(Photo by Joseph Prezioso)
By JOSH RESNEK
Gerly Adrien’s weekend announcement that she is running electrified the Everett political community and caused a stir among her friends like Kim Janey, the mayor of Boston, Rachel Rollins the District Attorney of Suffolk County, and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
Adrien’s announcement included going online with a full social media platform.
All the material she put out can be accessed by going to her election website: Gerlyadrien.com.
That being said, Adrien’s video was intended to speak to those who feel overlooked and left out of government.
“If you are overlooked, left out, and unheard if you must depend on others to get through the day…I offer the power of us,” Adrien said in her video, which showed her in a variety of poses and places throughout the city.
“This is the hometown I love…Everett is ready for a change…I have spoken up. I did it loud.”
Adrien said that she would lead the battle for affordable housing and economic growth and would work hard to make Everett a city “that represents all of us.”
Highlights of her campaign issues are:
Arts & Culture
Annual Arts & Culture Appreciation – highlighting arts, music, and other cultures with their contributions.
Funding art organizations and artists.
Senior Legacy Program- an annual program for the community that allows seniors to pass our history to future generations.
Civic Engagement
Eliminate barriers to voting.
Automatic voter registration at 18. Designating Election Day as a state holiday.
Support expanding early voting.
Criminal Justice
Improve in-prison and post-release support, including appropriate health care, for drug and alcohol addiction.
Increase GED passage rate and provide funding for classes and fees.
Invest in job training and interview skill programs for former offenders.
Establish faith-based programs, which can reduce recidivism. Getting rid of excessive fees.
Support mandatory training concerning unconscious bias and mental health first aid training for police officers, and other public servants.
Support transformative justice legislation and incarceration reform by addressing racial and income inequalities.
Economic Growth
Restore funding to small businesses, which provides grants to community groups to support local businesses in the opening, growing or stabilizing their businesses.
Partner with local businesses to implement job training programs that are effective and accessible, especially for single parents.
Work to expand small business lending, funded by opposing big corporate tax breaks.
Education
Fair Funding Formula for K-12 schools by supporting the education bill to update our 25-year-old Foundation Budget education funding formula.
Creating innovation hubs.
From daycare to college, making it more affordable. Support universal kindergarten and early education. Support more bilingual education.
Emergency Response Plan
Ensure that all citizens have access to the City’s Emergency Response Plan.
Conduct a series of workshops to provide critical information of how residents can access critical services during an emergency.
Environment
Support beautification, not gentrification.
Support legislation to transition to 100% renewable energy, with a supporting energy infrastructure.
Support rewarding creative cooperatives that promote and generate solar energy in urban areas.
Support structural engineering changes required to face the challenges of climate change.
Healthcare
Support a single-payer, Medicare-for-All system for Massachusetts that will guarantee health care as a right for all residents.
Support guarantee coverage of essential health care services.
Reduce the cost of care of drug prices and eliminating wasteful administrative costs.
Expand safety net programs for the uninsured and underinsured.
Supporting the expansion of behavioral health and addiction treatment services.
Healthy MA Initiative
Annual Health Challenge with prizes for participants to encourage healthy weight loss, exercise, healthy awareness, and an Annual Health Expo.
War Against Childhood Obesity: Partner to provide health education to parents and kids on healthy food preparation at low cost, ways to incorporate activity into family time, and the importance of living a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
Everett schools can also take advantage of private funding for the establishment of community gardens and cooking education at schools.
Housing
Work to increase public housing funding, as well as investment in CDCs and nonprofits that build affordable housing.
Create pathways to homeownership and creating paths towards cooperative ownership.
Work to ensure that new developments and public housing renovations do not displace low-income residents.
Work with advocates who are fighting to prevent and end individual/family homelessness.
Immigration
Support pathways to jobs, health care, education, and citizenship.
Support providing driver’s licenses for immigrants.
Support in-state tuition for all Massachusetts high school graduates.
Support the Safe Communities Act, which protects Massachusetts law enforcement agencies from federal overreach into local decisions regarding community safety and stops the diversion of scarce state and local tax dollars to federal responsibilities.
Improve Efficiency
Connecting constituents to vital public services
Helping with government paperwork
Providing assistance to help navigate unemployment, veteran’s assistance, and other services
Listening to concerns about legislation and more Quarterly robocalls to distribute critical information updates and upcoming meetings.
Improve Our Streets
Look how we can improve our roadways and the traffic. Also, to work with the city to decrease speeding on local streets.
Improve Transparency
Quarterly Newsletter to update residents of Everett on what is going on at the State House.
Quarterly State Representative Round xxstables with citizens to provide residents an opportunity to meet with their State Rep. on specific issues and provide a “State of the State House” update.
Quarterly Civic Training on Relevant State Issues and Matters that citizens should be involved in the issues and governance of our city.
ncrease Tech Savviness & Digital Brand
Increase the average resident’s technological competency by supporting adult education classes, in addition to computer literacy classes for youth, both in and outside the classroom.
Public Safety
Support community policing initiatives led by officers from the communities they serve.
Support increased resources for officer training on unconscious bias.
Support the decriminalization of mental illness. Fight against gun violence.
Seniors
Working to make Everett senior housing a priority.
Decrease property taxes for Seniors.
Strengthen vital programs, as well as free transportation shuttles and other services to ensure that older people have the resources, they need to stay healthy and active.
Transportation
Investing in MBTA infrastructure.
Creating more protected bike lanes.
Ensuring all modes of transportation are physically accessible to everyone.
Women
Take action that ensures the safety of individual women, while creating systemic change that guarantees opportunity and prosperity for all women.
Stand behind initiatives and programs that are fighting domestic violence.
Support comprehensive health care for women.
Enforce the new Massachusetts Equal Pay Act and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act while effectively advocating for comprehensive paid family leave legislation.
Youth Agenda
Increase the opportunities offered to students to assure every young person gets the chance to participate in positive athletic activity.
Support organizations that expand the number of summer jobs offered to Everett teens. Increase funding for the safety net for at-risk youth through increased housing and employment support for youth.
Youth Enrichment Saturday Programs to include Science, Business, Arts, and Music.
Implement a Youth Workforce Development Program.
Vocational training should be included in our high schools, and it should focus on technology.
Intervention Schools.