Supporting Seattle's voter-approved Democracy Voucher Program — a system designed to empower small donors and the candidates they support in city elections.
“There are massive benefits to institutions, to students themselves in the long term in being more diverse and having a set of students from different backgrounds.”
If we want to pass climate policies that could actually help reverse the climate crisis, then we also need to fix our democratic system that gives too much power to wealthy donors and big polluters.
“To the extent we have had baby boomers running for president for the past few decades, they got an education in a world when you did not have to take on debt."
"The justification for student debt as the primary way we pay for college has been in part based on the assumption that we’ll have consumer protections in place, and we’ll try to make it as painless as possible for people."
The dramatic rise in student loan debt has placed unacceptable risk on working-class families and on people of color, who must take on more debt for the same degree as white students.
"The potential of this plan is that it increases public investment back to levels we saw when college was much more affordable, and it pegs it to a price for students."
“If you compare this to some of the other gifts given in higher education, it’s incredibly stark, and I would hope points us to a smarter, better model of philanthropy where people’s lives are genuinely being transformed.”
“Your income or your family’s wealth is extremely predictive of whether you’re going to go college at all and certainly what program you’re going to do."
“Not only are students of color more likely to borrow more for a degree, and borrow in higher amounts for the same degree, but they’re more likely to struggle to repay student loans than white students."
“This is a problem that has not gone away but has gotten worse in many communities. It’s enough of a problem that people expect some action on it, and they expect some plan for how to get there.”