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The following letter is presented as I submitted it to NYU’s Office of Financial Aid early 2021, seeking a dependency override to apply for aid without my mother: I was told the information I had provided was insufficient and full of holes/contradictions. The life of a person fleeing abuse is often hazy and chaotic because we do not have the luxury of settling down and getting our story straight before we have to run again. I am sorry that the stories I’m telling seem illogical or make no sense, but illegally immigrating to Boston from Mexico at the age of 3, only to start 15 years of abuse at the hands of the woman who is supposed to protect you, and finally escaping by taking advantage of the opportunities education has afforded you, is not exactly the standard story nor does it fit with most people’s understanding of how a life plays out. I had also left out many details because relaying a cohesive narrative of my life so far will take multiple pages and I had assumed a shorter piece that touched on all the necessary points would be appreciated. For example, I had attended 6 different schools by the time I entered middle school. Of course, an adult is going to analyze the circumstances of my childhood and think I made illogical choices, but their mistake would be assuming a child can think about things the way a fully grown person can. The whole point of applying for a dependency override is to share the extraordinary circumstances that have caused my living conditions to vary drastically from most college students. What wouldn’t I give to wake up every day and not have my first thoughts be “my father abandoned me, my mother tortured me for years on end, and now I have no parents”. All this reliving of past horrors is so that I, now an adult, can make the logical and healthy choices that a child should not have been expected to make. My mother left me in Mexico when I was 8 months, to work in the US. Just before my 3rd birthday, she paid a smuggler to bring my sister and me over the border. We crossed on foot through the desert. She was abused by her own mother, who herself had been married off to an older man as a teenager. The man nearly beat her to death and my grandmother was locked in a cycle of drinking and relationships with abusive men who would abandon her and their children. Understandably, she inflicted the same pain onto her children, leading my mother to do the same to me. As the abuse raged on at home, I found school and academics incredibly easy. My 4th grade teacher ended up referring me to the Steppingstone Foundation, which aimed to get poor children into private schools. I started at Milton Academy in the 6th grade, about 93% of the 45k tuition was waived. The same program connected me and my family with the Boston law firm Ropes & Gray. The lawyers started my bid for permanent residency by getting my mother sole custody of my sister and I, as neither of our fathers responded to the court’s summons and we had never met them (hopefully that is enough to explain why I am unable to ask my father for financial support. I am literally incapable of finding him). The rest of the process seemed to go by quickly and by the age of 12, at the end of my first year at Milton, I was a permanent resident. The financial aid officer who spoke with me questioned why, at that point, I did not come forward about the abuse my mother was inflicting on me. If I had residency, why didn’t I come forward? I apologize for not having extensive knowledge about the way the US gov’t handles the abuse of former illegal immigrants when I was a middle schooler. Maybe the xenophobic rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiments that are baked into this nation’s psyche scared me into thinking that reporting the abuse would end up in my deportation. And even if I wasn’t deported, I knew my mother, still an illegal immigrant, would be. Where would I go? None of the extended family in the Boston area would have been able to support an extra person, much less the four of us that were my two younger half-brothers, an older half-sister, and I. And on top of it all, I had no guarantee that I would be allowed to continue attending the private school. I entered high school in the 2015-2016 scholastic year, still at Milton Academy. Freshman year was the first year I could live in the residential dorms. I leapt on that chance, unsure if I would survive being around my mother any longer. This year was also the year another scholarship I earned took effect. A middle school advisor had encouraged me to apply to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation towards the end of 7th grade. They covered the tuition the school didn’t waive, and sent me to month-long sleep away camps during the summers of 2015-2018. At this point, why didn’t I seek counseling? I was out of my mother’s grasp and most of my expenses seemed covered. For one, the dorms were not a permanent solution: I had to go back every time they shut down. For another, I knew that as a minor, any educator or mental health professional I talked to about the things my mother did to me would have been required to report it to the authorities. Even with the resources of a private school and behemoth foundation, there were too many variables and unpredictable outcomes, so I spent most of my time in high school sleeping and crying. I would stay up late into the night, unable to sleep, and then crash anytime I had a free period. I was stuck in that miserable cycle, going from my mother’s apartment to the dorms, until the summer after my sophomore year (2017). I wanted to attend that year’s pride parade, but my mother had a prior commitment that she assumed I was going to help her with. I told her no for the first time. I had known I was gay since I was a child, and I’d come out at school a few months before. It was a big deal for me to go to the parade. She blew up and said that I cared only about myself and not the “family”, and that she no longer cared what happened to me so I could do whatever the fuck I pleased. She’d always been hostile towards me, but she increased the hostility in the few weeks before I left for Nepal. I decided then that I did not want to see her ever again. I returned from Nepal mid-August, and left for school once again soon after to be a counselor for a program. Those were the last days I set foot inside her apartment. This is how I got pictures of myself, cropped out of shots I was incidentally captured in Unfortunately, the life I was trying to escape followed me to school. Early in the year I received a message from the Upper School principal: a social worker was here and wanted to talk to me. Turned out that my mother had hit my brother, and he had told his teacher. The teacher rightfully reported it, and because my mother had had social workers before (when I was about 8), social workers got involved once again. I don’t remember much about the conversation I had with the social worker that day. I was just tired. I remember looking at her and seeing her understand that I wasn’t going to offer up anything of use. Afterwards, the principal pulled me aside and asked me to go to counseling as a favor to him. I went, mostly because I understood “favor” to mean that he wasn’t going to let this go. But I knew it was a waste of time. Still a minor, I couldn’t say what I needed to. The counselor tried to get me to talk by saying I could tell her about my “friend”. We talked about some vague emotions and burdens, but I knew, whether it happened to my “friend” or me, she would have to report every detail I shared. As the holidays 2017 approached, I felt an increased pressure to find out where I was going during the school closures. Thankfully, two former teachers stepped in and gave me places to stay during the two weeks of Thanksgiving break. However, I couldn’t rely on their generosity every single time, and soon turned to gay dating apps in the hopes that someone would be willing to shelter me for the three weeks of winter break. Amazingly, someone did open their home to me and wasn’t a creep. I only spent two days at his place before I got a call from my mother, demanding I come home at once. The social worker wanted to know why I wasn’t at her place if the school was closed, and why she didn’t know where I was. Backed into a corner, my mother tried to save face. I decided to leave the guy’s home and stay with my aunt. I didn’t think it fair to drag him into the mess my mother had created. My aunt at least knew what sort of person my mother was. I’d not wanted to stay with my aunt because her apartment was cramped enough without my taking up space for three weeks. Four adults and two kids already lived in the 2.5-bedroom apartment. Another cousin who needed a place to stay was sleeping on the couch, so I slept in the tiny room connected to my aunt’s room. I took my 8-year-old cousin’s bunk, while he went to sleep with his grandmother in her room. In the bunk below me was my aunt's 9-month-old son. The baby cried at night, as babies do; my aunt and her husband had no privacy as only a slatted sliding door separated the rooms; I only got more miserable as I assessed the situation. I returned to my aunt’s during the two weeks of spring break. The return to classes solved one problem while handing me twenty others. It being the second half of my junior year, the college application process was about to pick up. My 21 year old sister attended the college information session for parents and handed me the information folders that had been passed out. The student end of the college application process took the back seat. I was too preoccupied sorting out the FAFSA and the CSS to worry about my grades, testing, or what school I wanted to end up at. I didn’t care much as long as it was in a city that wasn’t Boston. Junior year ended without much noise and gave way to a dramatic summer. The last phone call I had with my mother was around late July. She demanded I go “home” after the UConn program. I ignored her. I blocked her number. I was only two months from turning 18 and called it close enough. I went to NYC that summer, to stay with another stranger in Brooklyn. It was a careless decision but after so much fighting, I was worn out. I soon returned to Milton for my final year of high school. My 18th birthday came and went mid-September. After all I’d gone through, I had no idea what to do with myself then. Of course things weren’t simply over once I turned 18. I was still a high school student living in a dorm and was about to learn how finicky college financial aid could be. I signed up for a meeting with my college counselor and he explained to me that applying as an independent would be impossible. Not hard, impossible. The best way forward was to apply with my mother’s tax information. He was in contact with the former-teacher-now-friend who’d let me stay with her during Thanksgiving, and had also worked at Milton a few years prior. In order for Milton to waive the tuition, they asked for my mother’s tax information every year. The former-teacher-now-friend had asked my mother for the tax information on my behalf so that I could finish my senior year, and offered to do the same so that I could apply for college aid. So that’s what we did, and I applied to college, signing the FAFSA on my mother’s behalf. The financial aid officer said it was illegal for me to sign for my mother on federal documentation. She said I should have applied as an independent from the start, even though it would not have been granted. I don’t know what you would have me do here. How could I have made any legitimate claim to independence as a senior in high school? I had no income. The 12.50 an hour I earned for 2-4 hours of work a week I did for the school wouldn’t have been enough. I had no stable home. I was using my aunt’s address to receive my mail. College was the only out I saw. In all honesty, at the time, legality wasn’t even an issue that popped into my head. From the moment my mother recognized that I had some intellectual capacity, she turned me into her preparer. From the age of 11 onward, she handed me most of the forms and expected me to fill and mail them out. It made sense in a way. She had limited English skills, and of everyone in the household, I read, wrote, and understood it the best. In the fifth grade, I even filled out the parent sections in all school application forms, making my handwriting messier during the student portion so that admissions wouldn’t catch on. I initially gave her the parent section, only for her to hand it back while saying I already knew what to do. She’d had me sign for her on so many forms that by that point, it was reflex. The charter school she decided to enroll me in for the 5th grade required parents to sign the students' homework every day, but she instead made me ask if initials would suffice, and then gave me that responsibility as well. I think that was part of the abuse. She viewed me as someone to do all the things she didn’t have the time or capacity to do. Along with filling out forms, once I turned 11, she had me: going to the laundromat on my own to do everyone’s laundry for the week; sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing the entire apartment; taking the T throughout the city to run whatever errand; and doing grocery runs at the Market Basket the next town over. She even had me teach my younger brothers how to read. When I was 8 and my brother was in danger of failing 1st grade because his teachers couldn’t help him, she tasked me with keeping him from repeating. And when she started evening school to learn English, most nights I was the one who ended up explaining concepts to her or correcting her work. Sometimes I just did the homework for her. The financial aid officer I spoke with today said that my mother handing over her tax info my senior year contradicted my claim that she did not support me financially. I was not aware that allowing me to see all the money she didn’t spend on me counted as financial support. I apologize for making a false claim. My mother stopped paying my school tuition by my freshman year, when JKCF took over. I got a job at school in my junior year and started paying my own phone bill. I don’t know how long my mother paid for my health insurance, but I have been covered through the university’s plan since freshman year. The last instance of financial support from her was the tax information I received my senior year, over four years ago now. The officer claimed a parent had made payments in 2019/2020. That is untrue, as the only bank account to be linked to my bursar account is my own. The officer also said the third-party person wrote things that didn’t match up with what I had written. That makes sense. None of the adults in my life have known the extent to which I was suffering. This is the first time I’ve laid out my life path in such extensive detail. None of them knew where I was living or how I was paying for stuff. And they shouldn’t have; they’re not my parents or guardians. They have their own lives, independent of the mess I find myself in. Even after I turned 18, at what point was I supposed to go to them and say, “hey, the image you’ve constructed of me and my family for the last 10 years is a lie. Here, let me dump 15 years’ worth of abuse and suffering onto you. Have fun!” Finally, the financial aid officer let me know she wanted more details, and I don’t want to get on a call and hear that my story is full of “holes” again, so here is a chronological list of some of the special abuse my mother inflicted. It doesn’t not include all the times she’s slapped, hit, belted, or otherwise physically harmed me. That happened so often that I cannot distinguish one beating from another. The insults, names, and weeks where she banned me from eating her food are also not included for the same reason. I hope what I’ve written has patched up all the holes in my story. - 5ish The toilet had overflowed, so I grabbed a towel to soak up the water before it got out of hand. Upon seeing this, my mother forced me to kneel with the wet towel over my head as punishment 6ish My mother forced me to swallow tablespoons of cooking oil as punishment for taking food without asking I was forced to down 2 2-liter bottles of soda, for opening one of the bottles without asking I had run away from home because I was afraid of a punishment awaiting me. When I was found and returned, my mother decided to make me kneel on the landing of the back stairs, just outside of the apartment, for a few weeks. I was not allowed inside while she was at work. She only let me in to sleep. I often wet the bed at night, so she made me wear my younger brother’s diapers to school underneath my uniform, in order to embarrass me. She threatened to make the punishment worse if I took the diapers off at school and watched me put the diapers on every day. 7 She walked into the bedroom, got angry at the mess on the ground, and ordered me to eat the scraps of paper on the floor before she got back. 9 She used to lock the cabinets in the kitchen to keep us from taking food without asking. I figured out the combination and took a moon pie. She found out, pulled me out of bed one night, and sat me at the kitchen table. The light was shut off. She placed the remaining moon pies before me and told me to eat all of them. If I threw up, she said she would make me eat my vomit as well. 10 I used to steal 1-2$ every few days to buy stuff at the convenience store. One day 100 dollars went missing, so she made me go out on the street and beg for money. My brother had stolen the money. I wrote, during some Steppingstone event, that I wished my mother and I had a better relationship, not knowing she would see it. When she found out, she yelled at me for making people think we had a dysfunctional relationship. 