Helen Gym

(This is a combined response to Questions 1 and 2)

My politics and policies come out of broad movements for justice from communities who were forced largely to the outskirts of politics – immigrant communities facing deportation, public school parents and educators facing state takeovers and disinvestment, and young people challenging a for-profit market around housing, schools, and jobs. Politics don’t usually work for people like us. So we’ve learned to organize. I cut my teeth defying mayors and developers who would take public land for private boondoggles like stadiums, casinos and for-profit charter schools. Through our powerful collective action, we ended a 17-year state takeover and shut down a corporate reform agenda that pushed privatization, blamed teachers, and defunded and closed down schools. I’ve been part of immigrant communities which have established Philadelphia as a proud Sanctuary City, defied ICE and the for- profit detention and deportation machine, challenged the indefinite detention of families and children at Berks, won federal civil rights lawsuits, and ended PARS. I believe my perspective on organizing to build power makes me a uniquely qualified candidate for City Council.

My legislative record as a first-term Council member includes the most comprehensive schools agenda out of Council in years. From beating back reckless charter school expansion to restoring nurses and counselors and doubling the number of social workers; from winning a state complaint for special education services to guaranteeing water access, instrumental music programs and school breakfast, I am committed to stabilizing our school budgets, supporting educators and making sure students get the schools and services they both need and deserve. I have taken on an ambitious anti-poverty agenda, which includes introducing and passing the nation’s strongest Fair Workweek law protecting 130,000 hourly workers and expanding the City’s living wage law to thousands of service workers. And I have developed a Housing as a Human Right agenda, by establishing the city’s first legal defense fund for renters facing eviction and the first ever budget line item for youth experiencing homelessness, devoting over $2 million to expand housing and services for young people in need.

My primary objectives over the next four years:

• Ending the 10 year tax abatement as it currently exists because it is a vehicle for poor school funding and inequitable development
• A new school construction initiative: Six years after we closed down 24 public schools, I am pushing for a massive school investment campaign that will build for the future of our neighborhoods and our city and ensure that all students go to school in safe buildings.
• Expansion of the Housing as a Human Right agenda: Establishing right to counsel for anyone facing a loss of their home from eviction, mortgage or tax foreclosure or civil forfeiture
  and assisting renters through rent stabilization

I have worked towards an agenda that brings forward a mandate for housing as a human right. When I learned that one in 14 renters in our city face court-ordered eviction annually, with evictions disproportionately impacting communities of color, I led a campaign that created a historic legal defense fund for renters facing eviction and an anti-eviction initiative and task force that spurred reforms throughout city government and the courts. This includes a rule change in the courts that prevents landlords from evicting people from properties with open code violations and for claiming rent during periods where they lacked a rental license. It’s important to note that my campaigns center the voices of seniors, veterans, parents, women and Black women in particular; it is critically important to me that politics is more than just policy – it should reflect good organizing within vulnerable communities and communities of color that highlight the importance of storytelling to transform the ways in which we solve problems.

In addition, I co-sponsored Good Cause legislation, and championed the provision of local rent subsidies into the City’s housing plans for the first time.

I believe there is much more we can do at the local level to further balance the scales and protect renters’ rights. I am working to radically restructure the tax abatement. I believe in right to counsel, fair housing and true inclusionary zoning, and support prioritizing the creation of truly (and permanently) affordable housing whenever we sell public property. Ultimately, we need to win recognition of a right to housing, and I am committed to organizing alongside those who are ready to take on that fight.

I believe that we need to radically rethink our approach to tax subsidies, to take true stock of their cost and better ensure that when used they create truly family-sustaining jobs. My very first law was a disclosure law requiring businesses who take city subsidies to report on the job outcomes promised in exchange for those subsidies. And that’s why I have called for the end of the 10-year tax abatement as it currently exists. This is a decades-old program, built for a city that was in desperate need at the time. It has contributed to the current state of the city today. Taxes are not meant to be fixed in time; they must evolve as a city’s needs evolve. I consider school funding and equitable development, particularly as it relates to low-income housing and preservation, to be the most urgent needs of the city today. I have introduced the most comprehensive package of bills to radically restructure the 10-year tax abatement, including capping it, graduating the payment, eliminating the School District portion, and restricting it by geography.

