I am a senior technical writer born, raised, and living in Smithfield, RI. I attended public schools K through 12, delivered newspapers, played soccer, and graduated Smithfield High School with honors. When I'm off work, I enjoy growing vegetables, visiting family and friends, and playing with my Dad's dog Scamp.

In my career, I have worked for over a dozen corporations, learning how to grow my skills, provide value, make change, and get work done. I've provided telephone technical support, project management, software quality assurance testing, system administration, video production, and process design and improvement. Today, I write policies, standards, processes, procedures, and guidelines for my team and department.

Collaboration -- working with others to define problems, set goals, design solutions, and deliver results -- is the skill I have practiced the most. It's one of the many skills I am eager to put to work for all of us. With your support, I'll be the first District 22 State Senator in a long time who will listen to you, and collaborate with you, to build a future that works for everyone.

I am ready to serve Smithfield, Lincoln, and North Providence as our State Senator, and I ask for your vote in the Democratic Primary on Primary Day, September 13th.

Melanie DuPont:
A kind, skilled, successful collaborator who is ready to transform the way your State House works for you.

Platform

Healthcare
for All

Enact Medicare-for-All style universal healthcare
Ensure every RI resident has mental, dental, hearing, and vision care
Take on big pharma to make prescription drugs affordable
Protect reproductive freedom

Quality Education

Tax the rich to fully fund our public schools
Create smaller class sizes
Improve our school buildings
Ensure that all public school teachers earn at least $60,000 each year, and have a budget that fully funds supplies

Equal
Justice

Legalize cannabis ✓
End mass incarceration
End cash bail
Ban for-profit prisons
Ensure police accountability
Invest funding in mental health services and drug-overdose prevention
End family separations
Provide drivers’ licenses to undocumented Rhode Islanders

Pandemic Protection

Vaccine requirement to enter public spaces including restaurants, bars, and stadiums (except for people with valid medical or religious reasons not to get vaccinated)
Implement a statewide mask mandate in public spaces
Expand paid sick leave

Fair
Economy

Help small businesses recover from the pandemic
Pass a $19 per hour minimum wage ($39,520 annually)
End tax breaks for big corporations

Gun

Safety

Reduce magazine capacity
Regulate assault weapons
Remove state sales tax from safe-storage equipment
21+ to purchase long guns and ammo
Prohibit long guns in public

Green New Deal

Take on the fossil fuel industry to ensure clean air, clean water, and clean energy for all
Achieve 100% clean electricity by 2028 and net zero emissions by 2040 (first in the country)
Shut down corporate polluters in frontline communities, with a just transition for workers
Preserve our natural resources, eliminate clearcutting, expand regenerative agriculture, and guarantee public access to our shoreline
Create thousands of good union jobs
Expand public transportation, electrify all buses, and make the bus free

Democracy for All

End the influence of corporate lobbyist money
Enact public campaign financing
Make election days statewide holidays
Repeal the voter ID law

Reproductive Autonomy

Enhance and protect our right to determine for ourselves whether and when we will become pregnant, gestate, abort, or attempt to give birth
Repel attempts by the state and fed to dictate our family size to us

Housing
for All

Ensure that all working families in Rhode Island can afford housing
Extend the eviction moratorium throughout the pandemic
Implement a utility-shutoff moratorium throughout the pandemic
Build 10,000 green affordable homes for working families
Implement statewide rent control to ensure that rent increases do not exceed 4% annually