11 I had forgotten my keys one day, so I let myself in through a window after school. It was a half day; it would be hours before someone else arrived. My mother knew I’d left my keys. After she made me tell her how I got in, she sentenced me to 2 weeks in my room, with the lights shut off so that I couldn’t read. I was only allowed out once a day, to go to the bathroom. 12 A football game ran late and all the school buses into Boston had already left. I knew there was a T trolley stop a mile from Milton, so at around 7:30 pm, I started making my way to the T, since I’d been taking it for years. Teachers panicked because I seemed to have disappeared and they called my mother. When I got home around 9, she, angry as usual, forbade me from entering the kitchen and eating. The kid whose locker was to my left took my jacket home one day by accident. I thought I lost it and when I got home, she accused me of selling it to someone at school to make money. She told me she wouldn’t be buying me another one. The kid returned the jacket a few days later when he found my ID in the pocket. 13 I had been tutoring so that I could buy an iPad. When I finally made around 300 dollars, I treated myself to some junk food from the store. When she saw the wrappers, she yelled at me and told me she would break the iPad if I bought it. 14 My aunts decided to throw me a surprise birthday party and invited friends from school. I thanked my mother (because I thought she’d organized it), so she responded by saying she was surprised that I hadn’t been lying to people and telling them I was rich. She thought I’d have a breakdown when I saw my friends in the apartment. 15 I brought up how difficult a brother was being, to which she said I didn’t understand how hard it was for him to grow up without a father. I should cut him some slack since not knowing mine made it easier. ******** I do not doubt many will read this and claim I am performing trauma for sympathy. I am performing trauma. I wrote this letter in the midst of Covid during my sophomore year to shock NYU into seeing the absurdity of the games they were playing with my life. I could have written a more sanitized biography for my mayoral campaign, but I decided to repurpose this letter to show the City of Boston not just the childhood that shaped me, but how I respond to bureaucracy. I refuse to let entrenched powers set the rules of the game. The language of the letter is precise, intentional, and brimming with seething rage. The elite institutions I’ve navigated my whole life have used trauma as a currency of legitimacy. Institutions, classmates, teachers, administrators have all critiqued me and my ideas for being too “radical”, “idealistic” and “naive”. They force my hand, only genuinely engaging with my critiques and proposals after learning of the battles that forged them. I figure, why not skip ahead to that part this time around? Voting for me, and hopefully electing me to Mayor of Boston, is not a single discrete action that will fix everything. Voting for me means making a commitment to yourself and to the city, a commitment to take ownership over governance and play an active role in shaping Boston’s and your future. The commitment I make to you is to utilize my abilities, experiences, and insights to manage the labor and material resources of the city, to improve your life in ways you feel from day one. I promise to build from these daily improvements to set Boston's future as a national and global leader in education, labor, food, transit, healthcare, and healing. My commitment to you is the same commitment I made to myself as a child. I have navigated cruel and indifferent bureaucracy, elite institutions that sought to use my image while neutralizing my critique, and a society that probed me from various angles to say “we don't want you here, you illegal, you queer, traitor, radical, poor . . .” I emerged, not unscathed nor unchanged, but undeterred from my commitment to truth, honor, rigorous work, and joy. I emerged because of the people who took it upon themselves to make my world a little bit brighter. I remain steadfast in my pursuit of justice. I turn my critical eye to myself, knowing that the broad changes I call for require an honest reflection of self. I can guarantee you will not like everything I say —you will even find me extremely annoying. I am prepared to play that role, because the truth sayers, curse breakers, and architects of healthy presents are rarely welcomed as such in the moment. Most of my immediate and extended family has disowned me, a schism orchestrated by my mother over twenty years: a threat held over my head to keep me quiet, passive, meek. But even at 16 years old, I realized that the social conditioning of family could not satisfy my need for kindness. I accepted and accept the consequences for exposing the abuse, cruelty, and inefficiency that rule our lives. Throughout this campaign I will point you to observe your daily life, the physical and social changes to the city, to judge whether I have kept my promises. Hold me accountable to my judgements, to my predictions, to see how reliable my foresight is. I will talk a lot —I am a sly user of rhetoric, but my rhetoric will always be underpinned by concrete action and tangible results. And I will hold the other candidates to the same standards.

Spoiler: Elite Wealthy White Men were First to Weaponize Identity Politics Wokeism is Destroying the Nation Political rhetoric in the current millennium has trended towards the topics of political correctness and identity politics: the virtue-signaling Left focuses political discourse on marginalized identities(identity politics) in order to divide the country. The essentialist treatment of identities has weakened the nation by forcing people to choose between a cohesive national identity and identity-specific advancements. This logic around identity politics is not new or recent. But it does intentionally and maliciously twist a mythologized American history to continue preserving the default status of whiteness: The fears, political desires, and critiques made by White Americans(usually male and wealthy) are well reasoned concerns and necessary civil engagement by patriotic citizens; those made by any of the Other are ungrateful, ignorant, and even traitorous mischiefs spread by a cabal of communist infidels As American As Pie . . . And Slavery Contrary to the popular usage of the term, “identity politics” have been pillars of American political tradition before the nation even existed. Why exactly did groups like the Quakers and Puritans flee Britain? As the colonies developed and powered economic engines, wealthy colonial merchants grew incensed that their identity as colonials meant they did not have representation in the parliament of Great Britain (1701-1800). These men mobilized to place their new identities as revolutionary colonists directly opposite to the oppressive yoke of the crown. What was the Boston Tea Party if not a coming out party for a new revolutionary identity saying “fuck you” to British authority? This class of educated, networked, influential men convened across the colonies not just to construct a new constitutional order, but to create Political Identities over which their dominance was unquestioned and backed by state force. Women, Natives, Blacks, any other Mixed/Mulatto child —with room to create new subordinate classes (like Queers, Disabled, non-christians), existed, suffered, and died at the whims of the only people who could vote. Identity Politics Throughout American History Accusations of political correctness around identity politics, wielded to minimize and infantilize oppositional voices, have resurfaced at all key moments in the nation’s history. The following timeline is not comprehensive nor hyper-specific. It aims to lay out the pattern: 1760s-1780s, Revolutionary War and Constitutional Conventions Revolution incited, mainly a conflict between Tories/crown loyalists and revolutionaries For most, whether the crown or colonial elites taxed their unrepresented labor would not change much of their political realities, so they remained neutral to start. The conflict between the two groups was one between two privileged classes that had weighed their advantages in the colonies and a sovereign state differently 1788, US Constitution ratified, with explicit wording tying the American Identity to Slavery Colonial slaving customs enshrined in federal and state laws, with the growth of the nation dependent on the equal admission of “slave” and “free” states Range of laws and institutions ensuring escaped “property” returned back to rightful owner. Laws ensuring the reproduction of slave population through sexual violence: forceful breeding, rape, and tying slave status to mother’s (brutal example of the intersection of political identities) 1787, Three-fifths compromise A clear demonstration of the convergence of whiteness, economic power, and political agency. The economic and political force generated by enslaved and abused people was wielded by their captors and torturers to further entrench, normalize, and protect this mass abuse of rights. Slavery is not the result of solely Southern states and politicians. Northern states 1) acquiesced and 2) profited greatly, whether through endowments for their new universities, raw materials for processing up North, or any of the numerous cheap goods produced by tortured hands. Late 1700s to mid 1800s, Growing Abolitionist Sentiments, Freedmen Slave Narratives, Native Extermination Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North was fueled by Free People who had escaped slavery and took great personal risk to speak its evils Free People were often aided by literate Whites in sharing their stories, but being illiterate, their narratives were sanitized and softened by White people for White consumption Slave proponents argued that Black People were biologically and morally incapable of receiving and using full citizenship. They pointed to their lack of literacy, broken family structures, lack of wealth as proof Making them citizens and integrating them into the national fabric was an attack on America itself, and a direct violation of numerous constitutional provisions. By keeping secret the extent to which slavers denied Black People education, denied them stable family cohesion, and inflicted all sorts of trauma whose effects would be felt years and generations later, slavery/racism lays a self justifying/perpetuating framework. 1857, Dred Scott v. Sandford The enslaved (read: Black People) were not citizens, were not entitled to federal protection, and the federal gov’t/congress did not have the authority to ban slavery in federal lands Federal lands meant the land of 19 yet-to-form states, mostly in the interior and midwest: huge swathes of lands An enslaved Black Person in “free states” was still property, subject to the absolute authority of their master and the State 1863, Emancipation Proclamation, start of Reconstruction Official end to the Civil War, waged by Southern States to ensure the nation would forever enshrine the right of wealthy elite to deprive, traffic and abuse Black People. Again the North acquiesced and allowed the South to restore racial logics on a foundation of 100 years of legal and social subordination (literacy tests, sharecropping, numerous rule dictating Black behavior in public space) 1868, 14th Amend/Equal Protection clause In the opinion of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978, Powell himself acknowledges that it was not until the 1900s that the “Equal Protection Clause began to attain a genuine measure of vitality”. Throughout the 1800s, the US, as an official state entity and through hundreds of encounters with manifesting, westward expansionists, reneged on dozens of contracts with First Nations 1870s-1890s, recognizing the importance of wild buffalo in the plains to native sovereignty and self sufficiency, the US Gov’t leads campaigns to exterminate the herds of buffalo already impacted by work on transcontinental rail (labored over by many Chinese immigrants who continued to be excluded while rail tycoons’ influence grew thanks to their labor) Much meat and fur was sent west for new markets, and much was left to rot and spoil in the plains, the imagery stark: “there is no sustenance for you here, what remains of your identity is rot” Mid 1800s - 1920, Women's Suffrage and Gender Mobilization In 1920, nearly 150 years after the nation’s founding, Women were finally federally granted the right to vote with the 19th amendment The struggle was waged through a concerted effort in state legislatures, courts, academia, and public engagement. It took 40 years for the amendment to make its way to law after being introduced to Congress. Same rhetoric used against Women today was employed then: irrational, illiterate, not suited for math or political intrigue, cannot process complex socio-political thought, cannot be trusted to vote As with denying the Black vote, Power used the conditions of depravity it created to prove the incompetence of Women, not based on structural forces, but based on failings inherent to their identity as women. Political Identities Skipping through the Civil Rights Movement(1950s-60s) , a period of recent history too significant and vast to bullet point, I’d like to deconstruct Political Identities. Identities constructed by the state or society at larger, and then officially encoded through legal and judicial procedures Often created expressly to delineate a class of people that Power can apply the law to in precise, demeaning ways. Black & White The “White” identity is novel to the Medieval-Modern eras. The nations and kingdoms of the European continent hated one another. The French despised Britain so much it took on more debt in a risky investment to back the Revolutionary Army against the British crown. The identities of “White Europe” were more local and familial, based around patronage of a feudal lord, towns, or cities. The “European” or “White” identity did not exist or gain popularity until the nations of Europe began their savage invasion and conquest of the globe. Then a cohesive White identity provided clearer moral, cultural, legal advantages in these exchanges. Likewise, kingdoms and tribes of the African coast did not sort themselves under a unified race. Winning polities sold captives to European Slaving ships. In the “New World”, these captives were stripped of language, culture, family and identity to coalesce under the new Black Race. Slavers intentionally split captured Africans from those they may have a common language or culture with, to increase the chaos, instability, and thus ease of control These identities were enforced socially and by state intervention. Namely through race mixing ideologies and the classification of the products(children) of rape and abuse endured by Native and Black peoples. It cannot be more obvious that white elites and the state originated identity politics than when staring as an insane sheet classifying the different kinds of slaves based on Black, Native, and White percentages. Mulatto, quadroon, octaroon, mestee . . . the insanity of White Identity Politics created these and many other legal identities to categorize Black people. IDENTITY POLITICS ARE THE INVENTIONS OF WHITENESS, MEN, AND WEALTH Seeds the colorist form of racism still wielded among non-white communities to this day. Lighter skinned, more white-mixed people were given preferential treatment both by society and their own families Shifting Bounds of Whiteness, as Convenient to Power Slavs, Irish, Italian, etc; Bondage of indentured servants and waves of immigration Again, their histories in this country escape bullet points, but I’d like to highlight that these people, who are now identified as White, had to deal with the realities of the internal European hatred I brought up earlier As they arrived in the US, their movement and associations were monitored, their housing and labor was restricted so they would not compete with, or taint the lives of “White Americans”. The cruelty of society and government pushed people into crime for survival, spawning the notorious