Farheen will bring leadership to:

User-Friendly and Transparent Leadership

There is a need for State Government to be more user friendly for people, and there need for a strong, hard working, passionate advocate for the residents of 61B. I am the leader that will build a bridge for the people of 61B to the State Capitol. As a proven advocate and organizer in disenfranchised communities, I have the skills and the knowledge to make the State Capitol less intimidating and complicated and more approachable to the people. As your State Representative, I promise to be accessible to you and will continually seek community input before making decisions that affect our lives in our district. I will show up to events and be present in the community while still being a resilient advocate at the Capitol.

Education

As a former math teacher and a current youth coordinator, I am very passionate about the education of all our youth. My extensive experience in teaching and youth work has given me the knowledge to serve the youth of 61B. We must ensure adequate funding for staff, resources, and materials for the classroom and for community centers. With obstacles such as, "No Child Left Behind," decisions about education need to go back to the local level, instead of federal control. This will improve the quality of education to our students, and provide more opportunity to the community. The system is broken for our young people and we need to make more strides in expanding our youth’s options for success, not centralizing services at the national level. We need to give youth the tools so that they can build a future for themselves, and abandon old systems keeping them in the revolving door of poverty.

As State Representative, I will introduce proactive comprehensive youth policy so that youth are on their way to being active members of society. Those steps include investing in early childhood programs, offering opportunities in supplemental education to our youth, increasing community involvement with our youth at schools, and an increase in before-school, after-school and during-school programming.

Health Care

From the very beginning, I have been a supporter for single-payer universal health care, and I have been a champion in advocating for it for years. Since Minnesota has one of the lowest uninsured rates in the country, and more and more small businesses are not able to keep up with rising health insurance costs, is very clear that there need to be health care reform now. A group of legislators committed to real health care reform has formed the Minnesota Health Reform Caucus (MHRC). As your State Representative, I will work with this group to find real solutions for people in the District 61B – the right to accessible health care for all.

Homelessness

From my first-hand experience working with homeless families, finding solutions to homelessness — and preventing it — is among my core values. I was actively involved in this issue as a board member of the Minnesota Coalition for Homelessness, and practiced it as a Hennepin County funded Rapid Exit worker.

There are 20,000 homeless people in the State of Minnesota. Over half of them concentrated here in the Metropolitan area. Drawing on the Wilder Foundation’s research, the Minnesota Coalition notes the following:

• 69% of the homeless have lived in institutional arrangements
• 58% of those who have recently left correctional facilities are homeless
• 48% of those leaving institutions other than correction institutions did not have a stable place to live when they left

With these facts in mind, I recognize the need for discharge planning and re-entry policies that will assist those coming out of corrections. However, we cannot ignore the key question that must be asked:

How do we prevent thousands of people from ending up in jail in the first place?

To end homelessness we must respond primarily to these root causes: unemployment, addiction, and mental illness. We need to be developing pro-active solutions to these underlying problems. In the course of the past 20 years we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars responding to homeless people on the street. Yet many services have been astonishingly slow in prioritizing homelessness prevention.

We need to focus on strategies and systems that offer support rather than punishment. We need more treatment facilities for addiction recovery and mental health services, not more prisons. We need more outreach. We also need to focus on cultural competencies in our dealing with the problem of homelessness.

Transportation

Our community relies heavily on Public Transportation, I'm an advocate for it to be safe and accessible. The tragedy of the I-35W bridge collapse is a metaphor of our draining local resources while ignoring our addiction to foreign fuel. As critical as it is for the legislature to allocate resources to maintain local infrastructure and reduce traffic congestion, we also need to prioritize transportation alternatives for our community.

I have publicly pledged many times to make community input be at the forefront of all policy pertaining to transportation. For example, when the Hiawatha line was built, community input was largely ignored, leaving many people mistrusting of some aspects of local government. While I am enthusiastic about expanding this exceptionally popular transportation alternative, we cannot afford to repeat the mistake of alienating residents.

As a proven leader in community input, and an energetic organizer, I have the skills and the enthusiasm to develop plans with authentic community input. This is unlike current practice where plans are drawn in a closed board room, and then a presentation given so that few concerns or questions are addressed.

In addition I support the Urban Partnership Agreement(UPA), which allows for more public mass transportation as well as a reduction in congestion on 35W. The UPA will allow for more High Occupancy Toll, similarly found in 394, and a lane for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) from Burnsville Parkway to Downtown Minneapolis. This will result in more car pooling and more use of public transportation.

Environment and Energy Justice

Wind energy was an issue I championed during my 2005 campaign for Minneapolis Mayor and 2006 campaign for Hennepin County Commissioner. I am pleased to report that since then, the County board has decided to explore the options to bring renewable energy to Hennepin County. With my knowledge and dedication, wind energy will become a reality in our community. Why shouldn't it be - This is not about idealism but the need to live sustainability.

As a coalition builder, I have the ability to capitalize on urban wind plans by building relationships with rural legislators, whose constituents are already on board with wind energy. Wind energy will not only lessen our burden on coal and nuclear energy, but it allows us to save money.

Other methods to minimize the negative impact on the environment are to explore solar energy, look into hybrid government owned vehicles, make recycling more accessible, and to preserve and restore green space and wetlands. Minneapolis Parks and Recreation is off to a great start protecting natural spaces. I will introduce policy to impact the entire state in a similar way.

As an environmentalist, I support preserving natural lands and habitats from corporate interests and development. Furthermore, I will support legislation that will increase preservation of our land in Minnesota.

Furthermore, I am against the any type of biomass burning as a source of energy. This is not environmentally sustainable and many community members, activists and environmentalists have agreed that this is the wrong direction for our neighborhoods and our future energy sources.

Human Rights Reform

One of the best features of our State Government is the passing for the Minnesota Human Rights Act. The enforcement of this act, however, is lagging behind. The Spokesman Recorder talks about how community activists are ready to work on reform of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. As State Representative, I will work with community members to find creative and alternative ways to structure the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, so that it is more effective and efficient in handling cases.