Finish the Job: The Youth Agenda

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Our Demands

Anti-immigrant, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric and policies are threatening our freedom to move, freedom to stay, and freedom to thrive in our chosen homes. Politicians on the far right are using hate and fear to pass laws that police immigrants and bar our communities from accessing jobs, education, and health care, and they’re recklessly promoting white supremacist ideologies that have led to anti-immigrant violence in places like El Paso and Buffalo. The stakes are too high for the Biden Administration to let immigrants be used as political scapegoats or pawns.

Pass immediate executive actions to expand DACA and other policies like TPS, parole, and DED to protect people from deportation and hold ICE and CBP accountable.
- Ending all contracts between the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and private, for-profit corporations, who earn an estimated $3 billion dollars from their role in immigration detention centers.
Pass executive actions that also close the vast and cruel web of detention camps and not replace it with a practice of tagging people with electronic monitors or surveillance sold by for-profit corporations.
End the collaboration between local police and ICE and CBP through programs like 287g and Operation Stonegarden.
End the use of racial profiling by deportation agents and local police that pulls people into the deportation pipeline.
Commit to providing guaranteed counsel for all while making immigration courts independent and free of political manipulation.
Fight for citizenship pathways for all undocumented people without harmful provisions and prohibitive and criminalizing requirements.
End the militarization of the border and tying funding of the border to funding of wars abroad, including in Gaza.
Reverse October 2023 decision to waive 26 environmental and indigenous sovereignty laws to construct the border wall.

Championed by United We Dream Action

The climate emergency is here. Unprecedented heat waves, historic flooding, and devastating wildfires continue to economically and physically destroy people’s lives. We need a mass government mobilization to do everything possible to keep people safe and end this existential threat from claiming thousands of lives.

Reject new oil, gas, and coal projects on the basis that they fail to pass the national and public interest tests required by existing laws like the Natural Gas Act, Deepwater Port Act, and the Clean Water Act.
Lead the federal government to ensure that the US achieves 100% clean energy no later than 2035.
Course correct recent fossil fuel concessions and phase out all oil, gas, and coal production and use climate emergency statutory powers to reallocate funds towards larger renewable energy projects.
- (1) Reinstate the crude oil export ban and create a pathway to end all exports of fossil fuels to the extent possible under current law.
- (2) Use emergency powers to halt the hundreds of billions of dollars that fund coal, oil, and gas projects abroad.
- (3) Phase out oil and gas production on federal public lands and oceans as quickly as possible while complying with the law and protecting workers and communities.
Guarantee everyone has free healthcare and safe housing they need after climate disasters strike.
- (1) Use the Public Health Services Act to provide free healthcare to people affected by climate disasters and ban evictions and utility shutoffs in the aftermath of climate disasters.
- (2) Use the Individuals and Households Program to build new affordable housing when disaster strikes.

Help pass a Green New Deal and/or recommit to finish the job of Build Back Better by investing the remaining $3 trillion dollars for resilient housing, schools, and public transportation.
Building off of the historic effort to protect precious old-growth forests from logging, expand protections to mature-growth forests, which make up 68.1 million acres – 47%- of our National Forests.
Instruct federal agencies to approve solar development on public lands on the condition that they are built within 10 miles of existing transmission lines, the lands are previously disturbed, wildlife corridors are a required part of construction, and crucial endangered ecosystems are protected.

Championed by Sunrise Movement

Guns are the leading cause of death for young people and children in America; we are an entire generation terrorized by gun violence because right wing extremists and the gun industry are more interested in profit than our lives. We need a leader who will vigorously defend our right to live, take a public health approach to violence that divests from carceral solutions and invests in community wellbeing, end unconditional and irresponsible weapons transfers to police departments and abroad, and work actively towards a world where no one has to fear death because of a gun.

Raise national standards for gun ownership.
Hold the gun lobby and industry accountable, including rigorous regulation of predatory gun sales and marketing, and push to fully repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
Invest in a holistic, intersectional public health approach including CVI investments over carceral approaches, etc.

Championed by March for our Lives

On all levels of government, we’re seeing an erosion of democracy and our fundamental rights, from Cop City in Atlanta to a Supreme Court that fails to represent the will of The People. In order to meet this dire moment, the Biden Administration must show bold leadership. We’re calling on the White House to act boldly, including but not limited to the following:

Call for a permanent and immediate Ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank.
Call on the Senate to expand the Supreme Court and abolish the anti-democratic filibuster.
Push to protect and expand the right to vote, including for non-citizens to vote in local elections, and the Youth Voting Rights Act that requires states to accept student IDs for voter ID requirements.
Urge Congress to overturn Citizens United and create a public campaign financing system for federal elections.
Call for Statehood for Washington DC, and call for Puerto Rico to have the choice.
Support the Atlanta community and our country’s forests by vocally standing against Atlanta Police Foundation’s “police training facility” i.e. Cop City.
End unconditional transfers of weapons and military funding to the Israeli government and any government engaged in violations of U.S. and international law.

