Sacramento, CA, April 8, 2019 –  The Building the California Dream Alliance –  a broad coalition of progressive organizations — today announced an ambitious agenda to uplift families and expand opportunities for all Californians to take part in the California Dream.  The Alliance priorities build upon Governor Newsom’s “California for All” agenda and unite more than 60 organizations behind a bold, achievable, and progressive vision for the Golden State.

The legislation endorsed by the Alliance today promotes broadly shared prosperity and economic security, educational and good job opportunities, a clean environment and a healthy planet, stable housing opportunities, racial justice, community safety, quality healthcare for all, responsive and democratic government, and a strong safety net to ensure the well being of all Californians regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, disability, health status or age.

The Alliance identified the following as top, “Dream Builder” priorities for the 2019 legislative session:

  • SB 136 (Wiener) Fights mass incarceration by repealing an ineffective and unnecessary sentencing enhancement for people with a prior prison conviction.
  • AB 362 (Eggman) Allows the City and County of San Francisco to authorize programs where adults would use controlled substances to prevent and treat drug overdose and assist participants in entering drug treatment, housing, and other needed services.
  • AB 1215 (Ting) Prohibits the dangerous and intrusive use of face surveillance or biometric data collection in body cameras.
  • AB 901 (Gipson) Limits the use of so-called “voluntary probation,” a practice that disproportionately labels Black and Latinx youth as “at-risk” and assigns probation officers to students for behavior including being late to school or poor grades.
  • SB 321 (Mitchell) Ensures that families would experience no break in child care services as they transition between the three CalWORKs child care stages.
  • AB 378 (Limon) Gives family child care providers the right to collectively bargain with the state so they can negotiate for improvements that impact their work and the families they serve.
  • SB 458 (Durazo) Protects pregnant mothers, infants, and young children from the brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos by banning its use.
  • AB 508 (Chu) Improves the State Water Resource Control Board’s process for ordering drinking water consolidations and extensions of service to disadvantaged communities reliant on domestic wells.
  • SB 493 (Jackson) Protects students from sex-based discrimination, including sexual harassment and violence, at California’s public higher education campuses.
  • AB 1611 (Chiu) Prohibits surprise bills from “out-of-network” ERs, and caps prices to bring down health costs.
  • AB 731 (Kalra) Helps workers and employers negotiate better health insurance rates, potentially saving billions, and identifying underlying cost drivers.
  • AB 36/ AB 1482/AB 1481 (Bloom/ Chiu/ Bonta) The Keep Families Home bill package would alleviate the hardship, displacement, and homelessness being caused by out-of-control rent increases, by placing a cap on allowable annual rent increases, expanding the ability of local jurisdictions to stabilize rents, and protecting renters from unfair evictions.
  • AB 4/ SB 29 (Bonta/ Durazo) Eliminates barriers to accessing Medi-Cal based on immigration status.
  • AB 1593 (Reyes) Expands the California Earned Income Tax Credit (CalEITC) to include all working Californians who file taxes and are income eligible.
  • AB 376 (Stone) Establishes the California Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights, ensuring individuals with student loan debt have reliable information and meaningful access to repayment and forgiveness programs.
  • SB 145 (Wiener) Aligns sex offender registration requirements to address an inequity in existing law that disproportionately affects LGBTQ youth.
  • SB 201 (Wiener) Protects children born with natural variations in their sex characteristics (often called intersex) from harmful, elective “normalizing” procedures until they can provide informed consent.
  • AB 392 (Weber) Updates California law to make sure all California police officers are trained to de-escalate and use deadly force only when absolutely necessary to protect from immediate harm.
  • SB 516 (Skinner) Moves the presentation of evidence for gang enhancement to after a conviction, to prohibit prosecutors from prejudicing juries.
  • SB 144 (Mitchell) Eliminates burdensome fees counties charge people who come into contact with the criminal justice system.
  • AB 1211 (Reyes) Allows formerly incarcerated people to receive EMT licenses, a prerequisite to working as a firefighter.
  • ACA 6 (McCarty) This ballot measure would give voters the opportunity to amend the state constitution to restore the right to vote for Californians who are on parole.
  • SB 139 (Allen) Requires counties with more than 250,000 residents to establish an independent redistricting commission, ensuring a more fair, nonpartisan system for drawing the lines of county supervisorial districts.
  • AB 5 (Gonzalez) Codifies into state law the Dynamex Operations West, Inc vs. the Superior Court of Los Angeles (2018) court decision to prevent misclassification of employees as independent contractors.
  • AB 51 (Gonzalez) Prevents employers from forcing employees to sign away their rights and forcing arbitration for cases of sexual harassment and other misconduct.
  • AB 1066 (Gonzalez) Provides financial protections for workers fighting for better working conditions by permitting striking or locked out workers to collect unemployment insurance.

ACLU of California Center for Advocacy & Policy, ACCE, Advancement Project, Alliance for Boys and Men of Color (ABMoC), Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Black Women for Wellness, Breast Cancer Prevention Partner, California Budget & Policy Center, California Calls, California Low Income Consumers Coalition, California Domestic Workers Coalition, California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA), California Environmental Justice Alliance, California Food & Farming Network , California Labor Federation, California Immigrant Policy Center, California League of Conservation Voters, California NOW, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, California Reinvestment Coalition, Child Care Law Center, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Consumer Attorneys of California, Council on American-Islamic Relations, California Chapter (CAIR-CA), Courage Campaign, Disability Rights California, Drug Policy Alliance, EarthJustice, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Environment California, Equality California, Equal Rights Advocates, Friends Committee on Legislation of California, Health Access, Indivisible, Latino Coalition For A Healthy California, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, Lutheran office of Public Policy, MALDEF, Mobilize the Immigrant Vote, Mujeres Unidas, NARAL California, NextGen California, PICO California, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of CA, PolicyLink, Progressive Era Project (PEP), Public Advocates, SEIU California, Sierra Club California, UFCW, Voices for Progress, Western Center on Law & Poverty