Leaving Mom’s Basement

Campaign Updates!

Hello everyone! This week’s campaign update is a short one because I have been door-knocking. We finally got some yard signs out there which is very exciting! If you would like a sign, please let me know - especially if you live in the upper highlands area. These coming weeks will be extremely busy as I begin to introduce myself to people for the second and third time. 

This past Wednesday, I spoke early morning with Gary Francis live on WCAP radio about who I am and my campaign. The conversation was casual, and I will always be happy to speak on my platform and the need for a city council which does more for our struggling working class residents.

Building a movement is not easy; it requires a lot of ground work and long conversations with family, friends, and neighbors. This is of course the case with my campaign - so, I ask if you want someone with a bold vision and who is wholly dedicated to being a principled voice for every single family in this city, to please spread the word, or even come out and doorknock with me. This election is only a tiny part of the larger movement, but albeit, I believe, an important part if we can pull off an upset victory.

One stark truth has made itself clear as I have met with members of my community: young people are trapped. Once a right of passage of your early twenties, even a class of people otherwise comfortable and successful like full time, professional, college graduates, cannot find their own place in the city they grew up in. If our single, healthy, educated, well employed neighbors cannot comfortably move out, where does that leave those with children to support, health conditions, uncertain employment, or other challenges? The situation is only worsening, and it’s a policy choice. 

At the risk of going on a book-length tangent — again — about the absolute “failures” (and by failure I mean the successes of neoliberalism/rabid capitalism) of both the Democratic and Republican party which have brought us here, I will be concise in what we need: an approach to housing policy which prioritizes people over profit. This means we must streamline and support the construction of deeply affordable housing units, introduce tenant protection and rent control measures, and dramatically expand and improve public housing offerings. Every single year we delay these measures, we accelerate the suffering of all our residents.

Housing is a right, and we must cease the blaming of other communities for not doing their part. Affordable housing will be a boon to Lowell, while other communities will be left in the dust. If we increase tenant protections, we ensure our community members don’t end up homeless in the first place. If we build beautiful, affordable, multi-unit, multi-use buildings, we will provide work for residents in the trades, increase business opportunities and connectedness, and create space so that our young adults may build a life in the communities they were raised in.

Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! The Occupations Have Got To Go!

For the oppressed, occupation and the constant threat of state-sanctioned violence is the norm. The ghettoization of communities whereby our government corrals poor people into neighborhoods rife with poor housing conditions, and which are disconnected from resources and filled to the brim with surveillance and police presence, is a form of occupation in and of itself. When protests against our nation’s thirst for global death and destruction are met with police brutality, are we not already in a state of occupation?

High-minded liberals, and many so-called ‘progressives’ — a term which means nothing at this point as there is no accountability ー have recently come out with strong words (and not much else!) for the Trump regime’s calling of the national guard into the D.C. metropolitan area. 

Where were these same media organizations and individuals when our students and community members were putting their bodies on the line to protest this nation’s funding and support of a genocide on the Palestinian people? Although this recent move by Trump is certainly an escalation, by how much really? Why do we accept the violence ridden surveillance state facilitated by local police forces, but not by federal soldiers? If someone in your community is killed, does it matter whether it was at the hands of a thug cop or a thug soldier? I think not, but surprisingly, many seem to believe yes - or at least that much is clear in their actions and when they choose to speak out.

This crisis demonstrates Democratic party leadership’s complete disinterest in effective resistance and total focus on clinging to the last vestiges of a rapidly collapsing neoliberal world order. Thus, they offer milquetoast ideas, brand themselves as at least better than the other person, while hardly being such by joining the other side in unanimously increasing funding for our military, militarizing local police, expanding I.C.E, and undermining the development of any movement for a better world.

An analogy which works for me is the good cop, bad cop scenario. In this situation, the bad cop will act overtly aggressive in an attempt to soften one up to be ready to speak to the ‘good’ cop. However, neither of them are on your side and they will both report to the same boss. This is exactly how our “two-party” system is working today. Republicans come in and do obviously evil things and the Democrats do nothing but release disconnected immaterial statements and wait for desperate voters to run back into their arms. As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it: “We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy…and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.”

As many of us look on at DC in horror, we wonder how it has gotten this far and what we can possibly do about it. The fact is that the ideology of state violence is already here, it manifests in different ways and even in our own city. When I.C.E thugs are able to snatch and separate families in our city, with a police force which stands idly by and does not intervene as they should, how far is our city from occupation truthfully? Every year we choose to increase the amount spent on bureaucracy and the police force as opposed to our communities and schools, are we truly that far from occupation? 

If we do not close ranks, similar actions will continue to permeate every inch of America unchecked. Our progressivism must include an understanding of state repression, so we can call it out whenever it manifests. We need to throw our collective weight behind people in power whose analysis is aligned towards growing a movement of resistance that protects our city from infringement on our rights and does not resign itself to hopelessness and blame of the Republican party. We need principled voices at all levels of government. Let us make Lowell an example of what it means to truly care for and protect your residents. Let us vote in a bold vision that will not compromise with those who seek to take our liberties in the name of securing a better life for the few. Let us work together to build a better Lowell!

Reminders