The politics of hope

As long as we're coming clean with early picks, let me say I strongly support Marc Stier for City Council At Large. It's not just because I've enjoyed his lengthy chewy blog posts, but because I've been able to see him in action on the Neighborhood Networks Steering Committee (and on several critical early subcommittees), and he's one of the most impressive folks working in the political and activist realms right now, and extremely dedicated to the principles he propounds. He seems to work 36 hours in a day, and yet still bring a sense of humor to difficult discussions, and all of those things mean that causes in which he is involved simply make progress faster than they would without him.

Marc seems always to be incredibly well informed on every issue facing the city (he picks the brains of the experts and seems to take in and synthesize what they say), he knows local politics well enough to be a good judge of where pressure can be applied and change can be started, and he is a good speaker capable of changing people's minds and pulling together coalitions of people who might not have thought that they had interests in common. Sounds a lot like a real leader, no?, and he's a true progressive trouble-maker as well, extremely unlikely to suffer ideal-rot once in office. Anyway, if you want to know his stances, a bunch of issues are addressed here, but if you really want a good overall sense of the man and his vision, it's worth investing the 7-8 minutes to watch this video (currently the lower of two on that page) from his speech at this summer's NN conference.

There are several other strong progressive candidates this year, so there's room for quite some excitement (and need for volunteers!) on many fronts; I hope to give space to some others as events or announcements merit. I'm unlikely to stump continuously for Marc in this space, but I do intend to work for his campaign, so I wanted to make my plug now and encourage others to consider giving some time and energy to him. For that matter, set aside a little time just to find out who's running in your District Council races, as well as to get a sense of the field of At-Large candidates (see some introduction here). These are races that get a fraction of the votes that the mayoral primary attracts, and yet City Council can have a huge effect on the future course of our city on many fronts. This is a good year to work (and vote!) for positive change.