crime families of the US. Again, racism lays a self justifying framework. As the population of non-european migrants/nationals grew, they threatened white men’s monopoly on power. White Men realized the political advantages of integrating “inferior europeans” into Whiteness: a united front against the Other. Groups most recently integrated into Whiteness can project some of the most acute trauma in their dogmatic defense of Whiteness. Having just experienced social order from the bottom, they revel in their newfound access to power, which they reaffirm by persecuting those still “beneath” them Biracial People will almost always be referred to as Black by White people, while excluded from black spaces Even when a person is clearly mixed, society will never refer to them as “white”. People will correct this violation of the one drop rule, lambast the white parents for poisoning the bloodline, and both black and white families will express negative sentiments about the racial mixing. Hispanics: picking up on the Iberian white supremacist rhetoric, much of Latin America adopted the delusion that their mixed race people were white Until the 1930’s, the US Census Bureau held the same, Mexicans were white. It was not until the population of these mixed Mexicans began to grow that the US government (aka White Men) realized the danger in giving these mixed race people basic rights Latino/Hispanic/Latinx Hispanic Ethnicity questions first appear in the 1970s census. Mixed race peoples, like those from nations that have undergone prolonged colonialism, occupation, and slavery, threaten the USA’s incredibly rigid and unnatural racial classifications Plainly put: latino means a person from Iberian controlled/influenced regions south of the US  (see how Filipinos are not considered Latinos but Brazilians are) . Imagine census and demographics questions making you choose not just a race, but similarly constructed ethnic groups. What business does a white American steeped in American custom have in claiming all of Europe as part of their essential identity? All the particularities, traditions, and languages of each continent, country, and region are collapsed under a single term. Personally, I was raised to check off the Hispanic/Latino boxes Some DNA testing in high school confirmed that I was mostly native, with equal parts black and white mixed in, through the complex process of trade, slavery, and colonialism. Despite the US’s unspoken continuation of the one drop rule, I cannot identify as black. Or white. Or native. I do not present as either, am not treated as either, and have no cultural or personal connections to those identities. I reject identifying myself with a lingering imperial project. I do not partake in the religion, sexist/racist cultural fixtures, or the national hierarchy within the latino umbrella Terms like “latino” do not exist for the benefit of the people they categorize, they exist to consolidate power. Pitfalls of Identity Politics There is truth that essentialist frameworks create many gaps that can be exploited by power. In pursuing legal action for identity-based discrimination, a person who embodies many marginalized classes (including those not protected), will be forced to choose a single protected class from which to argue their case. This creates a hierarchy of subordinate identities, usually subordinate to race or gender, and precludes discussion of intersectional experience and targeting. This subordination is not a shortsighted error, it is a feature of the legal system. By splitting people to their essential legal categories, forcing them to choose within them or argue another aspect of their identity is meriting the same protected status, the hierarchy of identity is reinforced and legitimized. People will always strive to seek parity with whiteness, wealth, men, status. The most clear example of the damage essentialist legal perspectives cause comes from the concentrated struggles of Black Women. Among black people, Black Men, by virtue of gender, are afforded most of the limited opportunities available. And among women, White Women, by virtue of race, are hired and accepted for most of the roles set aside for women. A statistical demographics review of a school, org., or leadership would show Black People and Women are present. Diversity has been achieved. In that sleight of hand, essentialist identity politics justify and normalize the exclusion of Black Women. I could continue by deconstructing the marriage equality movement for positioning wealthy white male queer interest above all else, as they seek parity with straight counterparts. Meanwhile, marriage equality fails to solve higher rates of violence, homelessness, suicide, and drug use among queer people/teens, or the insanity and paranoia of the Cold War, in which Identity Politics was weaponized to neutralize and destroy political opponents, with a simple accusation of Communism, but this project is already long enough. And I am tired. My efforts here do not aim to debunk conservative talking points and revisionism alone. Liberal and conservatives alike wield identity politics and woke dog-whistling to achieve their political ends. Democratic party leadership wore kente cloths to Congress for photo-ops at the height of BLM protests. Many of the USA’s highest level officials, like Pelosi, are career politicians abusing office to profit. Identity Politics serves the elite of both parties. They pay lip service to issues because undoing, dismantling, and rebuilding the structural frameworks that generate inequality means losing their power (Obama and Biden’s shift from opposing marriage equality once it became politically advantageous to advance it). Power and injustice are inseparable under the USA’s(and West’s) socio-political superstructure. Leaders of the current system have shown they place power over the professed values of freedom, liberty, and democracy. I wanted to overwhelm you with a truth Americans obscure: identities have always been tied to politics. Identity Politics seem to be an issue only when oppressed classes gather around their shared identities to find power in solidarity and in the struggle for liberation.

Reduce, Reuse. The Clean Boston Initiative Policy Research + Proposal + Philosophy for the beautification of the City, and the restructuring of Boston Public Works Departments managing:  Household Waste Collection Metal, Paper, and Glass Recycling  Compost  Textiles Appliances and Tech Philosophical Rationale We are over consuming. That is the foundation of an American Identity premised on consumption and capitalism. When my bike was stolen last August, I bought a second-hand bike from a Jamaica Plain’s business that restores older bikes. My new-old bike cost me $600(40 hours at my part time job). That transaction did not contribute to GDP –how this nation measures its health– because only new production factors in the calculus.  Overconsumption would still be an insidious problem on its own( soaring obesity rates , toxin saturation , brain chemistry hijacking ), but its damage is magnified by the waste and disregard for goods, labor, and life. A plate of 10 chicken wings represents at least 5 birds, and I would say most contain meat from 10 different ones.    In addition to trashed food and textiles, we carelessly abuse materials that are so valuable but are made worthless (in our minds) by mass production and consumer alienation. We, in material terms, access riches beyond what the most tyrannical monarchs ever could, and yet, we are miserable. Slowly dying from simultaneous excess and deprivation.  Metal  is infinitely recyclable. Every beer can, each 3,000 lb car embodies the many costs of mining: human impact, distance, labor, extraction impacts on environments. An industry dedicated to capturing and reusing metal creates a constant source of jobs, with direct lines feeding cheaper materials into other industries.  Glass , again, is nearly infinitely reusable. So many plastic containers used for condiments or foods could be directly replaced with glass. Glass can be used in art work or sustainable construction for the Boston developments I propose. There are people in Congress who were grown adults by the time milkmen disappeared.  Plastic : its life cycle from oil drilling to disposal is one of the most destructive materials we’ve ever created. Most are derived from petroleum products, the final good in a chain of noxious by-products that does not stop with plastic. We all have plastics in our blood streams . Children conceived today meet plastic before they meet their parents . Its constant production and pervasive nature give undue power over geo-politics to despotic regimes, corporations, and corrupt politicians. Plastic has entirely replaced key species in many biomes, seen most hauntingly in our oceans. Food . Nationally, individually, industrially, we trash 100,000,000,000 lbs (100 billion) of food every single year . Overweight/obesity is a global health epidemic affecting   ⅔ of Americans and 20% of children . And yet food insecurity persists.  All this trashed food could be used to provide high quality feed to livestock, rather than the soy/corn slop they are gorged on. It can also be used to grow more food. Not only is it insane that we would rather excess food rot in dumpsters than feed people, livestock, or grow more food, it is sinful.  Add to this the utter destruction of land and topsoil thanks to industrial mono-cropping, abuse of water resources, poisoning of animals and ecosystems due to petrochemicals like -cides and fertilizers. I can go on and on, and will, in “Cook Boston” my food policy research and proposal document to be released soon.   Think back to the milkmen that would deliver fresh milk in the mornings and collect empty glasses for reuse, in one go. Why is it so hard to understand that this is how most of our material economies should operate? It’s not just an ecological win, these companies would save so much time and money on material extraction and container production.  Ask yourself, “why is it cheaper for them to drill for oils, transport, refine, process, treat, form, and transport once again, just for the bottle to wind up in the trash –rather than reuse already made containers?” It is not cheaper; we pay the true costs. We pay with our taxes that subsidize their profits, their tax breaks and incentives, and the infrastructure they use(trade deals, roads, bridges, schools). We pay with the rising healthcare costs as their chemicals leach into our bodies and brains, seeding invisible epidemics. We pay with the trash that endlessly blows around our homes and nature, rising with the tides.  We pay in blood, 50k annual deaths to cars alone –do not mention those out of sight, does a person suffer and die if no one is around to see it? The chaos the buffoon unleashed on global trade relations presents a crisis and opportunity: the cost of everything  dependent on this material-intensive production cycle will skyrocket ; however, we are more than capable of, and should be , reorienting our economies to form a closed material loop and emphasize local/regional.  I am presenting a comprehensive overhaul of our systems. This document will reference many other policy proposals I am currently working on. We do not have the time for piecemeal solutions. This Clean Boston Initiative will focus on the waste produced by companies and consumers. The systems I propose are more economically sound than the current ways we live.  from my ongoing cleanup of the Dorchester Shores Summarized Policy Proposals Immediate Action Individual Accountability Increased enforcement of current litter laws + Modifications Civic Pride through the Boston Summer Games Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation  Companies will be charged for the clean up of their branded products Planned Obsolescence Fines  Right to Repair + City Sponsored Repair Days 25 cent bottle deposit reduced cig cartoon in exchange for carton of 50 butts do not foist cost onto consumer, producers must be responsible for their product. Ongoing to Long Term Action Redesigning Sanitation Collections Street and truck redesign  Commercial Composting Negotiating deals with local/regional farmers Near Total Commercial Plastics Ban  Scheduled targets and incentives for commercial plastic reduction. Meeting or exceeding targets will result in waiving EPR fines.   Yearly trash audits(quantity, kind, origin), as data is collected for Boston Summer Games Reduce, Reuse.  You're all grownups.  If you can’t manage to live without constantly trashing material, like most humans in history have, I don’t know what to tell you. You can have a stable world with abundance for all who pitch in, or you can have one more decade in a collapsing world with your coke in every flavor and size.  Are we really not capable –in terms of ingenuity and implementation– of a world where products exist not to make money but to play intentional roles in our lives?  We will never be able to get rid of plastic. We can never clean it from our bodies, track down every scrap in the ocean, unbury it (though look out for pending proposals on cleaning landfills), or make it obsolete. We also need it in our lives. So let's use this versatile, important tool for medicines and research (these fields still need to work to cut down material waste because expanded healthcare networks will not scale in terms of consumption [stay alert for coming proposals on healthcare as well]). Immediate Action Individual Accountability Increased enforcement of current litter laws + Modifications Current litter laws are strong on paper, but are meaningless in effect. Cigarette smokers will almost certainly toss their cigarette butts on the ground. This behavior is so normalized that I get dirty looks when I congratulate them for littering.  Fast food, chips, soft drinks, coffee cups, and liquor bottles, cigarettes; there are clear items that are consistently littered. Take a walk out anywhere in the city and you will find these items in the gutters. Broken glass from beer bottles is as common as Dunkin’s cups. Pulled from Central Sq in Eastie, prevalent all over Whether deputized citizens or new positions within sanitation or BPD, we need more enforcement. Fines for littering will increase exponentially, able to be worked off through sweat equity. Litterers can reduce their community service hours if they identify other litterers.  Consistent disregard for public welfare will result in ban from public services. Eg; if you cannot pick up your trash on the T or in parks, you do not deserve to access these spaces picked up from the stairs in Aquarium Civic Pride through the Boston Summer Games These annual summer games are meant to spotlight the city, create neighborhood and city cohesion through shared identity and friendly competition. See Joy is Revolution for more.  The entry fee is litter clean up, whether as individual or team competitors. Neighborhoods will score points for winning events, but litter clean up also adds to their tally, with multipliers for cleaning outside of their neighborhoods. This extends the Games throughout the entire year.  Children who go out to clean their neighborhood with their teams or schools will develop a sense of protection and pride over their city. I am trying to establish a positive feedback loop: they associate cleaning their city with fun and community, and thus are more likely to call out other litterers when they see it happening. Eventually the need for increased city enforcement will be supplanted by citizens who protect their living spaces.  Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation  Companies will be charged for the clean up of their branded products I have spent the month of April cleaning 600lbs of garbage. I like to post my progress on Reddit. I get many thanks, people sharing their own anger and despair, the amount of garbage they see, as well as dozens of people telling me about their own efforts or asking to join a more official event I put on.  I talk about holding corporations accountable in these posts. I often get people saying they don't understand why a corporation like Pepsi Co or Dunkin should be charged for trash one of their customers littered. Here is my explanation.  I am running for mayor. This entails people-to-people marketing with items like flyers and pamphlets with my bio and platform. Yes, people who accept these items are responsible for either keeping them or disposing of them properly. Adults and under 18s alike should all have this basic courtesy.  However, as the person who generated all this material for a self-serving motive, I am also responsible if flyers with my name wind up littering the streets. Given that my name is plastered on these flyers, responsibility can and should be traced back to me.  Expanded enforcements and consequences like community service tackle the personal responsibility part of this problem. Extended producer responsibilities ensure that entities/companies cannot produce excessive packaging without concern for where it ends up after sale. They will find ways to incentivize customers to return the packaging for reuse.  