From The Ashes Of Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Rises An Army Of Candidates [View all]

[Donkees]

Rob Curry-Smithson teaches U.S. history at a public high school in Manhattan, but when Sanders put out a call for supporters to step up and run for local office, he began picturing a different kind of public service. Today, he identifies as a hardcore “Berniecrat” running for a seat in the New York State Assembly.

“As a government employee, I’m impacted by the state’s political decisions more than most people,” he told ThinkProgress. “I have seen some of the problems at the state level with Common Core and the charter school model, and I want to fight for a community model that respects parent and teacher voices in the schools. I also think it’s reprehensible what’s happened to the funding of our city and state university system. There was a time we had free education, and [as a member of the Assembly] I could try bring that back.”

Curry-Smithson, who began gathering signatures to get on the ballot a few weeks ago, said his resolve to run was solidified after witnessing the botched primary election in his district in April. More than 120,000 Brooklyn voters were improperly purged from the “rolls, and the purge disproportionately targeted Latino voters. “I was outraged at how our election was handled,” he said. But before he can push for voting rights and education reform, he has to beat a candidate with more funding and local endorsements.

Win or lose, he says, he hopes his bid motivates other young progressives to try their hand at local politics.
“Focused on presidential race is easy, but change happens from the bottom up,” he told ThinkProgress. “I teach my students that Roosevelt was only as good of a president as he was because there were social movements pushing him."

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/06/24/3789786/bernies-candidates/