Combating Hate Crimes

 

Since 2020, hate crimes against the Asian community have increased by 339 percent nationwide. In New York, there was a 368 percent increase, with 131 hate crimes targeting Asians in 2021, compared to 28 in 2020 and just one in 2019, according to the NYPD statistics.

 

Congress must act to ensure the FBI, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security are taking the appropriate steps to investigate threats, protect vulnerable populations, and hold individuals and groups accountable. More funds must be appropriated to help local law enforcement and community-based organizations combat hatred and protect communities as well as providing culturally competent policing and law enforcement. The federal penalty for committing a hate crime must be increased.

 

Public Safety

 

We need real, proven solutions to reduce crime and build true, lasting safety for everyone in the district. 

 

Dan is calling for Federal laws and law enforcement to crack down on the influx of illegal guns into New York through the Iron Pipeline and to end the proliferation of ghost guns. We also need to strengthen community-building programs that have proven records of success, such as the B-HEARD initiative. 

 

In Congress, Dan will push for greater federal investment into mental health and crisis counseling programs and to help develop a robust emergency response system. By investing in emergency mental health resources to ensure law enforcement response teams include trained mental health professionals, we can both improve outcomes of mental health emergency calls and free up police resources to focus on uniformed street patrol and violent crimes. 

 

Dan also supports programs to enhance cultural competence and language access in all law enforcement agencies, from police to prosecutors to judges. 

 

Dan will also push for much needed federal funding to build safety upgrades like platform safety barriers and fully operational safety cameras on public transit.

 

Supporting Small Business

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In far too many instances, small business pandemic recovery funds left out APIA small business owners because of a lack of language access and/or because they share zip codes with wealthier neighborhoods. 

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The lack of tourism and foot traffic due to the pandemic severely hampered Chinatown business recovery and now rising interest rates and a potential recession threaten to disproportionately impact the community.

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Dan will fiercely advocate for more federal funding for small business recovery and increased language accessible support services, as well as culturally competent outreach so APIA small-business owners are aware of these services.

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Language Accessibility 

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We need to ensure that language is not a barrier for accessing federal immigration forms and other important information and documents. While the federal government has made many of these forms available in several languages, it is still difficult to navigate these websites in English to gain access to the translated documents. 

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Dan will advocate for additional updates to certain federal websites to create translated versions that make it easier to find information and documents, and in Congress will provide aggressive oversight to ensure comprehensive implementation. 

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Education

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Education is a pathway to success and Dan firmly believes in the need to fully fund high-quality education for everyone and push our educational institutions towards excellence. 

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We need to continue to expand funding and resources for our schools and our educators. It’s unacceptable that teachers are still being forced to buy their own supplies for their classes. We need more funding for multilingual/multicultural education and programming. Schools must provide language accessible resources for parents and guardians so that they can participate more fully in students’ education.

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Dan will work to reduce school overcrowding, improve facilities, and open new opportunities for our students. Dan will work to support and expand scholarships, student aid, public interest debt forgiveness programs, and pathways to success. 

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Additionally, we need to construct talent pipelines from underserved communities into fields that face severe talent shortages, such as nursing, medicine, and education. 

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Dan will fight to make sure that there are sufficient nurses, social workers, and mental health counselors available in all school districts. We need to construct more community schools with wraparound services as well as summer programming, universal childcare, and youth employment programs.

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2nd Ave Subway

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Phase 2 of the expansion of the Second Ave. Subway has begun to extend the Second Ave. line up to 125th Street in East Harlem. We need to secure additional funding from the federal government to begin the next phase of the Second Ave. line expansion to extend the line into Chinatown and Sunset Park. Dan will work to secure additional infrastructure funding to help make this project a reality. 

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ADA Compliance and Assistance

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We want to ensure Americans with disabilities are able to visit businesses and restaurants without issue. For many small businesses, however, coming into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act can be cost-prohibitive. Dan will work to secure federal funding to help businesses and restaurants comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act without undue financial burden.

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Social Security and Medicare

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Dan will defend Social Security and ensure that benefits keep up with the rising cost of living. Dan supports an immediate expansion of monthly Social Security benefits. Dan firmly believes in the need to expand healthcare access, and supports expanding Medicare by lowering eligibility to age 60 and allowing people 55 and older to buy in.

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Immigration Reform

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Immigrant communities are the soul of New York. Dan supports reforming and streamlining the immigration process by improving language accessibility for immigrant services, dedicating more resources to hiring USCIS caseworkers to speed up applications, and pushing for more funding for services for recent immigrants, including language classes and workforce development. 

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In Congress, one of Dan’s first orders of business will be to introduce legislation to double the number of immigration judges in our system and streamline the asylum process so that we don’t have a backlog of asylum-seekers in inhumane conditions. He also firmly believes that undocumented immigrants must have a pathway to citizenship.