I have been active in Democratic politics for the last ten years, and in that time I have seen up close how dysfunctional our political system has become - and how out of touch it continues to be with the technological revolution that is fundamentally changing our society on a daily basis.
This isn't news to Kossacks, I know. What Markos and the rest of this community has built at DailyKos is an absolutely valuable model of a new way of doing politics from the bottom-up, grass-roots and net-centric. (That's why Markos is a keynote speaker at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York next Monday May 16th, by the way.)
I've tried to help nurture that change in a lot of ways, from founding a non-profit called MOUSE (Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools & Education) to help New York City kids learn to be their own schools' system administrators, to founding the Personal Democracy Forum as an online magazine and conference for people at the center of the technology-politics nexus.
But now I have decided that it isn't enough to talk about all these amazing new tools and the possibility of opening the system up--I want to show what a difference we can make. So I've decided to become a candidate myself.
New York magazine,
Wired and the
Gothamist have each just published Q&As with me, so I'm not flying under the radar any more.
New York City's Office of the Public Advocate's office is a natural place to start. That's because I have been a public advocate most of my life. And the office's ongoing invisibility is itself a perfect example of what's wrong with our political system.
New York City's greatest neglected resource is the tens of thousands of public advocates who every day volunteer to make their neighborhood, school, block, and city a better place. Yet no city agency does anything to help them connect with each other and with government. I want to change that.
But in running for Public Advocate my hope isn't just to reinvent that one office, it's to begin to remake our politics. I want to end the top-down, intellectually-bankrupt, money-obsessed politicking of the past -- and to start talking up to people and valuing them for something more than the checks they can write.
How? For starters, by taking a whole new approach to building support for my campaign. Even though the law allows contributions up to $4,950, I'm not taking anything over $100. And I'm not holding fundraisers. Instead, I am going to hold "friend-raisers" as way to build a network of similarly civic-minded New Yorkers who are eager for change. (The first one is tomorrow night, in fact, at The Slipper Room, 167 Orchard Street, corner of Stanton Street,from 6:30-8:00 PM.)
That way, people will know that there are no special interests pulling my strings and no special access is being granted to big donors. And instead of spending most of my time chasing money, I'm going to be focused on listening to and learning from everyday residents of New York City. Since NYC's progressive campaign finance system will match every small contribution 4-1, I will definitely have a viable campaign. Why no other politician has ever done this in New York before is just another example of how dysfunctional the Democrats have become.
I also want to bring our government into the 21st Century and tap the full potential of new technologies to make information more accessible, city services more efficient, and our economy more competitive.
There's no way one elected official can solve the problems of 8 million people. But I am convinced that 8 million people working together can solve the problems of one city. This is a model that I believe can be applied to promote transparency and elevate the voices of citizens in city government throughout the country.
I'm also not going to wait until I'm elected to do what the Public Advocate could be doing -- I'm going to start doing it right away. For example, one of my top goals is to make low-cost, high-speed Internet access available to every New Yorker. I want to make sure no one is left behind as we enter the Information Age, and to seize the vast potential of technology to strengthen our connections, our communities and our future. We are not going to wire everyone overnight. But I've got an idea for how we can begin to connect the city's most neglected neighborhoods in the next few months -- without spending one tax dollar.
For years we have been following the same process and getting the same results. I want to change the process so we can begin producing different results -- a more open, efficient, and accountable government and a more responsive, responsible, and vibrant democracy. After all, its your government... isn't it time you had a say in how its run?
I welcome your comments and ideas here and at www.advocatesforrasiej.com.