There is a real cost to all this garbage. I spent money on trash bags and gloves. I got scraped and poked by branches and glass shards. I spent 3 hours collecting 80 lbs of garbage, time I could've spent doing anything else (opportunity cost). The bill comes due and we (the common people) end up paying it with our taxes and with the effects on the environment and our bodies.  EPR pushes companies to ditch single use plastics and a consume-at-all-cost profit motive that burns our world for momentary gain. And EPR encapsulates more than just packaging: the chemicals dumped into waterways, saturating the air, sprayed on our foods, leaching out into environments at extraction and processing points.  Planned Obsolescence Fines  We’ve all made the same observation: the stuff we buy now is of lower quality, doesn’t last as long, breaks just when prices are surging. Again, measuring economic health with GDP incentivizes companies to create subpar, inferior products that break. Creating a $100 work boot that lasts 10 years and a customer wants to repair is a worse financial decision than selling $50 dollar boots that have to be replaced every year.  Across sectors, from tech and appliances, to clothing and endless subscriptions, the quality of what we own has plummeted.   Even though we recognize this robbery, people’s brain chemistry has been hijacked by the constant release of dopamine from endless online ordering and same day fulfillment.  P.O.F’s punish companies for these tactics. Baseline research will have to be conducted to determine how long items like fridges, microwaves, phones etc should last. Fines will be imposed by how much current products underperform the standard.  Right to Repair + City Sponsored Repair Days Items like lawn mowers, personal electronics, microwaves, that should be refurbished, will be fixed at these events. Residents who donate them for use elsewhere can receive tax credits.  This is a perfect time to highlight trades people and to reorient classist/elitist attitudes around the different kinds of labor people perform.  These events are also opportunities for companies to reduce the POF’s and EPR fines. If they send company engineers/technicians, or share schematics/parts, their total fines will be reduced based on calculations performed by appropriate city bureaucrats.     Ongoing to Long Term Action Redesigning Sanitation Collections Street and truck redesign  More in depth street design proposals can be found in my urbanism policy proposal, but simplified: about 50% of on street parking space must be removed for various reasons. For sanitation rationales, look at this video:  Sanitation trucks block entire blocks while workers have to go bin by bin, lifting them up into the trucks.  I suggest replacing 3-5 parking spaces per block with heavy duty bins that can be lifted by trucks directly. These bins will be separated by compost, recyclables, and waste. Consolidating collection in this way preserves workers bodies and is more efficient, meaning more ground can be covered before bins are full. People push back on my litterer critique by saying that the trash is actually blowing out of bins, not being thrown by people. I disagree, but the wind is a serious issue. Boston is a windy city and erratic climatic conditions have only strengthened gusts. This spring has been insane. Consolidating blocks of waste into these 3-5 spots with heavier lids addresses this issue.  Not every street can or should be moved to this model. Again, research must be performed by City Hall, and pilot programs started within the year.   Commercial Composting Negotiating deals with local/regional farmers I have worked across various food service jobs. The amount of food being thrown away is depressing. Boston must roll out a commercial food waste collection program, and quickly scale its compost facilities.  All this trashed food can be turned into rich soil used to grow more food. The city can negotiate deals with local growers for our compost, saving them the cost of fertilizers (which as I stated earlier will skyrocket in cost). This is an ancient practice that has only been supplanted by petrochemicals in recent memory. Fertilizer use destabilizes ecosystems and damages water sources. Municipal compost can protect Masscahusetts’ lands, laborers, and consumers.  Yearly trash audits(quantity, kind, origin), as data is collected for Boston Summer Games As competitors collect their litter for admission, analysis must be done of the materials and likely origins. This data will be used to determine EPR fines, further refine legislation to stop litter production, and create a detailed trendline to show whether these initiatives are working.  Near Total Commercial Plastics Ban  Scheduled targets and incentives for commercial plastic reduction. Meeting or exceeding targets will result in waiving EPR fines.   Examples–What this Looks Like in Action “Coffee” companies like Starbucks/Dunkins (as well as smaller operations) can pivot to bring-your-mug or use one-our-own. Starbucks is currently trying to rebrand as a stay-and-sit coffee house. This scheme fits right in.  Cup drop-off stations at places like transit stops, parks, near garbage bins, with liquid waste spots.  Penalties for throwing reusable cups away or being inconsiderate where you leave them Cups tracked and tagged to orders with QR codes so know who is responsible. Get charged a fee if the cup is not returned within 48 hours.  Cup collection and return is ultimately the kind of thing we need to automate. AI and autonomous robots are incredible tools that should be liberating us of menial labor. Not crowding humans out in creating art, research, connection.  Infinite app, membership, and promotion opportunities from here. Nicer mugs for members Generic for regular orders.  Free upgrades, prizes like membership privileges for a week, or discounts for consistently bringing your cups. Break your streak and the reward ladder resets I could add so much more but again, why am I doing all this work for y'all. These are multi-billion dollar companies, yet I, a single person working part time jobs —still not making enough for city rent— am coming up with these ideas.  Emphasis on local food production cuts need for absurd levels of plastic packaging and reckless use of fertilizer pesticides and herbicides.  Plenty of other countries use local methods like banana leaf plating. Opportunities for international ties and local entrepreneurship.  Fund startups making algae plastic or other alternatives  Eradicate marketing and consumption incentives that create inordinate amounts of waste, or multi material packaging that cannot be reused or recycled.  Replace plastic water bottles with highly filtered water stations all around cities and key spots like parks, museums, schools.  Pressure grocery stores to stop carrying synthetically derived polluting products like detergent and instead switch to models where we bring our dedicated containers to places for top offs. This would work for products like soaps, grains, cereals, coffee, oils, etc  Shift back to natural biodegradable textiles and shoe materials. Use every part of livestock. Revival of tanneries and leather workers.   Tax breaks/fine forgiveness for businesses that implement these changes ahead of schedule and take initiative.  I anticipate many people will say that what I propose is beyond the city’s power. I understand that some of my ideas will require city-state collaboration. Boston is Massachusetts' economic and cultural heart. The ideas I propose will benefit the entire state in real material and social terms. But we have to start from somewhere and getting the state on board will be easier if the city is on the same page and already modeling the framework.  Also, most of these ideas are entirely within the city’s power to implement, and I made sure the groundwork policy operated as such, like litter law enforcement or the Boston Summer Games.

Reflections from 2,000 miles on a Bike Breathe in . . . Breathe out . . . When is the air in you different from that outside? When does the water you drink become two-thirds of who you are? 38 trillion bacteria: digestion cognition action; they outnumber our own cells performing functions that keep us alive We pilot bodies made of elements forged in aweful celestial explosions We think of ourselves as wholly distinct beings Able to exist as we are, no external input needed Breathe in . . . The universe is a single string All we are: Its loops, kinks, frayed strands “The greatest illusion is . . . of separation. Things you think are separate and different are actually one and the same” The Sun, in truth, one of our gods each of us carry its spark My skin is bronzed by its embrace Sol bears witness to my hours of labored breathing In a neighborhood it ordered shield from world ending masses By its nature making our planet possible it blinds, roasts, warms, and guides me with drops of energy that bathe the Earth Breathe out . . . I ask it Are you not a being beyond our comprehension? the stars, our DNA, the earth, the internet We describe quantify qualify their being, But we can never understand them as they truly are, unable to approach the scale of their existence We peer through the smallest of slits to harness their powers Breathe in . . . Breathe out . . . These musings occupy my mind, Boston to Austin Two thousand miles on a bike I time the rotation of the pedals to the cadence of my breath Passing fields wave hello with a million bladed fingers wild grasses, stalks of wheat, flower heads beckon in the wind: We’ve been expecting you our family told us to look out for you Their swaying mesmerizes A midwesterner said open fields are the closest they can imagine the ocean in the absence of water the fields draw your eyes in Rest in my sway of green and gold I pedal through farmland, cities, tan sand and red clay, trying to discover my country Brutal ugliness; littered trash everywhere Abandoned developments and forests ravaged by industry Where is the love and pride for these lands? Painful sounds; solitudes and songs stolen drivers lay into their horns, oblivious to their part in all they hate about driving Wretched odors; petty trucks rev their engines, dousing me in dark diesel fumes Twenty miles along the Mississippi, the mighty vein I am left with a splitting headache For Louisiana, lifetimes near the plants along the river mean much more Stress and danger –so many corpses I count 40 pieces of roadkill in an hour one morning Snakes turned inside out tanned into leather by tires and sun Armadillos , little armored ones, their shattered shells couldn’t save them Not even birds fly away fast enough I am startled by the front half of a dog its entrails spill out where it was cleaved in two Natives of this land, common cultural heritage, struck down as they moved in their own home Constant reminders of the risks I undertake Breathe in . . . Breathe out . . . This brutality builds in beautiful patterns Painful climbs over bridges reward my efforts with vistas I fly over waters that once took hours, days, detours to cross Winding overpasses stacked and layered steal my breath away, What limits our collective power? In all this constructed chaos, Nature still breaks through I did not expect to see a butterfly flap delicate wings dancing round a semi Or for fields to explode into colors renditions of this land past What did these places look like before us? What migrations, storms, cycles did these flowers paint? The absurdity of this wonder, So far from home on a bike Sets a pendulum to swing In homesickness adventure fear discovery threat freedom Out My tears flow in grief and joy Bike Musings Mon 3-4/Tues 3-5. Recouping with a high school roommate, Philly While climbing hills If I stood up to power through like I usually do, instead of shifting down, I would not have made it past rhode island. Not every obstacle can be blown through at full force, especially not when more are certain to come. Take time, don’t hurt yourself, appreciate the progress When looking at my speed I could have covered these distances so much faster without all this weight –but then how would I have survived the nights or fueled these efforts? Dropping “baggage” can make you lighter, move through life more freely, but some of that baggage is essential to survival; some of it makes you who you are.  Know what to cut and what to keep.  When judging routes I may be biking this country alone, but these trails, paths, routes, and cycleways were fought for and planned by decades of cyclists, outdoors people, activists, and legislators. This “solo” trip is only possible through the support of thousands of unseen, unnamed hands, much like most of society.  I owe much to friends, family, to the people living their lives where I get water, buy food, use bathrooms, for making this possible.  What’s easy to notice I set out on this trip into winds. Southern winds blasted my face, making hill climbs harder and stealing my speed on descent. I cursed it a few times, begged it to let up for a moment, and went deaf from its roar But I only noticed the wind when it was antagonistic. Partially because it mostly blew in from the front, but the few times it blew on my back, I did not notice it. I only gave a soft thanks after coasting for ninety minutes, wondering why this stretch was so easy.  Fri 3-22. Just south of the Alabama Florida border, near Graceville Reflections Stayed in my tent most of the day, avoiding rain. It didn’t hit my area, but soaked west/south of here, so not worth riding in that direction. The reprieve for my thighs and ass is good.  ⅓ of the way to San diego. Seeing the distance from here to Boston on a map is surreal. I know I did it, I can vividly recall almost every day, but somehow the miles feel like dreams. On day 9 in Baltimore, I had to stop myself from calling it off, hopping on a plane back home. Paring back the trip helped, as did meeting the people I have. The eclipse is less than 2.5 weeks away, Less than 1,000 miles to Austin. Feeling well conditioned gives confidence I can pull it off. The setting sun and orange tinted clouds over my last stretch in Georgia reinvigorated me, reminded me of the “why” of this trip.  Reasons one takes a trip like this Adventure A test of will, drive, mental strength, physical fitness Looking for growth, to learn Seeking some form of radical change; to self and the world I’ve felt stunted, like I have not progressed. I have done things. Like graduating from undergrad last year. But I’ve felt static since I was a teen.   Became a citizen in August 2023. I could have done it 5 years ago, but resisted the idea of becoming “American”. What does that even mean; in a nation of 350 million that sabotages itself and its people for narrowly defined gains, that can’t honestly reflect on its history and impact on the world? I finally went through with it because the bureaucracy & tenuousness of permanent residency wasn’t worth the effort of renewing.  I figured I needed to define being an american for myself. Part of this trip is a search/construction of an american identity I can claim. So many of us barely get to see this country. Some people essentially never leave their towns. Those who do travel frequently probably bypass most of the country in favor of the “best” other regions and states have to offer: hotels, resorts, places inaccessible to locals . . . .  I choose the direction of this trip, but what I see and where I ride through is up to what’s “safest” for a bike.  It’s not at all like living somewhere, but 1, 2, 300 miles through a state grows into its own kind of intimacy: a desire to protect, invest, and improve the places you ride through for the people you glimpse in passing.  Taking space on these roads frightens me; plentiful roadkill constantly reminds me that my life is not entirely in my own hands. Plenty of assholes have angrily honked as they blow past, pathetic people gas me with their exhaust, but I also see, and appreciate, the head nods and waves, the light beeps of encouragement, and the wide berth cautious drivers grant me. Multiple strangers–now friends– have let me crash at theirs, given me hot meals, let me do laundry.  Kindness to a stranger. Small gestures of support. At the bare minimum not intentionally worsening someone’s day. These are aspects of an American identity I can proudly claim Embarking on a solo journey an act of self-exploration. testing the hard-wired parts against the unpredictable reality of the open road, seeing who i am when stripped of context, safety nets, or familiar routines. I am slightly insane, there's no way a “normal” person willingly takes something like this on.  What might seem bizarre—the desire for solitude, the urge to endure—is part of who i am. my way of answering lingering questions about who ive become as a result of both innate resilience and the experiences that demanded it.

