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Wire Insider: Hon. Teresa Mosqueda

Seattle City Council member, Teresa Mosqueda joined us for our first Wire Insider video to discuss the issues she will be fighting for in her new position on the city council. Her priorities include changing the work place culture, ensuring affordable child care, and creating a stable regional health system.

We’re really focused on standing up and fighting for the rights of every worker to know that if they’ve been retaliated against, they’ve been harassed, or if they’ve been assaulted, they know that they have someone to go to who will believe in them. Beyond that, we’re actually interested in changing the culture of our work places so that harassment, intimidation, whether it’s unwanted flirtation to assault, people know that they have somewhere to go and that there will be action and decisive actions taken. People can get counseling and then we can retrain folks. I am not interested in continuing to perpetuate work place cultures that allow people to live in fear, to work in fear, to worry about whether they’re wearing the right thing or whether or not someone is going to comment on their body, or their person. So, I’m interested in changing policy, in changing culture, and making sure that we respond to the #metoo movement and to the “believe women” movement.

In addition to that, I am going to be fighting for affordable childcare for every family, equal pay in the work place, and standing up to make sure that we have a regional health plan because, as you know, a single tweet from our president can cause people to fear going to the doctor, or cause our market to go into chaos. So we need to stand up, fight back, and create a stable health system regionally. And we know that we’ve taken tremendous steps in Washington State. We’ve covered almost 96 percent of kids in our state. We have some of the highest rates of insured people in Washington in recent history. However, undocumented immigrant adults are still not covered. Women are worried about their reproductive justice and access to affordable health care. We’re worried about transgender individuals being able to get the services that they need and the LGBTQ community to be able to have services they need in health clinics as well.

I want to make sure that in Seattle, and more regionally working with King County, that we actually have a regional health plan. Very similar to what you see in San Francisco. Other parts of the nation have also taken this on. We can create that safety net to make sure that every resident has health insurance. It does rely on us to continue to get funding for CHIP, and Medicaid, and have the exchange. But we need that fall back program so that every resident has access to health care and I know we can do it in Seattle and lead the nation again.


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