Five things Slate for Cambridge can change after being voted into City Council on Nov. 3
Slate for Cambridge, the young, justice-oriented group of Cantabrigians running for public office, deserves our righteous applause and top votes in the upcoming election.
The slate of candidates includes Mariko Davidson, Nadeem Mazen, John Sanzone and Romaine Waite for City Council and Jake Crutchfield for School Committee. It wants to wipe the status quo aside and address pressing issues with an urgency we desperately need. There are a number of reasons we should be giving new candidates a hard look, instead of reflexively voting in familiar names.
Cambridge has climate change on the back burner. Our current council won’t demand multinational developers (or Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) go net zero on greenhouse gases, and summarily rejected our own development department’s goals of protected bike lanes on major streets. Despite engineer and scientist confirmation that climate change will cause the Charles River and Amelia Earhart dams to be breached, with hundreds of millions of dollars of damage resulting (and our most disadvantaged neighbors bearing the brunt of this suffering), we’ve collectively exercised more political will debating corporate development than organizing regional protection and resilience plans. Slate for Cambridge members, on the other hand, have revived abandoned plans for transit improvement and demanded the city catch up to Boston in implementing protected intersections and Vision Zero.
The current City Council (with the exception of councillor Mazen) have green-lighted Cambridge police militarization, ignoring a a stockpile of assault rifles, a new BearCat armored vehicle, sniper teams and a perpetually increasing police budget, despite plummeting crime rates. Mazen has been the only strong critic of a military police, despite obvious evidence from Los Angeles, Ferguson, Mo., and New Orleans that this disproportionately endangers low-income and minority residents.
Much of the current political establishment has claimed office for an unhealthy amount of time – up to a quarter-century! Slate for Cambridge promises self-imposed term limits. A healthy democracy relies on committed community members cycling in and out of public service, not monopolized representation.
The current council has signed off on national corporate development fantasies, ignoring the objective academic truth that Cambridge alone cannot meet the housing demands of the entire region. Slate for Cambridge has advocated for development that respects the wishes of local residents and promises to unleash fewer damaging real estate externalities. Even John Sanzone, a strong pro-development candidate, acknowledges that the current council has done significant disrespect to neighborhoods with little benefit to housing costs.
This isn’t to say that the current council hasn’t worked hard for Cambridge and doesn’t care about this city – it is only to say that we’ve become complacent and satisfied by the status quo. Corporate real estate donations guarantee incumbent councillors a hefty campaign war chest, meaning there is little pressure on incumbents to make change in arenas of desperation. Slate for Cambridge is rejecting corporate real estate donations, not because its members don’t support and believe in the role development will play in our future, or the significant benefits of an expanded tax base, but because they believe it is unethical to take thousands of dollars from businesses interests and subsequently vote on their projects.
Slate for Cambridge deserves a strong look. Email them, call them, Facebook them – ask them why they’re worth your vote.
Joseph Poirier has has been a political volunteer for all of the slate candidates and has donated to all or most of their campaigns.
They’re nice kids but they aren’t qualified. Nadeem is the only one that deserves a top vote. In my opinion, other challengers are more qualified.
Anyone who fails to understand that the sole purpose of this slate is to create “feeder votes” for Nadeem Mazen is either incredibly naïve or simply does not understand Proportional Representation voting. Mazen recruits a bunch of twenty somethings with little history of engagement in the civic life of Cambridge (just like their leader) and encourages them all to run for City Council with him. He schools them in campaign technology and they all agree to promote each other to their circle of friends. What a cool idea! What he fails to tell them and their earnest young followers is that while they are blogging away at how they can join together and change the world, he is cultivating a national fundraising network amassing record amounts of campaign contributions from outside of Cambridge and Massachusetts. Not a single one of the slate members will break 300 votes in next month’s election. Not so their leader, with upwards of $50,000 raised in this election cycle Mazen can be expected to exponentially outperform his fellow slate mates who only have the equivalent of “bake sale” money to spend on their campaigns. Why didn’t Mazen include other progressives on his slate like Mike Connolly, Dennis Carlone and Jan Devereaux? Easy, because they are serious candidates who will compete with him for the transfers from his young band of followers. Pay close attention. This is machine politics for the social media age. Remember the ward bosses of Tamany Hall? They had nothing on the organizer of this slate.
@urbandesign10, you should call the other slate candidates and have candid conversations with them. They all realize their chances of winning are slim and they are all willing to distribute their votes to Mazen. That is the express purpose of a Slate. Like-minded candidates work together to help keep representation on council that they believe in.
There is no evil conspiracy here or some grand deception. All of Slate for Cambridge members actually believe in changing local politics, which is why they are willing to work hard, lose, and have their votes diverted to someone they believe in.
You have just turned genuine youth engagement in government into a cynical, evil, money-grabbing scheme. That’s not encouraging to a whole new generation of people who care about others and are working to make their community a better place.
You should also call Connolly, Carlone, and Devereux and ask them why they aren’t on the Slate for Cambridge. You might learn something.
urbandesign10 hits the nail on the head here, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling the other “progressives” s/he mentioned “serious candidates”.
This so called “Hashtag Slate” is Councillor Mazen’s shield to protect his own seat. There is ZERO chance that any of his buddies make the top 9, but it’s all but guaranteed that he will eat up their votes when it comes to the transfers.
@Joseph Poirier
“That is the express purpose of a Slate.”
No. It really isn’t. The purpose of a political slate is to elect ALL its members so they can legislate together under the same policy umbrella. If they aren’t serious about winning, which you really make it seem that they are not (and you claim to be working for them), then why are they wasting our time?
@JosephAiello, they are indeed serious about winning so if I mischaracterized them as such then I apologize. I should have written that they would like very much to win but understand that it is unlikely. I would add that it is not very respectful to call their campaigning ‘wasting our time’.
We will have to agree to disagree about the purpose of a slate under PR.
I have also not claimed to be working for the Slate. I have volunteered some time and made donations, as Cambridge Day has noted.