Championed by Gen-Z for Change

Fight to make abortion safe, legal, and accessible across the country.
- Certify and publish the Equal Rights Amendment, which would enshrine sex equality in the Constitution, and provide a strong, permanent legal tool to challenge all restrictions on abortion.
- Champion the repeal of the Hyde amendment and people’s ability to access abortion care regardless of their income or zip code.
- Protect and provide mifepristone and other reproductive related drugs to the public.
- Eliminate barriers that prevent young people from accessing abortions, including parental consent requirements and waiting periods, and expand access to abortion at college campus health centers.
Support the Menstrual Equity for All Act and expand access to menstrual hygiene products to all regardless of income or zip code.
Champion the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act and the Youth Access to Sexual Health Services Act to support comprehensive, queer-inclusive sex education and sexual healthcare access for all young people.
Fight to expand access to birth control and emergency contraception, including providing over-the-counter birth control covered by insurance and without age restriction.

Championed by Young Feminist Party

Urge Congress to pass legislation to reform labor law, including:
- Instating punitive damages for all unfair labor practices.
- Establishing and expanding whistleblower protections for managers who refuse to participate in union-busting.
- Establishing minority bargaining orders as penalties for unfair labor practices, as the most effective deterrent to union-busting.
- Expanding the NLRA to include agricultural and domestic workers, to guarantee the right to organize to these workers and to remedy the historic racism embedded in labor law.
- Establishing the classification of “dependent contractors” rather than independent contractors to ensure that misclassified workers have the right to organize.
- Providing permanent paid family and medical leave and paid sick days for all workers.
- Raising the minimum wage to at least $20/hour for all workers.
Bar federal contractors from engaging in union busting tactics, while mandating they embrace more equitable pay structures.
Reestablish President Obama’s National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force to enforce equal pay laws and close the wage gap.
Lead a massive overhaul of our healthcare system by:
- Championing Medicare for All.
- Supporting the Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act to allow the government to manufacture generic versions of drugs and dramatically lower prescription drug prices.
Support a just transition for workers in industries like coal, oil and gas, defense technologies, the prison industrial complex, and other unsustainable sectors.
Work with Congress to fix our broken tax system by:
- Returning to FDR’s income tax, ensuring that the top 1% pay a 90% federal marginal tax rate instead of the current 37%.
- Strengthening estate taxes and end special tax breaks for investment income.
- Substantially raising the corporate tax rate.
- Permanently expanding the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit.

Championed by Inside Organizer School

Push for major changes to federal sentencing practices, including:
- Supporting the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act, which would abolish federal capital punishment.
  - Commuting the sentences of those on death row federally to a lesser sentence (or pardoning when appropriate).
- Pushing to end the use of mandatory minimum sentencing federally.
- Barring federal prosecutors from seeking LWOP, or sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
End the era of mass incarceration by:
- Instructing the DEA to reschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act, and champion legislation to legalize marijuana, decriminalize drugs, and respond to addiction with treatment rather than punishment.
  - Urging states to decriminalize cannabis-related offenses that would apply not just proactively, but retroactively, liberating over 40,000 Americans from and still incarcerated for cannabis-related offenses, despite its legalization in numerous states.
- Encouraging states and localities to reallocate police budgets to invest in social services and alternatives to incarceration including restorative justice and diversion programs.
  - Supporting the Reverse Mass Incarceration Act to incentivize states to reduce their prison populations and invest in their communities.
- Taking urgent action to clear the federal backlog of over 16,000 clemency petitions and grant clemency to the tens of thousands incarcerated for nonviolent, drug-related offenses.
Address the broken juvenile justice system by:
- Empowering youth voices in policy-making around criminal justice reform.
- Establishing a White House Youth Justice Advisory Council (WHYJAC), leveraging the framework of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council initiated with Executive Order 14008.
  - Populating WHYJAC with youth from the over 1,150 Teen Court programs nationwide, recognizing their unparalleled position to advise juvenile justice policy.