What does it mean to be alive . . . . I ask myself everyday, when I breathe in car and second-hand cig fumes; when I read about another way capital has poisoned us, our food, our water, our social forms; when I read about another horrific crime an elite class got away with; when I witness the senseless violence fear and terrorism that shapes our societies. People I speak to say they just don't like to think about it . It  gets too depressing. They find it more helpful to focus on the now and surviving : how they will make it through this day with enough to get to the next. The effort to answer “what am I doing with my limited time here” makes many despair. Am I wasting my life? Did I waste my life? What was it for? Am I happy? Who am I I understand. I go through many bouts of depression; circumstance and intention have shoved these questions in my face my whole life. My young adult years (12-23) were spent in isolation. Grappling with the trauma I’d inherited, scrutinizing myself and my evils, desperately searching for ways out. In resisting this line of questioning –fleeing from the weight and discomfort of deriving meaning for yourself- you allow the cruel, the opportunists to answer for you: you  exist to serve, produce, consume, suffer.    Growing up with a simultaneously neglectful and micro-managing abusive mother, I have issues with authority. Namely, I cannot stand hypocrisy, cruelty, incompetence, and stupidity. It was only natural I would spit on their social order. I exist to free the world around me I ask, Is this the meaning of life? when I see happy pups running in the Common; when I see little kids in snow gear waddling through the slush; when I bike through the miles of beautiful trails and nature, spotting the murals, the art, the detail people poured into a city they love. Contemplating the meaning of life and one's own existence is not inherently depressing and paralyzing. We are paralyzed and afraid because we live in a social world constructed in the most inane and cruel ways. We live farces that produce misery; even the excess hoarded by the wicked is poisoned fruit. Many die more miserable than the poorest among us: All the material wealth in the world comes at a cost. Your soul. Community. Purpose. Satisfaction. Contentment. Joy. You hate asking yourself what the meaning of your life is because you work for faceless superiors, producing in menial repetitive ways, day in and out. To afford the housing you must have to keep all the crap you're told to buy, year after year bc everything breaks. And if you're not consuming, you're sabotaging the economy (just like how millennials killed x). You run endlessly behind bills, rent, food, medical, the car you need to get to the job you hate. Meanwhile the nagging voice grows: what about the microplastics. What about the increasing storms or floods or droughts or fires? What about, what about, what about . . . What am I doing with my life? Every time I sit to write my vision for the present, the future What am I doing with my life? While I complete my 20, 30 mile loops of the city. What am I doing with my life? While I bake treats to share, while I scoop cat litter, while I wash dishes. I asked it while a cop stopped me in Georgia, where a karen accused me of stealing her welfare check from her mailbox, on my bike trip from Boston Ma to Austin Tx. The absurdity of it all made me want to cry-laugh. I graduated from college, unsure of what any of it meant if the world did not care to iterate and improve. The question shaped my degree, Critical Systems Studies, interrogating the very earth as I dug to the origin of our problems. I asked it during my ten mile runs from the Upper West through to Brooklyn. While I ran across the East River at 4 am during the covid years, I thought about the thousands of people who built these bridges. How could they have ever possibly lifted all this material and suspended it in the sky!?! The unnamed faceless masses altered the city’s identity forever. They did not get the recognition nor reward their efforts merited. What . . .? Who, why, me, us . . . ? How would the question change for you, for all of us, if we spent days creating communities and mending the earth? We could spend our lives working with kids, adults, and animals to restore balance. We could focus our lives on learning, teaching, preserving traditions in the crafts, creating beautiful art that moves us . . . Our coastlines are forever changed. We can influence the nature of the change: nurseries for overfished species, rehab zones for ecosystems and injured wildlife, linked by bike trails and scenic walks. During the summers, our cities can spotlight their neighborhoods with city wide games and festivities; in the winters we’d slow down, gather together to preserve and cook, to enjoy the darkness with warm drinks and new year celebrations. Times Square could become the world’s largest theater, a massive art gallery, an immersive singular experience. Or it can remain a soulless indictment of liberalism/capitalism. If pondering the meaning of life leaves you depressed, it is a signal to take our lives back.

Who Decides When We Get to Lead? Where do I –a gay, illegal 24 year old who’s never had a real job– find the audacity to run for mayor and expect people to support/entertain my delusions? I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to forgive me for bragging I wholeheartedly believe I can lead the city as mayor because I am competent; l am qualified and tested; I am not afraid of hard work; I am intellectually rigorous; I position joy as a legitimate and moral political goal. First, the legal status issue. I am a naturalized citizen(Faneuil Hall 2023), a registered voter of the City of Boston. I meet the bare minimum requirements to enter this race (woo!). I call myself an Illegal because that's how I spent my first eight years in this country. It’s the political reality a kid had to come to terms with. I call myself an Illegal to force y’all to think about a toddler crossing the desert, too young to remember the peril or the home it took from him. earliest picture I have of me, few months after arriving in Boston I want y’all to think about the 11 year old illegal who, after being hit by a car, ran away because his first thought wasn’t “am I hurt”, it was “I can’t let the cops find out and deport my family”. I became a permanent resident at 12, through a partnership between The Steppingstone Foundation and Ropes & Gray. They argued that the nation would do me and itself a disservice if I were sent back to Mexico. My status was legalized before I finished the 6th grade. My presence in this country hinges on the recognition that I was an asset worth keeping while I was still in middle school. Field-Tested Since the Age of 6 Despite being only 24, my nearly 2 decades-long professional resume demonstrates my competency in the range of skills required for the position. I have been bridging gaps left by institutional, social, and governing failures since I was in kindergarten. My knowledge of Boston does not come from an abstracted, intellectualized-policy perspective, or a disconnected, paternalistic-charity angle. I know Boston through a deeply engaged life with its schools, programs, and infrastructure. Kindergarten: I was the English-Spanish interpreter for my teachers and classmates’ parents. I stepped up without being asked, seeing a need in their struggle to communicate. I bought my siblings ice cream with the $10 my teachers gifted me as thanks at the end of the year. My mother unloaded most (paperwork and bureaucracy included)household chores onto me by the time I was 11; I filled out and filed forms for schools and medical records; I did the family’s weekly load of laundry; I scrubbed, swept and mopped the apartment; I tutored my siblings and cousins; I went from East Boston to Chelsea to buy groceries, managing the budget; I took the T to drop off paperwork at consulates, to go to extra school, to pick up my brothers, and to run errands for my mother. I went to 3 different schools in the 2nd grade. My brother’s teachers at the Samuel Adams Elementary School told my mother he would have to repeat the 1st grade because they would not be able to bring him up to grade level. Over 2 grueling months, not only did I bring him to level, he passed the grade as one of the strongest readers in the class. The next year, I started at the William M. Blackstone Elementary School. When Boston Ballet came to scout, I was selected for their program. I dropped out because I was too insecure, too exposed in the tights that accentuated my rolls in front of a wall of mirrors. I finished the 3rd and 4th grades at the Blackstone, where I tried my first persimmon, where I spent 2 hours every week diving 12 feet to the bottom of its pool, challenging myself and friends. I know the value of city programs that support kids. The principal at the time posted MCAS scores on a wall of the main office. For those two years, my name towered over the previous reigning champs. That did not make me very popular. My 4th grade teacher asked why I was disrupting the class. “I don't know. I'm bored. Sorry”. She went above and beyond to push me to apply to the Steppingstone Foundation. I didn’t want to do it because it meant two summers of 6 weeks of school, on top of a year of extra class on Wednesdays and a full day on Saturday. Against Steppingstone’s counseling, my mother enrolled me at Excel Academy Charter School for the 5th grade. We were so late in applying that I should not have won the lottery meant to keep enrollment fair. But after I went to Orient Heights to take their test, I was offered a place. Of all the school’s I went to, I hated Excel the most. The rules, the performance, the pointless demeaning nature –I rebelled as much as I could at a place where the principal checks the color of your socks every morning before you're allowed into the building. Thanks to my mother’s abuse and brushes with institutions like these, I know the danger of tyranny and unchecked power. Even through my thinly veiled distaste, I was awarded one of the two student of the year awards. I really wanted the science one. A teacher from Excel told me, while I interviewed him for my memoir 10 years after the fact, that he used me as a barometer. If I got a question wrong, he took that to mean he hadn’t explained the subject matter well enough. Another told me he didn’t call on me until he had exhausted all other options because he knew I would get the class where it needed to go. Excel even tried to convince Steppingstone to not go through with my application to private schools for the 6th grade. They obviously told Excel no. The whole point –of my taking the Blue line from Orient Heights to Ruggles to catch the bus to Boston Latin Academy for two extra hours of schooling on Wednesdays– was to get me into the elite bastions of Massachusetts. Negotiating Coalitions, Navigating Bureaucracy The founders of Milton Academy never intended for someone like me to befoul their hallowed halls. The liberal administration that admitted me did not understand the full context of what they had gotten themselves into. Just like I wasn’t prepared for the world that would shape the next seven years of my life —simultaneously beyond my reach and a lifeline when I was homeless at 16. My advisor had been hired as the Director of Multiculturalism (or some other similar nonsense title) that same year. She had to ask the administration how they expected me and another Steppingstone alumnus to get to school. They said it wasn’t really their concern, the other kids figured it out on their own. Their parents chartered buses to campus independently of the school. She had to hold Milton’s hand through the process of understanding how much effort we put into getting to the bus stop alone; they had hired her without understanding why she was there. Eventually, the headmaster of the Lower and Middle School stepped up to pay $4,000 every year for three years so that we could ride the bus. A few weeks into the 6th grade, the football team got back to school after the last bus to Boston had left. I waited until all the adults were distracted to start walking the mile to the Milton Trolley station. I walked past giant houses, entertaining envious thoughts. I got home to a punishment; my mother could not believe I made her lose face. At school, I was reprimanded, for posing a liability risk. How what I had done was any different or worse than longer commutes I’d already taken on the T, no one could explain. Out of my depth, a perpetual outsider, surrounded by kids whose lives were inaccessible material and social realities, I refused to back down. To disappear, to become unnoticeable, to lose my intellectual edge to the fear of inadequacy was to die. My mother continued to neglect my academics, and where most would slack or lose focus, I pushed myself. I took Latin throughout middle school, expanding to French and Ancient Greek during high school. I struggled to find a place at Milton. I never did find a place. Again, I was never meant to access that world. So I decided to challenge it, make it grapple with the question of why I was there at all. In the 8th grade, the 7th grade social studies teacher invited me to present my story to her class. It was the first time I spoke about being an illegal in a space carved out for me. I sanitized it of my mother’s abuse, the loneliness, the anguish. It was as close to the typical feel-good immigrant narrative I ever got. Ms. Charon invited me back year after year. Each time I presented, I became more conscious of my own story. How I held myself, the language I used, the themes I highlighted –this was probably these kids' first experience with immigration outside of news sound bites. I still have the letters they have written me, reflecting on the experience. The rest of my high school shenanigans would fill a novel (hint, be on the lookout for my memoir, Illegal), but to summarize: I started boarding in high school, orchestrating my escape from my mother. I ignited protests that shut classes down for a week as a sophomore, and broke dorm rules, mostly being off campus and stealing. I began to understand that the adults around me recognized my contributions to discussions in ways they didn’t other adults’. And I learned that the school held me at an arm's length, even as I showed clear signs of distress like 40 pound weight cycles, plummeting grades, and general irritability. Giving me the help I needed would open Milton to liability suits. We reached a shaky understanding: a coordinate response would not be coming; my rule breaking would go largely unaddressed. I survived because individuals, despite owing me nothing, gave what they could. Teachers, friends, strangers, my aunt. I didn’t go to my high school graduation. I was not proud of what I had done during my time at Milton. I was mad at the school for failing me. I didn’t want my mother’s and father’s absences, in the crowd of hundreds of proud parents, to remind me of yet another way I was different. I moved out of the dorm a day early, skipping out on senior celebrations. I spent the summer before college working at the Starbucks inside the Star Market opposite the Prudential Tower. The Not-Real Jobs I’ve Had I walked three miles to work and back, down Mass Ave. I had not yet re-discovered biking. I walked faster and was more reliable than the circuitous bus routes. When I was scheduled to close, I began collecting the food Starbucks demanded we toss out. I finished closing by 8:30, after Mass and Cass got busy, and distributed the pastries on my way home. Starbucks said they didn’t donate the food because they were liable if someone got sick or had a reaction. I knew they meant they didn’t want their product to be seen in vagrant, homeless hands. It would shatter the illusion of luxury and exclusivity they sell. Cruelty is the point. I wish I could’ve given out the sandwiches, something with protein instead of all the sugar, but they would have flagged me for heating/cooking them. You do what you can in the moment and learn for future revolution. When I talk about Mass and Cass, I don’t frame the people in crisis as failures of single individuals or administrations. I see them as victims of an intentionally dysfunctional system, people I have more in common with than I do with the rest