To promote school funding, I have introduced bills to slow down business tax reductions and raise the U&O (along with its progressive bottom-end exemption). I have consistently been on record as opposing KOZs, raising concerns about its application within growing or already developed areas of the city.

I do have interest in funding school construction with the help of a revitalized payment in lieu of taxes program for the largest entities in the city, both corporate and non-profit. I am open to new ideas for progressive local taxation, and believe we need to sharply minimize reliance on regressive approaches like our high sales tax rate.

Since coming into office, I have led the most ambitious schools agenda to come out of City Council in years. Here are some of my highlights:

1. Winning a nurse and counselor in every school
2. Doubling the number of social workers in schools and promoting a new pilot program of schoolwide social worker supports
3. New programs including instrumental music in every elementary school (won after I published a racial disparity study on this program), breakfast in the classroom, and the end to suspension of children in grades K-2 – all of which were my lead initiatives.
4. Clean water access in every public school, including a guaranteed ratio of working water fountains, minimum of three new electric filtered water stations in every school building, and regular lead testing that is the strictest in the nation.
5. Ending the Renaissance Charter initiative, which was the fastest means of school privatization and charter expansion in the District. My active opposition at two of the last three Renaissance charters and a districtwide study my office did on Renaissance Charters effectively ended the program.
6. Won a legal complaint on special education that brought compensatory services schoolwide to nine public schools, and also resulted in the District taking new measures to address special education vacancies.
7. Improving funding from the Parking Authority: In 2016, PPA funds to schools were at its lowest level – projected at $3 million/year. After hearings, meetings and aggressive restructuring of School District/City/PPA meeting structures, in 2019, the PPA will deliver over $14 million to schools – it’s highest level in years. I will work to ensure this entity delivers much more.
8. Read my full list of accomplishments here: http://phlcouncil.com/HelenGym/accomplishments/ Looking ahead I have prioritized essential needs such as stable staffing and the fulfillment of all curriculum mandates, an end to leveling across the district, a reduction in class size, ensuring a full arts and music program in every public school, and demanding improvement in racial diversity in teacher and principal staffing across the district. I am pushing for a community liaison to address truancy, bullying and harassment, and provide supports to parents. And finally, I am championing a 21st Century School Construction effort to build the schools our city desperately needs for our future.

My position on charters – and I was one of the founders of a social justice community-based charter school in Philadelphia Chinatown – is that they should be a highly curated supplement to a quality public school system. I have been one of the loudest voices against reckless and rampant charter expansion which has contributed to the District’s financial crisis, diverted resources and public will away from our public schools, and failed to improve the overall educational landscape. I’m proud to have been a leader in ending the School Reform Commission, which was a major driver of charter expansion. I helped end the fastest means of privatization and charter expansion by getting the District to place a moratorium on the Renaissance Charter Initiative. I opposed an effort to enact MCOs (Multiple Charter Organizations) in the district and will be a loud voice to end cyber charters. I do believe that the greatest counter to charters is a strong public school system and am devoting my energy and focus toward that charge.

I support putting an end to stop and search and have long criticized abusive policies around civil asset forfeiture. I will continue to advocate that police attain competency in responding to mental health crises and overdoses. I believe in greater transparency around the reporting of financial settlements that result from police misconduct and abuse to improve public accountability and inform police policy.

In my capacity as Chair of the Committee on Children and Youth, I have successfully won a school district policy to end suspensions on children in grades K-2, fought for and won investments in counselors and social workers and opposed the disproportionate investment in school police officers, and have supported efforts by citywide student organizations for a student-based grievance process in incidents of excessive force by school staff. I am currently challenging the School District’s attempt to mandate the use of metal detectors and scanners in all high schools.

