Thompson Seeking To Unseat Nisly
September 12, 2020 at 2:18 a.m.
Thompson Seeking To Unseat Nisly
By Amanda [email protected]
Thompson, 55, owns a concrete contracting business in North Webster with her husband, Mike. She has six children and five grandchildren, with a sixth on the way soon.
“My slogan is I’m running like a mother and what I mean by that is mothers find what their children need, mothers find the energy, they find the resources, they find the courage to do what has to be done, and that is what I’m willing to do in Indianapolis,” she said.
Thompson founded and operates the nonprofit organization Whitewater Community Services that helps families and children connect with resources to better their situation. Her work through Whitewater – and hearing the stories from families in need – is what led her to run against Nisly.
“The needs of our families are so important that literally the lives of children hang in the balance,” Thompson said. “So when I took a look at our current representation, I found that for six years we have had a representative, and although he’s a very nice man, he has not authored any legislation that was actually beneficial to families in meeting the needs that I knew existed. When I did the research, I found 23 pieces of legislation that he had written and zero had made it out of the committee, so I came away from that research and felt unrepresented as a constituent in District 22.”
Thompson takes a starkly different stance on key issues in comparison to Nisly. Nisly has proposed legislation that would charge doctors with murder if they perform abortions.
Thompson believes women should be able to choose what they do with their bodies, however, she said the ideal number of abortions would “obviously be zero.”
“I think that the biggest argument that we have is that we don’t like abortion being used as birth control,” she said. “Forty-four percent of pregnancies in the United States are unintended; in Indiana, it’s 49%.”
Her plan to help get abortions down to zero isn’t to make them illegal, but rather make access to birth control easier.
“There is legislation sitting in Indianapolis right now, House Bill 1141, that will make Indiana the 15th state to allow women to get birth control over the counter at their local CVS and to get it for one year at a time,” she said. “This would require no doctor’s appointments for moms, no time off work, no ‘oh my gosh I’ve run out, how do I get an appointment with my doctor.’ Nobody dances into an abortion clinic, and nobody dances out. The ideal number is zero, that is the goal. But we’ve tried for 50 years to make it illegal, and we’ve wasted a lot of dollars that could have been spent on public health funding. We’re fighting a symptom instead of the root, and the root is unintended pregnancy.”
Getting to the root of the issues is what Thompson intends on doing if elected, starting with public education and how it’s funded. Thompson said she can no longer tolerate teachers in Indiana public schools feeling disrespected and unsupported – starting with their pay.
“They’re not even paid well enough to be teachers, and now we’re asking them to put on 18 other hats,” Thompson said.
Figuring out where to funnel those education dollars is something high on her priority list. Another thing Thompson points out in her campaign is that Indiana is one of only eight states that still charge textbook fees. As a mother herself who has lived through both feast and famine, she said she can remember school registration days and worrying about all the expenses that came along with it.
“It can be a shame-inducing moment for a lot of parents,” she said, noting that while a lot of textbooks are now used on iPads in schools, the textbook companies are “still getting paid from somewhere, and parents from Indiana are still writing checks. Public education is public education. Everyone needs to have an opportunity for a good, public education.”
She believes everything is connected and it starts with the children and families. Expanding the Head Start program, offering private business owners with empty buildings tax incentives to open more early childhood care centers in them, and talking with contractors to rehab or repurpose spaces to create affordable housing are all on her to-do list. She has ideas, she said, and she has experience in trying them out to see if they’ll succeed.
Thompson also takes up with issues surrounding equal rights for everybody, including standing up to discrimination against members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Equal is equal,” Thompson said. “If this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, then we need to get braver about letting people be free. What I am for is equality and safety. They need protection. We all do. With the families that I’ve met and my own family included, I have noticed and felt the pain associated with injustice and inequality.”
She also thinks cannabis should be legal in Indiana – like it is in literally every surrounding state that touches Indiana’s borders.
She cites the medicinal benefits to patients – and particularly veterans with PTSD – who use cannabis, and she also points to crowded jails and courtrooms filled by people who are criminally charged with possession of it.
“Indiana will not be the first state to legalize. We can learn. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “But I also don’t feel like we need to be the last state.”
Thompson said she believes legalizing cannabis would help law enforcement be able to focus their time and energy on the more pressing needs of communities.
“I think that it’s time for the people of District 22 to have a representative that has proven she cares and can actually get something done,” Thompson said. “I have learned to communicate in effective ways. I have learned how to listen to what is being said and to what is not being said. I will be relentless in pursuing the goals that I think we all have. Those goals being to be safe, healthy and to have opportunity for ourselves and for our children, and I won’t give up. Basic needs are basic, foundational. We cannot afford to ignore these issues any longer.”