of “civilized society”. I see a sibling trauma, unmet need; we are separated only by a network of aid and opportunity that allowed me to move beyond my collapsing world. Candidates who tell you they’ll fix the problem without overhauling housing, labor, food access, and mental health services aren't looking to fix the problem. They're looking to eliminate people, or move them elsewhere. My first year of college was interrupted by Covid. When I returned to NYC the next year, I took an internship with Legal Services NYC. The bulk of my work focused on Emergency Rental Assistance Program applications. ERAP was the federal program rolled out to help keep people housed as the economy shut down. I interviewed applicants, walked them through applications, created know-your-rights info sheets, and followed up with clients to ensure they had all the documents necessary to get approved. My own homelessness had revealed the insanity of a society that refuses to ensure the basics of survival despite material overabundance and truly sinful levels of waste. This internship got me close and personal with the inefficiency and stupidity of bureaucracy. Rather than giving that money to applicants directly, or handing them a check or card that could be used exclusively for rent, the money had to go to landlords; they had to agree to receive the federal funds. Why would they reject the back pay rent money? To evict tenants, plaster a new layer of white paint, and upsell the apartments to a desperate market. I also worked at an Italian specialty pasta shop on W. Houston(How-ston) St. It was generally a good job, but you can only handle being racially harassed so many times before you leave. A man berated my older coworker who dared ask him if he needed a bag. When I told him to leave her alone, he said nadie te pregunto mono negro – no one asked you black monkey . I told him to be careful, being so close to meeting god. The owners did not ban him, did not ask for an apology, and when he did it a second time, I knew I was better than this. All service and retail workers are, and yet, this idiocy is normalized. I spent a summer working for NYC’s Department of Sanitation, as a community outreach intern. I spoke with hundreds of businesses, helping them come to compliance with sanitation laws before enforcement or fines. I worked dozens of tabling and touch-a-truck events, handing out information to city residents and letting kids climb into the muraled sanitation trucks. In August I spoke with thousands of Queens residents about the new borough-wide compost collection rollout. My Spanish improved dramatically from use. I took charge of our intern team, handling the added responsibility of coordinating between groups, splitting terrain and tasks, and ensuring work was completed before we went home, without extra pay. And I also made note of what did not work about this compost rollout. I interviewed and volunteered at a composting plant to understand how we can capture the 100 billion pounds of food Americans waste every year. Instead of individual trash, recycling, and compost bins that every residence places out on the street, Boston can consolidate collection to 2-5 bins per block. This model solves: the repetitive strain of lifting trash into trucks; the rats that chew through plastic; the wind that blows garbage out and all over the streets. I spend my time working on fixing issues like these for the next generation systems I hope to implement in Boston. The summer after graduating, getting no responses to hundreds of applications I sent out, I worked as a contractor’s assistant for a friend here in Boston. I lowered the foundations of a house, used a jack hammer, drills, power washer, and operated a hand auger. I carried in thousands of pounds of mortar and concrete mix, and carried out thousands of pounds of concrete and dirt we had drilled off the floor. I helped replace decaying wood on a second floor deck and lay the foundations for a patio. I quit after 10 weeks because I wasn't going to remain friends with the contractor if I continued; he said I lasted twice as long as he expected. I have done the manual labor it takes to build and maintain this city. I know what protections workers need, and how the city can show them its appreciation (things like temp-controlled stations for crews out in rain, cold, heat). In the fall 2023 to winter 2024, I worked in Arlington as an after school teacher. It was the most fun job I had. The kids reminded me that children have a passion for learning that our education systems destroy. I learned how to motivate obstinate kids, how to redirect disruptive energy, and led a few days of the February Break camp. Two weeks into this job, I texted my advisors –turned lifelong friends– that the snark and button-pushing was payback for my crimes. I biked 12 miles there and back from Dorchester everyday. When I didn't have my bike, I took the Red line to Alewife and ran 3 miles along the Minuteman Trail to get to the school. I have always been reliable, dependable, and committed to executing the roles I play wherever I go. 2 years out of college, this past winter, I had to find a second part-time job: an undergraduate internship with the Conservation Law Foundation. Thank god it was paid. I performed numerous research tasks for litigation, like collecting and analyzing data on pipeline explosions. I pored through hundreds of FOIA documents, picking out details to strengthen our cases. When various teams got busy with litigation, I took charge of CLF’s comments on the 2026 MSGP, performing comparative analysis with the previous version to identify backsliding standards and measures. I was then given the responsibility of drafting the bulk of the comment. Since October 2024, I have filled the role of manager at my part-time job in Beacon Hill. The restaurant had just opened up, and after a week of seeing my work ethic, the owner offered me the role. He has said he only feels at rest leaving the shop when he knows I or one other coworker will be there. In this role, I have interviewed, selected, and trained new hires. I helped stabilize the personnel aspect of the restaurant, managing the schedule, creating documents for procedures, and reaching out to city hall and local businesses for partnerships. I've sent out over 500 applications to “real” jobs. 60 alone to City Hall. My lack of experience isn't a lack of effort on my part. Do I not have a resume that shows I'm capable of more than part-time retail work? This issue is not unique to me; capitalism wastes so much human potential because realizing it threatens the entire premise of the system. Millennials have spent years being the most educated and underemployed generation this country has ever produced. My generation follows in their footsteps: a lifetime of sending out resumes from retail jobs. Average rents in Boston exceed $3,000/month. At minimum wage, that's 50 hours of work every week, pre tax, pre utilities, necessities, bills, pre loans. The elites running society have the audacity to ask why people aren't starting families, why people don’t own homes, why people are fleeing Boston. Why should people in their mid 30s, with multiple roommates, stay in the city if it will not recognize them as essential to its function? If the people who service Boston cannot afford to live in it, the city has failed them. Theoretical and Academic Record We discussed antidepressants during one high school health class. The teacher asked us for our thoughts on their prescription and use. I listened as my classmates shared their opinions: they’re positive because they help fix chemical imbalances; I have been able to focus more on school and my life; I think it's dangerous to rely on these chemicals; I have seen some people get more imbalanced until they find the right combination years after starting. Once everyone had shared, I provided my synthesis: We cannot ignore or discredit the biological, chemical impacts these drugs have. They help balance people out, and the stigma around them is needlessly cruel. We eat food to attain compounds we cannot make ourselves, why should doing the same to balance chemical signals be shameful? However, we cannot pretend like this band aid is anything more than a short-term solution. People aren't depressed because of chemical imbalances. They are depressed because elites openly destroy and poison our world. Our futures look bleak, what are our prospects? Professionals have been warning of multiple crises for years and nothing is offered except distractions telling us to consume more to fix ourselves. I have performed this analysis my whole life, and made it the heart of my degree at NYU. I went to NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. I created my own degree: Critical Systems Studies. Critical : I meticulously analyzed, critiqued, and offered alternative systems. Critical Systems : The flow of information, resources, and labor that cannot fail, lest we plunge society into bloody chaos. Systems Studies : I do not approach governing and education, or food and mental health as separate from each other. These are complex, interlaced systems that cannot be siloed and changed as if effects won’t ripple across all of society. I took classes in all sorts of departments: economics, communications, history, public health, civics, political theory, etc. In all these classes, even in lectures of 100+, I made vital contributions. Not because I hogged air time, but because people in classes for their own majors often stayed silent, leaving the professors to talk to themselves. In a political communications class, when the professor asked if the stunt Pelosi pulled at Trump's State of the Union was appropriate, I said I cared less about it than the insider trading she and much of Congress have brazenly engaged in for decades. I remained vocal throughout those four years that Democratic and Republican leadership have more in common with each other than the people they pander to with identity politics. I took Italian and Japanese in my first few semesters. Italian was a breeze, given my background in Spanish, Latin, and French. Japanese was the most I ever struggled in a class, despite putting 10 times the effort compared to any other subject. I dropped Italian and minored in Japanese, knowing it would lower my GPA by .25. The challenge was crucial to future plans of global cooperation, and to avoid mental complacency. In a public health class, I spoke openly about the eating disorders given to me by my mother. My frankness allowed others to share themselves, understanding that education is not meant to be abstract study. It is supposed to train us to analyze the production of our lives, so that we can intentionally shape our presents and futures. I was a leading voice in my classes because I cared to take ownership over my education. As I sifted through the trauma of my childhood, I realized it was a direct outcome of the systems of abuse that control our lives. Maybe more acute and relentless in my life, but present in everyone’s life to some degree. Education, housing, food, government, trade; I understood that I could not let the machinations of education slot me into this failing, dying system. I needed to turn its resources to liberation, not solely personal, but national, global, beyond our species. NYU, even receiving many of my pointed critiques, recognized my efforts. Gallatin awarded me for interdisciplinary academic excellence. I hadn't known it was an award I could pursue. They nominated me as their candidate to speak at the all school graduation exercises. Of the four finalists, I understood why I wasn't selected as the speaker: hearing the institution’s complicity in abuse is not exactly great graduation speech material. Leadership While at NYU, I joined a leadership organization called Junior Chamber International. As the youngest member, before I'd been officially inducted, I already served on its board. Before I received any training, I taught English and Spanish to over 50 people, organized member appreciation events, and launched a project that cleaned 500 lbs of garbage from city parks and streets. I created a garden bed that produced abundant tomatoes, peppers, onions, squash, and herbs, with minimal input. I documented and shared the process, showing how I had saved months of compost and layered it into the soil as I constructed the bed. February 2024, I left Boston on a 2,000 mile trip across the country. Some people travel to Europe or Mexico after graduation. Overachieving, delusional me thought I would be able to bike 100 miles for 100 days to cover the entire circumference of the country. The road humbled me. It tested my ability to plan and improvise, to reach out to people, to read my environments, to navigate the unknown with a goal in mind. I managed to see the eclipse in Austin, Texas. This project was political and personal. Having just become a citizen after 20 years here, I needed to understand what America and being American mean. What is the nation’s identity stripped of the political circus and identity politics that has defined it since its beginning? The Otis, Samuel Adams, the Blackstone, Let's Get Moving, Steppingstone, Milton Academy, C5 Crossroads for Kids, Camp Harbor View, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, NYU : This exhausting list of leadership programs and institutions shows I have been prepared in numerous contexts by dozens of interests and people. I have been training myself my entire conscious life. I never set a particular title as a goal —in fact, running for mayor wasn’t on my radar a few months ago. But as I traverse the city, noting its dysfunction, wondering why it can’t step forward, I realize I need to step up. In a month alone, I’ve stopped people smoking in moving subway cars, got rowdy children on school buses to settle down and sit, and cleaned 600 pounds of garbage around the city. What could have I achieved had the Wu administration hired me? Does the city want homegrown talent to move elsewhere? What potential can I help Boston unlock at its helm? Ongoing Clean Up of the Dorchester Shores My goal is liberation, advancement, bounty, compassion, cohesion. Boston is poised to lead a world that can see itself honestly, working to improve while celebrating its beauty. I am a kid raised, shaped, trained by Boston, the intended product of its schools and programs. Mr. Kraft cannot relate to the basic realities of people fighting to stay alive in this system. Most of us can’t afford rent, much less a condo on a whim to enter the mayoral race. Mayor Wu is a dedicated civil servant, but she is not bridging critical gaps in transit, housing, and labor. Neither of them can claim to have been raised here, steeped in the physical and social fabric of Boston. Most critically, I do not have to answer to anyone besides the people of Boston. If you ask Kraft the intention behind his work with organizations like the Boys & Girls Club, I imagine his mission is the same as Steppingstone’s, C5’s, or JCKF’s: to provide life changing experiences to children that will train them for leadership. I am here today because dozens of institutions and individuals helped me advance through flawed systems. I was trained to recognize needs, to see how my talents can help others, and to lead, not through mandates, but through example. Do I, or any of the other kids who’ve gone through these programs, have to wait for establishments to tell us, “now you can lead your city”? Boston is proud of its history: the catalyst for the revolution that would birth the country. I am here to tell you the revolution was never completed. The colonial elite replaced the British Crown, cascading through history to end up here. A nation that poisons the planet, itself, and its people in service of oligarchs. Peter Faneuil built the “cradle of liberty”, where I became a citizen, off of the abuse and torture of black people. It’s time we continue the work started 250 years ago, and reignite the smoldering embers. However, I do not believe in the “raze and burn everything down” mentality. We only have so much time, so many resources. We need to operate within material and social constraints. I know what parts of the city work: it’s people. I know what can be made so much better: the systems holding us back, draining us. I know the sleeping potential hidden around many of its corners because I’ve come across them through a life of exploration. I have lived on the margins, making do with scraps. My entire childhood was a crash course in valuable, applicable governing skills. I can generate bounty out of what already exists. I want all kids to see Boston as a reflection of themselves, a city they helped build. I want every adult to feel the tingling of youth when they step out onto Boston’s streets. I will build a city that sees its residents and validates their existence. Alex Αλεξ アレックス Alex For Boston’s Mayor Joy is Revolution