Championed by Trespass Project

Support free tuition for community colleges, public universities and vocational schools for all students, regardless of income, citizenship status or criminal record.
Provide economic relief and stimulate the economy by addressing the student debt crisis and canceling the entirety of student loan debt.
Urge congress to pass a Green New Deal for Public Schools and champion climate curriculum in schools across the country.
- Free school meals for all students K-12.
Work to end the school-to-prison pipeline by:
- Directing federal funds to improve and advance educational programs including universal pre-k, after-school programming, universal free school meals, mental health resources, and community-based youth diversion programs.
- Supporting The Counseling not Criminalization in Schools Act to prohibit federal funding for police in schools.
- Instructing the Department of Education to work with schools to create restorative justice programs that prioritize school well-being over exclusion and punishment.
Protect and promote diverse, equitable and inclusive learning environments in schools and universities by:
- Supporting the Books Save Lives Act to ensure that children have access to a wide range of educational and representative literature and classify the banning of books as a federal violation.
- Incentivizing schools and universities all across the country to incorporate the often overlooked histories and experiences of marginalized peoples, including Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples into educational curriculums.
- Embrace and enforce the Obama-Era understanding of Title IX, which prohibits public schools from discriminating against LGBTQ+ students.
Support the Rebuild America’s Schools Act so that students can have access to modern and safe learning environments.

Championed by Ohio Youth Alliance

Establish an Interagency Tenants’ Rights Task Force, to:
- Build and manage a national landlord registry and eviction database for all properties receiving federal subsidies, mortgages backed by one of the GSEs or receiving federal financing or rental subsidies.
- Enforce tenant protections by taking action to remove federal funding from the most egregious evictors and/or tenants’ rights violators, and redirect them to:
Establish a Federal Office of Tenant Protections at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to:
- Recognize tenants as consumers of a financial product and take decisive action to protect tenants from predatory corporate landlords including establishing a national landlord registry for all landlords.
- Hold corporate landlords accountable and recover damages for tenants.
- Inform tenants of their rights as consumers.
Condition all federal subsidies, mortgages backed by one of the GSE’s or receiving federal financing or rental subsidies on the following tenant protections:
- Rent Control: Limit rent increases to 1.5 times the Consumer Price Index or 3%, whichever is lower.
- National Right to Lease Renewal: Prohibit evictions without good cause, ensuring every tenant has the right to a lease renewal. Good cause is defined as serious and repeated lease violations provable in a court of law.
- Tenant Opportunity to Purchase: If a landlord should choose to sell a property, tenants have the right to purchase the property before it is available to the public market.
- Tenant Right to Organize: Tenants have the right to form tenants’ unions free from fear of retaliation from the landlord or managing agent. Ownership and management representatives must not interfere with the creation or actions of tenant organizations.
- Tenant Right to Habitability: Tenants have the right to housing that meets their basic needs. Should a landlord refuse to make necessary repairs, tenants’ must have the right to “repair and deduct” from the rent.
Declare a national housing emergency.
Work with Congress to:
- Designate funds towards creating millions of permanently affordable, green homes in the form of public housing, community land trusts, and limited equity cooperatives.
- Ban all utility shutoffs, and provide relief for utility debt (water, electricity, gas, internet).
- Establish universal just cause eviction protections and right to counsel.
- Expand access to subsidized, affordable housing for mixed-status families, immigrants, formerly incarcerated individuals, and other groups disproportionately impacted by housing inequality.

Championed by Youth Alliance for Housing

Certify and publish the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender-identity, and sexuality in the U.S. Constitution, and provide a strong, permanent legal tool to challenge attacks on queer and transgender youth, abortion-seekers, and all young people marginalized by their gender or sexuality.
Champion the Equality Act, which would expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity in public accommodations and any programs receiving federal funding.
Rescind Betsy DeVos’s dangerous Title IX rules and immediately issue new guidance that protects, supports, and advocates for survivors of sexual violence, and fosters safe, affirming environments for transgender students.
Support the Transgender Bill of Rights, which would protect the rights and freedoms of transgender Americans.
Authorize the construction of gender-affirming care clinics on federal land in states where transgender healthcare is increasingly restricted.
Support the Do No Harm Act, which would clarify that federal protections on religious freedoms do not permit or protect discrimination of any sort.
Build on past executive action and support the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act, which would effectively ban conversion therapy nationwide.
Support the Books Save Lives Act to combat book bans and secure a healthy and inclusive education for students.
Prioritize investigation of LGBTQ+ discrimination in public schools via the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Championed by Young Feminist Party

What is the Youth Agenda?

A bold, progressive roadmap that highlights the need for immediate action to combat the issues of our time and lays out a better world for our and future generations of young people. This is a call to action and a reminder for any politician that they need to show up for us if they want us to show up for them.