I hadn't understood yet that in the US people had a very different relationship with war. I imagined our warplanes zooming menacingly over foreign skies. I remember struggling to understand why my new country would want to attack and invade another country. Whether it was Napoleon or Hitler or the war in Chechnya, even at a young age I understood war as being dangerous, as being wrong.

In Russia, historically, war meant you were in danger. Coming from Russia I had a very different relationship with war than my classmates. Shortly thereafter I remember my parents telling me that the US invaded Afghanistan. While everyone else is my class seemed ok, I was already imagining that this was the beginning of WW3. Once I saw what was happening I started crying so hard I had to be taken out of my class. Our sixths grade teachers tuned all the tv's to the news. The first major event that I recall vividly was 9/11, I was eleven years old. These examples are just some of the many ways in which we can incentivize characteristics, principles and, most importantly, actions that align public interest with the self-interest of politicians. Policies like term limits will remove the motivation that most politicians have to hold on to their seats permanently. Policies that promote transparency by allowing complex legislative language to be easily accessible to the average reader will make it harder for politicians to misdirect their constituents. Policies that promote voting, for example, by giving everyone who votes a $20 dollar check, would incentivize broad participation and thereby force politicians to appeal to all people and not just small, well-resourced communities. We just have to build a coalition that can make this happen.įull public financing of elections would make it impossible to rely on corporate money, lobbyist money, and special interest money to finance one’s campaign thereby removing the largest incentive for duplicity and double-dealing. We already have the tools and insight to create such an environment. I envision a world where even the most self-obsessed politicians will still do the right thing because it’s the right thing for their careers. Today’s politics rewards misdirection, duplicity, disregard for others, and worse! We need to build a world where truth telling, empathy, vulnerability, integrity, perseverance and other such characteristics and principles which lead to better policy outcomes are rewarded and not punished by the electorate. I want to help create political systems that will make this question irrelevant. We are building a movement with the long-term goal of shifting the political and policymaking outcomes in the Capital Region for years to come. Our vision is to build more than just a campaign. With this campaign, we hope to embody that same energy and use it to put an end to the inequity and injustice that have crept into our society and our urgent fight against climate change. We live in a special country where a socialist, a bartender and a nurse can become the biggest change makers of the past several decades. Whether I'm tending to our community garden, volunteering at Honest Weight Food Co-Op or attending a protest to shut down a polluting factory, the Capital Region is my home, my community, my people. I have found belonging in the Capital Region.

My path was filled with contradiction, diversity and a search for belonging.

I'm an immigrant, a nonprofit immigration attorney and a very proud fiancé.īefore I came to the Capital Region after finishing my sophomore year of high school, I had already lived in Russia, Japan, Germany, Alabama and Tennessee.

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