How much more time do you want waste complaining about Boston traffic? Cars, bikes, and scooters customized to make noise have taken over Boston. Their drivers speed and rev engines at all hours of the day. I have spent many nights up until 1, 3, 5 am, listening to insecure men being nuisances for attention. And trailing ten minutes behind them are piercing police sirens.  All videos filmed by Alex Alex This winter, as I crossed Columbia Road–the white stickman affirming I had the right of way– a driver surged forward, missing me by a second. He just had to turn right at a red. Obviously I shouted at him: “What is wrong with you?! I have the light” His response? “What did you say!! You want me to light you up???” “Yeah, go ahead, shoot me because you  were wrong”.  How have we allowed this to continue? Why are we ok with our spaces being taken over by cars in ways that encourage and shield these people. Are you not concerned with the disregard for life, pedestrians or motorists, these vehicles spread? I cycle Boston on a daily basis. I commute four miles each way, go on longer 20, 30 mile loops around the city, and have even biked the 130 miles from Boston to Ptown in a day. Before the bike, I grew up taking the T and walking all over the city. All this to say, I have built a detailed and lived map of the city and its streets. I know where conflict arises and how it spreads. I’ve filmed hours of dangerous, stupid, inconsiderate road behaviors. In MA alone I have been seriously hit by 2 cars, with dozens of other “minor” confrontations.   Where are the cops (they are sitting on their phones in cruisers parked in bike lanes, bus lanes, crosswalks, on sidewalks —I’ve filmed it)? Traffic and transit problems are beyond actionable; the solutions come in many versions of long term and problem specific strategies. Many of these policies arise from research conducted by the City, and plenty are already implemented all around the world.  Congestion pricing on suburban vehicles. Revenue generated will go to improving city infrastructure and T/Commuter Rail projects loudest, heaviest, biggest pay more. Encourage drivers to take the T or commuter rail in exemptions for trades people or Boston business owners. not a license to violate traffic laws delivery trucks exempted if they arrive within the following windows before 7 am 11 am - 2 pm after 7 pm on days with no large events towns can collectively negotiate out of congestion pricing if   they support mixed-use zoning development, high density housing around commuter rail stations they commit to working with city and state to build out rail infrastructure, increasing frequency efficiency and punctuality they make honest binding commitments to counteracting NIMBY’s in favor of cooperative development Traffic law enforcement. cars should not be double parking, in bike/bus lanes, on sidewalks, blocking crosswalks/intersections, or generally driving erratically. the City could generate tens of thousands in daily revenue if the "public safety" budget of nearly 800,000,000 actually did its job exponential increases for subsequent violations. If price is too high, can be worked off with sweat equity by identifying other traffic violations. Bus corridors grid of dedicated, continuous bus corridors crisscrossing the city the corridors will double as EMS routes for faster responses linking priority spaces like schools, museums, parks, hospitals, and recreation districts Raised crosswalks; expanded bike corridors; accessibility audits of pedestrian infrastructure; parking garages on city outskirts Police force Bike division guarding children biking to and from school main traffic enforcement arm Motorcycle division tagging flagrant violations, tailing safety risk vehicles, directing traffic in high conflict zones Mayor Wu, I find the work of your admin and team to generally trend in the positive direction, but you lack the follow through and urgency on many issues; so as the saying goes: commit or get off the pot. Framing the Problem with Boston Traffic Despite campaigning on improving streets and public transit, Mayor Wu has conceded to entitled motorists and the auto lobby, and removed the pitiful showing of bus lanes. When bus service replaced segments of the T undergoing repair/improvement, were these busses given priority or their own lane? No, riders were forced into the dysfunction cars cause. Over the course of a week of commutes to one of my part-time jobs in Beacon Hill, I saw the removal of three blocks of “bus lane” on Boylston St. Mr. Kraft, at an event announcing his candidacy, asserted that Boston’s streets are congested because of hastily conceived and implemented bike/bus lanes. Lets take a look at a video I recorded on Boylston St after the removal of the bus strips that do not deserve the title of “bus lane”. Seems to me like the problems aren’t the bikes or busses, but the obstinate, stupid insistence that tax-payers publicly subsidize auto industries. In this two minute clip, you can see 15 vehicles flagrantly violating basic traffic laws, parking in what are supposed to be lanes of motion. There are dozens of open parking spaces available but walking more than 10 steps is a hate crime against drivers. I have seen a single cop clear this lane, and he too parked in the lane of traffic. Literally the moment he left, the street filled back up again. My new traffic congestion plan would include a flat $50 fine for the first three traffic violations (blocking crosswalks, bike lanes, parked on sidewalks, double parked, blocking intersections), with the fine doubling for each subsequent infraction. My approach to services like Amazon and Uber is further detailed below. At $50 each, in this clip alone, the city could’ve generated $750 in revenue in less than 2 minutes. You know this is not the extent of the law breaking that happens continuously, all over the city, at all hours, on a daily basis. What is the purpose of this doubling scheme? A $50 fine is not felt the same by someone who makes six, seven figures a year as a person who works multiple barely minimum wage jobs. This doubling effect ensures that no one thinks their wealth exempts them from the law. When the fines get too big, drivers have a second option to repay their debt: document other traffic infractions. The specifics are something to be worked out with communities and city council, but I imagine a corresponding time per penalty, with reductions for every violator they find. Basic Economics I will get railed for my age, my inexperience, my naiveté, and poor grasp of economics. So lets perform a basic economic exercise: The first, and almost only, economic law capitalists/liberals bring up is that of supply and demand. As supply dwindles or demand increases, price will increase. As more cars (demand) take up space on the road (supply), the more you will pay, with your time, in taxes, with your health, and with actual money. Everyone complains endlessly about traffic(you lose 79 hours/year ), parking( cheapest estimate: $900/year ), gas prices( ~$2,500/year ), insurance costs( $2,149/year ), road repairs(well over hundreds of millions, impossible to find exact figures for the city), Masshole drivers, and on and on and on . . . The industries and people who benefit from these insane expenditures are what I mean when I refer to the “auto lobby”. The more people that fill the roads, sitting one per 3,000 lb vehicle, the less parking spaces available, the higher the local price of gas, the more time you spend in the misery of traffic, the more you are taxed to maintain roads handling wear from these vehicles. I know you may not see the state of road conditions from your boxed-in cars, but I feel every pothole, wear, and deficiency. Do you know why this happens? Because thousands —if not millions— of 3,000 lb vehicles driving over roads day-in and day-out creates mechanical stress that cannot be avoided. You know what it takes to repair these roads? More taxes. And yet car drivers are the first to whine about the out-of-control taxes. As supply increases or demand decreases, so too will the price decrease. As more people opt for improved transit and bikes, the less traffic you as a driver will have to deal with, the less time you spend driving, the easier it is to find parking. Increased transit and bike infrastructure is a win for everybody who has a basic grasp of economics. The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility This law states that for every additional unit of X, the utility or value derived from X decreases. In the context of city road usage, any additional road space or accommodations made for a saturated car ecosystem will provide negligible value. What does this look like in real terms? It looks like a perpetual congestion problem even after governments like those in Texas or California spend hundreds of millions to widen freeways that are already 5+ lanes wide. Katy Freeway, Texas Mass DCR is currently trying to build a 6 lane highway in Brighton off the river. How many more studies need to be done before we listen to common sense? On my commutes, I pass hundreds of vehicles jerking through traffic, even though I am barely pulling 14 miles an hour. Giving space to under-served cyclists and transit will generate more utility than giving that same space to cars. Most streets already have 2 rows of on street parking, but no one ever seems to complain that they should be turned into lanes of traffic. The Human Cost In the USA, we sacrifice 45,000 people every year to auto related incidents —all for the privilege of funding auto industry executives (manufacturers, gas and oil, metal mining and refining, insurance, construction). September 2024, 62 year old John Corcoran, while cycling in Cambridge, on a section of bike lane raised up to the sidewalk, was struck by a driver. He later died of his injuries. It was not until March that prosecutors began the process of filing charges against the reckless motorist. March 24, 2024, 4 year old Gracie Gancheva was struck and killed by a pickup truck in the Seaport District. Mr. Kraft, how can you claim to be a candidate for the interests and wellbeing of families and children while opposing safer streets and bike infrastructure. Mayor Wu, what is the delay in implementing the findings of the hundreds of studies that come to the same conclusions? Everyone complains about kids’ lack of activity, about the amount of time they spend indoors on screens, about their lack of socialization, about their complete dependency on their parents. How can you fault kids for being this way when our physical and social infrastructure gives them no other options? Older generations love to talk about how they were wild children, not coming home until the sun set. But rather than fight to return this freedom to children, they selfishly turn the city and its neighborhoods into minefields. I am a daily cyclist and yet, if I had kids, I would not let them bike around the city. I know how dangerous it is. And the parents I talk to agree with me. Except the danger isn't in the cycling, its in being around cars. Gracie was not a cyclist. She will never get that chance. There was an overwhelming sense that this tragedy was nobody’s fault really; it couldn’t have been avoided. Except that blame can be assigned; drivers and corporations must be held accountable. Why have we accepted the enlarging of vehicles to the point that drivers cannot see children over their hood? Why have we let politicians and executives redesign the city to maximize profit at our expense? (Credit: AJ LaTrace on xwitter ) In the fifth grade, I snuck away to the Orient Heights Library after school, without my mother’s permission. As I left, I waited to cross the four lanes of Saratoga St separating the library from the Orient Heights T Station. The three furthest lanes stopped to let me pass, but a lady on her phone rounded the corner of the closest lane, sending me over the hood of her car. She sped off, and while the adults were distracted chasing her down, I ran away into the T. I didn’t want to get in trouble with my mother for sneaking off to the library, or with law enforcement if they found out I was an illegal. Last year, late February, on my last day as an afterschool teacher in Arlington, I was hit by another car. I was walking across the crosswalk when a driver too busy with a vape pen in his mouth turned left without looking. My left knee smashed into his right headlight and I fell backwards. A positive omen just before my cross country bike trip. Just a few weeks ago, another driver too impatient to wait for a green light almost hit me while I had a pedestrian signal. Like a good Bostonian, I asked if he was stupid, asserting that I had the light. He rolled down the window and said “how about I light you up”. Drivers are so entitled they threaten to shoot those they nearly injured —their entitlement is only reinforced by a culture free of consequences. Alex Alex’s Street, Road, and Transit Plan I don’t consider a painted strip of road littered with glass a “bike lane”. Bike lanes cannot be called such until a 12 year old can safely ride them on their own to school, to parks, to libraries, to see their friends. Bike lanes are not just for bikes: I have seen and documented them in use by parents with strollers, people with push carts, and people in mobility aids, because the sidewalks are too uneven and often blocked by vehicles Basic Bike Lane Principles Best practices for bike and transit infrastructure On the inside, the right, of a lane of parked vehicles current left side bike lanes create conflict when: drivers try to park; drivers are pulling out; drivers open their doors; drivers double park A single corridor on one side of the street for both directions of bike travel is better than two separate, narrow strips Bike lanes should be separated by sturdy bollards (bonus for ones that reflect community, bring identity to neighborhoods, are made in partnership with local artists. Some of my favorite ideas are ones depicting the solar system with distance to scale, ones topped with life cycles of various local flora and fauna, ones depicting Boston history) Bike lanes must be free from debris from damaged cars, or glass from liquor bottles thrown onto streets Clear signage directing motor-scooters and motor-bikes to general traffic Proper drainage Bike and Transit Corridor Network, Doubling as EMS Lanes Take a look at this video of traffic at the intersection of Mass Ave and Columbia Rd. I captured 2 minutes of the 4 in which a firetruck was stuck behind traffic. I see no bike or bus lanes in sight holding these vehicles up. In fact, had there been a bus or bike lane, EMS could’ve taken it to leap frog the dozens of cars with a single person in them. I film instances like these all over the city. What are the costs we incur to sustain this model? Why do we resist implementing transit corridors that criss-cross the city, providing comprehensive coverage, reduced mass transit times, and more responsive emergency services? Boston’s Finest Part of my plan to make Boston’s streets safer and more efficient involves tapping the police force. A separate policy proposal will go more in depth into my proposed cultural and institutional shifts at BPD, but this snippet here captures its heart. The police are not the law, above the law, or exempt from it. They must lead by example, and are to be held to the strictest standards, just like all civil servants. Under my administration, BPD’s authority and peace-keeping will not operate through threat of force, but through model behavior and integration to the communities they serve. In addition to bike units set out to ticket and enforce traffic laws, I will create an elite task force dedicated to ensuring the safety of children biking to