Thompson, 55, owns a concrete contracting business in North Webster with her husband, Mike. She has six children and five grandchildren, with a sixth on the way soon.
“My slogan is I’m running like a mother and what I mean by that is mothers find what their children need, mothers find the energy, they find the resources, they find the courage to do what has to be done, and that is what I’m willing to do in Indianapolis,” she said.
Thompson founded and operates the nonprofit organization Whitewater Community Services that helps families and children connect with resources to better their situation. Her work through Whitewater – and hearing the stories from families in need – is what led her to run against Nisly.
“The needs of our families are so important that literally the lives of children hang in the balance,” Thompson said. “So when I took a look at our current representation, I found that for six years we have had a representative, and although he’s a very nice man, he has not authored any legislation that was actually beneficial to families in meeting the needs that I knew existed. When I did the research, I found 23 pieces of legislation that he had written and zero had made it out of the committee, so I came away from that research and felt unrepresented as a constituent in District 22.”
Thompson takes a starkly different stance on key issues in comparison to Nisly. Nisly has proposed legislation that would charge doctors with murder if they perform abortions.
Thompson believes women should be able to choose what they do with their bodies, however, she said the ideal number of abortions would “obviously be zero.”
“I think that the biggest argument that we have is that we don’t like abortion being used as birth control,” she said. “Forty-four percent of pregnancies in the United States are unintended; in Indiana, it’s 49%.”
Her plan to help get abortions down to zero isn’t to make them illegal, but rather make access to birth control easier.
“There is legislation sitting in Indianapolis right now, House Bill 1141, that will make Indiana the 15th state to allow women to get birth control over the counter at their local CVS and to get it for one year at a time,” she said. “This would require no doctor’s appointments for moms, no time off work, no ‘oh my gosh I’ve run out, how do I get an appointment with my doctor.’ Nobody dances into an abortion clinic, and nobody dances out. The ideal number is zero, that is the goal. But we’ve tried for 50 years to make it illegal, and we’ve wasted a lot of dollars that could have been spent on public health funding. We’re fighting a symptom instead of the root, and the root is unintended pregnancy.”
Getting to the root of the issues is what Thompson intends on doing if elected, starting with public education and how it’s funded. Thompson said she can no longer tolerate teachers in Indiana public schools feeling disrespected and unsupported – starting with their pay.
“They’re not even paid well enough to be teachers, and now we’re asking them to put on 18 other hats,” Thompson said.
Figuring out where to funnel those education dollars is something high on her priority list. Another thing Thompson points out in her campaign is that Indiana is one of only eight states that still charge textbook fees. As a mother herself who has lived through both feast and famine, she said she can remember school registration days and worrying about all the expenses that came along with it.
“It can be a shame-inducing moment for a lot of parents,” she said, noting that while a lot of textbooks are now used on iPads in schools, the textbook companies are “still getting paid from somewhere, and parents from Indiana are still writing checks. Public education is public education. Everyone needs to have an opportunity for a good, public education.”
She believes everything is connected and it starts with the children and families. Expanding the Head Start program, offering private business owners with empty buildings tax incentives to open more early childhood care centers in them, and talking with contractors to rehab or repurpose spaces to create affordable housing are all on her to-do list. She has ideas, she said, and she has experience in trying them out to see if they’ll succeed.
Thompson also takes up with issues surrounding equal rights for everybody, including standing up to discrimination against members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Equal is equal,” Thompson said. “If this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, then we need to get braver about letting people be free. What I am for is equality and safety. They need protection. We all do. With the families that I’ve met and my own family included, I have noticed and felt the pain associated with injustice and inequality.”
She also thinks cannabis should be legal in Indiana – like it is in literally every surrounding state that touches Indiana’s borders.
She cites the medicinal benefits to patients – and particularly veterans with PTSD – who use cannabis, and she also points to crowded jails and courtrooms filled by people who are criminally charged with possession of it.
“Indiana will not be the first state to legalize. We can learn. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “But I also don’t feel like we need to be the last state.”
Thompson said she believes legalizing cannabis would help law enforcement be able to focus their time and energy on the more pressing needs of communities.
“I think that it’s time for the people of District 22 to have a representative that has proven she cares and can actually get something done,” Thompson said. “I have learned to communicate in effective ways. I have learned how to listen to what is being said and to what is not being said. I will be relentless in pursuing the goals that I think we all have. Those goals being to be safe, healthy and to have opportunity for ourselves and for our children, and I won’t give up. Basic needs are basic, foundational. We cannot afford to ignore these issues any longer.”
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