal harsh drug laws that have proven to be racially biased and ineffective
- Repeal excessive habitual offender laws
- Implement smart reforms to undo our reliance on abusive and hopeless sentencing policies.
Provide access to adequate Healthcare
You can’t enjoy wealth if you are not in good health.
- build more medical facilities in at risk communities
- incentivize the pursuit of healthcare education for individuals to obtain healthcare careers
- improve the Affordable Healthcare Act
- Duty to respond act, which would require health professionals to provided immediate response to patients claims of distress
- Regulated work time for medical professionals at public facilities.
Human activity is the driving force behindGlobal Warming
“No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” -President Barack Obama
The overall goal is to transition Americans from contributors of climate change to mitigators.
- Reduce carbon emissions
- incentives the production and use of electric powered transportation
- tax companies for carbon footprint, waste mismanagement and pollution
- Increase food distribution
- Use clean energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels
- Rejoin the global global climate initiative by investing in our country
- Mandate green roofs for commercial buildings
- Implement reforestation plan
- plant at least one tree for every US resident
- require companies replace plant life displaced through development