My office supports the Philadelphia Reentry Coalition, which brings reentry partners together to increase collaboration, reduce duplication, align existing efforts and strengthen stakeholders’ capacity to improve their own reentry programs. I believe that any cost savings that come from a reduction in our jail population should be reinvested in the communities that mass incarceration has decimated, and I will be supporting efforts by returning citizens to demand a community reinvestment initiative during this budget cycle.

Additionally, much of my juvenile justice work has focused on removing barriers to re-entry. I passed legislation to ban the consideration of juvenile records during the hiring process. I established a task force to reduce the numbers of youth in residential placement, develop local trauma-informed alternatives, and support young people in their transition back to family, community and school.

My work will continue to bolster job quality as a key reentry tool. Despite our inability to increase the minimum wage, we can ensure that “one job is enough” and that those in entry-level positions are not forced to work with uncertainty. I worked with returning citizens to craft the Fair Workweek ordinance to best meet the job protections that workers need as they reintegrate into communities post- incarceration. I will continue to champion programs like the Fair Chance Hiring Program that provide returning citizens with avenues to employment and other programs and policies that provide support for successful reentry.

I strongly believe in the crucial role of public spaces in our civic life, from parks to rec centers to libraries, and am committed to investing in them and protecting them. We have seen a number of instances where public-private partnerships have sped up improvements that might have taken years to accomplish within a solely public sphere. However, it is crucial that we fully protect and ensure equal access to all constituencies, a commitment to free speech and freedom of assembly (including protest), and efforts to dissuade hyper commercialization. I support all efforts to ensure that constitutional and civil freedoms are upheld and we limit the for-profit exploitation of these spaces. I have personally worked to ensure that the rights of groups engaged in voter registration and issue advocacy are upheld at our privately-managed parks. That being said, I still do not believe that the City of Philadelphia should have privatized Dilworth Park on the front steps of City Hall.

As the Democratic Party’s first Asian American elected official in decades and the first AAPI woman on City Council, I bring a strong immigrant rights agenda both to the City and nationally.

• I held a town hall with more than 500 members of the immigrant community in January 2017 and won the first staffing and support investments for immigrant communities in our public schools since 2010, as well as districtwide know your rights trainings to ensure that our public schools would be protected from ICE.
• Before I came into City Council, I fought for Philadelphia’s designation as a Sanctuary City and fought against the PARS information-sharing agreement through the Secure Communities Act under Mayor Michael Nutter. I was proud to help lead the fight within city government to finally end PARS last summer.
• I use the power of my voice to drive public action. I helped lead the airport protests of the Muslim ban. I have been a vocal supporter of the #ShutDownBerks coalition and the fight for drivers’ licenses for the undocumented in Pennsylvania.
• As vice chair of Local Progress, a national network of progressive municipal electeds, I helped lead an #AbolishICE letter signed by over 100 local elected officials in 2018 and co-hosted a gathering of 70 elected officials for a Sanctuary Cities conference to protect immigrant rights in 2017.
• I am co-sponsor of municipal ID legislation and a charter change to permanently establish an Office of Immigrant Affairs within the City of Philadelphia.

Cities can win on environmental justice. After Flint, when the Guardian raised alarm bells about Philadelphia’s water system, I took action. I followed the lead of young people who organized for universal access to clean and safe water in schools. By taking direction from student activists, we implemented groundbreaking solutions that require every school building (including private and charter) to have sufficient water hydration stations, and to annually test water safety with rigorous standards. I partnered with my colleagues to ensure water testing would occur in housing rentals and daycare centers. This work led to the creation of the Philly Healthy Schools Initiative, a group of advocates advancing a community-led, systems-change approach to safe school facilities. I support expanding our city’s lead remediation laws to cover all rental properties.

We can generate high-quality jobs through large-scale retrofitting of public buildings and schools, and we can make renewable energy accessible by holding PECO accountable to transitioning to renewables and passing cost savings along to residents. I will continue to fight for sustainable investments in public transit and oppose the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in Philadelphia.