school. (Bike units save money on insurance, gas, vehicle repairs, etc., so if you’re for reducing taxes, why would you oppose this low capital investment way of generating revenue?) there was no one in the driver seat, and an officer in the passenger seat This elite bike unit will be comprised only of the most upstanding officers, who pass rigorous background and behavior audits. Officers must be in peak physical condition and demonstrate deep knowledge of the city, its streets, and neighborhoods. These officers are community leaders that put citizens at ease through their demeanor alone. (two for one) Additional Elements of my Street Safety and Efficiency Policy Noise and Human Health Tricked out cars and motorcycles/scooters endlessly assault our ears. I wake up at 3 in the morning to the sounds of roaring engines. It is constant, at all hours of day and night. Do I really need to bring up studies explaining why interrupting sleep is a bad thing, or why humans and the natural world deserve quiet? These people are advertising themselves. They need everyone to know of their presence. Put bloated police budgets to good use and send a message that Boston does not tolerate the disrespect of the city and its people. The traffic enforcement cops dedicated to tracking these vehicles down will not chase after them. Doing so will just put more people in danger. And once one person gets caught, the others will try to hide. I propose a coordinated intelligence gathering period followed by a swift impounding/ticketing period. Speed Humps Mayor Wu is trying to lower speeds in the city by installing speed humps. Again, I agree with the underlying logic, but disagree with the execution. Take a look at these curb cuts and crosswalks. They are flooded and blocked. Hundreds more look just like this when it rains or snows. I am able to walk around or jump over. What about everyone who cannot: people with strollers or kids in tow, people with mobility aids, older people, people with bags, people who don’t want to risk walking into traffic? Instead of installing speed humps in the middle of streets, I intend to raise crosswalks to street level, and suggest whoever wins this election do the same. This design choice achieves multiple beneficial effects at once. Crosswalks serve as natural end points and consistently placing speed humps at ends of streets will condition drivers to respect even non-raised crosswalks. The elevation makes it clear to cars that they are in pedestrian space, not the other way around Fixes the curb cuts that do not align with sidewalks Eliminates flooded curb cuts Stops cars from edging lights, stopping in cross walks, and clearly defines the boundaries of the intersection box that they are not allowed to block Delivery Windows for Commercial Trucks Another major source of traffic are all the trucks that must unload and deliver the supplies that keep the city functioning. They will be exempt from congestion pricing if they arrive in the following windows (as in come, unload, and leave before window expires) Early morning deliveries: Finish by 7:30 am. Afternoon deliveries: 11 am - 2 pm. Night deliveries: Anytime after 7 pm, unless significant night events are scheduled. Delivery Services: Amazon, Uber, Lyft etc I support the Mayor’s current initiatives to make these companies apply for permits with increased reporting and data sharing. My proposals are complementary, focused more on the physical use of city space. Individual drivers will be fined as individuals, even if they are on the clock. For example, an Uber Eats driver double parked while grabbing food would add to their own personal tally. However, each driver associated with these companies will contribute to a singular running total. The exact details of the fine structure requires more data collection at a scale I am not capable of performing on my own. However, just like individual drivers can reduce their fines if they identify other violations, companies can reduce their fines for compliance with traffic laws and adherence to the permitting structure the Mayor is currently pursuing. Improved worker conditions, compensation, and reasonable quotas on drivers will also result in reductions to their fine total. The City and private sectors will need to work to create 5-10 min quick load spots on streets, or help businesses dependent on the delivery model create satellites that divert traffic from city centers or congestion zones. Congestion Pricing: from Boston, Massachusetts, and the Northeast corridor, to National High Speed Rail and Global Partnerships Boston must implement congestion pricing. Before you let Mr. Kraft whip you into a frenzy, congestion pricing applies to non city residents. If you live in the city, congestion pricing will not apply to you. The traffic in this video of Mass Ave @ Columbia Rd is almost entirely people trying to get to I-93. Meaning they are not Boston residents. They come in, wear down city roads, and back up traffic for city residents. We sustain and subsidize their suburban lives off of our labor. No, enough is enough. They can drive to T stations on the outskirts or to commuter rails, and ride the trains in. I filmed this video of Mass Ave on a Sunday, on my way to work. As you can see, dozens of parking spaces that are filled on the weekdays are completely free. Suburbanites coming into the city represent a significant strain on Boston’s infrastructure. A portion of the revenue generated from congestion pricing will go to developing world class public transit, bike programs, etc. The remaining part will go towards improving T and commuter rail access: lower prices, more frequent punctual trains, and expanded routes. This effort must be a city-state partnership that the state takes accountability for. Boston, as the economic and cultural heart of Massachusetts, wields great influence. We should use that influence not solely for self gain, but for mutual development across the state under the guiding principles of equity, justice, and community. As the unqualified, incompetent, self-interested buffoons in DC torpedo global diplomatic relations, the burden for maintaining these international ties will fall to our cities and states. There is so much opportunity in the chaos they cause. Expanding T (like branching off the Blue line to service Chelsea, Everett, and Revere) and commuter rail services will require a level of efficiency, punctuality, and communal respect we have not yet achieved. But plenty of cities around the world have already done so, demonstrating that projects 10x the magnitude are possible. These infrastructure projects are rife with technical and cultural exchanges with countries like China, Japan, the Netherlands, etc. These improvements in local rail, centering Boston as a major hub, set strong foundations for a national high speed rail network. We would begin by connecting the Northeast corridor, running a continuous line from Maine through to NYC, Philly, and DC. With the right attitude and leaders, we can open up connections to Canada, reaffirming a longstanding mutual partnership. The current fear surrounding the safety of flying further forces open the door for national high speed rail. I promise that my day one improvements to city life will lead into attempts to establish Boston as a national and global leader. ***This policy proposal is distinct from my bike, street design, and child cycling proposals. In separate documents I will go over cyclist training/registration, bike busses for BPS, 10min-under parking spots for delivery services, and more comprehensive street design philosophies, like removing parking at the corners of streets to eliminate blind turns***

Endless honking from aggressive drivers, short tempers on a packed T, unhinged meltdowns from customers and workers in retail  Stress, distrust, isolation, selfishness.  The oligarchs in DC/the country/the world operate through fear. We need to be separated, broken down, and afraid of each other for them to maintain control. When we are too busy tearing out one another’s throats, too distracted with bare survival, the pillaging of the planet is trivial. We do it for them, at our expense.  Joy,   Fun, Friendly Competition  are imperative to resist their woke, identity-politics mind virus.  The following events and policy aim to build a cohesive Boston unlike ever before. Schools, neighborhoods –the City as a whole– we will create a new identity for the City of Champions. These ideas combine civics, infrastructure, community building, business development, and trade revival.  These events are listed in order of increasing funding/logistics needs. Many of these can and should be implemented by whichever candidate wins at minimal cost. Disclaimer : I am a single person setting the framework for what a team of civil servants, private citizens, and local businesses will need to work together on to flesh out. If you notice a gap, good! Get involved and shape Boston into a city that is yours. City Wide Scavenger Hunt City Hall, City Council, and other leaders in business and non-profits will have a city wide scavenger hunt sprung on them.  There will be no special accommodations on this day; traffic and transit will run as normal. They will not be allowed their phones or cars. They must navigate the city using public transit, bikes, walking, their own knowledge, and the information publicly available (like maps of Boston).  Goals : Showcase the city through locations on the scavenger hunt (historic spots, scenic looks, neighborhood staples, schools and parks, ghost bike locations, etc)  Show the city which of its leaders actually know Boston Make these leaders come to terms with the infrastructure needs of the city in undeniable ways  Their assistant will follow them and livestream, as well as offer hints. Hints start at $20 and increase $10 per additional. All the money will be donated to charities and city programs. The multiple perspectives will be projected at City Hall Plaza. Livestream donations are another source of fundraising. Fun wagering on who will do best, refreshments and entertainment throughout the day for people who stop by to watch. This is as much a reward for competent politicians/leaders as it is a punishment for those neglecting their responsibilities.  The hunt creates a public record and ensures leader accountability. If they start cramming in preparation, good, at least they’re learning more about the city and will hopefully be better able to serve it.  Whoever completes, or does best in the hunt will win points for their neighborhood’s total in the Boston Summer Games.   T Masters Who knows the T the best? Who will be crowned the master of certain lines or routes?  Competitors will be given two transit locations that they will have to navigate as best possible. No biking. Walking ok. Basic safety rules and dangerous behavior will get you disqualified. Chance for residents to show their secret talents and hacking of transit schedules. Champions get a year of free T access, and an ad on the route they won.   Added challenges like limited budget (so have to make smart transfers) Can only use bus lines Again these events are open to community input and leadership to establish rules Games/Events in the Common Skating on the Frog Pond is a quintessential Boston experience. But the Commons are underutilized. A movie series, one every month, weather permitting, is a year round project that increases the value people get out of living in the city. Again the following list is not exhaustive, just passion projects I would love to get the chance to implement.   Fall Events Harvest Festival/Markets  Celebrate the farmers of Mass, New England, and Boston’s Urban farms. Show off their goods, essentially an expanded farmer’s market. Plenty of treats, recipe demonstration, and classic activities (bobbing for apples, face painting, darts, etc) Set up a hay maze(can later be used for composting, or if still good quality for feed). Fastest time through it will win automatic advancement to their event of choosing for the Boston Summer Games  Halloween Parade through the Commons and Public Gardens  On this day, if in school, kids will have early dismissal and have all eyes on them and their cool costumes. Halloween is one of the few items a year where people freely give out compliments, food, and good spirits without anyone yelling about socialism. Lets build off of this cultural conditioning to recognize we can just do this all the time.  Emphasize not giving out candy, especially not wrapped. A quarter of children are overweight, the percentage rapidly increasing. The main downsides of current Halloween traditions: excessive sugar consumption and waste. Once again, spotlight local businesses. Highlight regional and local treats, show that the appeal of Halloween is not the candy, but the open giving and community Zombie Tag In conjunction with Halloween but also spread out through the week. Games of Zombie Tag by age range.  Kids will get afternoon/early evening slots for these games When the sun sets, the adults will get their turn. Use glow in the dark paint to represent who is a zombie and show when someone had been tagged into a zombie.  Winner of their rounds will get automatic byes to their event of choice for the Boston Summer Games  Winter Events  Snow Sculptures and Hot Chocolate/Ciders  When the snow allows for it, section off parts of the commons for sledding, for igloo building, and for an official ice/snow sculpture walk. The frosty equivalent of the sand castle display at Revere Beach  Can do even cooler things like adding lights to the sculptures. Instant classic and gives people a reason to visit during the winter Bountiful opportunity for local business development. Red Apple Farm, located in the Boston Public Market, could set up their donut machine and provide fresh apple cider donuts and hot cider. There is no shortage of local cafes who could do the same with coffee, hot chocolate, teas, etc.  Ice skating performance/show.  A combination of professional talent hired, as well as opportunity for locals who want to show off their skills to sign up to do a single or team performance. If at all possible, maybe expanding the rink. If not, the size is plenty good now.  Spring/Summer Events 4 Way Capture the Flag Teams of 15: City Hall vs BPD vs BFD vs Sanitation. Mixed gender teams Winners get dinner paid by the losers. They also get to choose what charities/programs donations and raised funds go to Critical movie showings Films, presenters, and discussions. Different organizations and neighborhood programs can sign up to host a movie. Showings like Hidden Figures, Selma, Bajo la Misma Luna, Nature Documentaries, etc.  Cook Boston People are severely lacking in basic life skills like cooking, which are being replaced by fast food, industrialized crap, takeout, and home meal kit services. Family recipes are being lost, the communal aspect of food is gone. This initiative will combat the loss of food culture.  Invite people, from local and celebrity chefs to grandmother's, parents, and young aspiring cooks, to share recipes.  Emphasize sourcing ingredients as locally as possible, including showing the process of killing, cleaning and butchering meat.  There will be some in person 6-10 people events done by sign up, others that are recorded and posted on a Boston website for wide reach. At the end of the year, all the year's recipes are compiled and the top 50 voted into an “Eat Boston” cookbook, unveiled at the Summer Games, presented to winners.  This creates more community and common identity, as well as generates revenue and attention for Boston as a culinary capital.  Each neighborhood will run their own series, maybe twice a week. Combatting the food loneliness epidemic and food illiteracy.  How the Children Saved our Wildlife + Children Science Expo Most of us remember raising caterpillars in elementary school. That round mesh cage that filled up with monarch butterflies.  We can scale this project. Have homerooms and science classes raise insects. So many science, math, and reading lessons to be derived from this effort(percent of eggs that hatched, percent that survive, how much mass/height they gain, averages, what percent of total pop schools have released, etc). Continued tracking throughout the years on sightings, how it affects other species (like predator birds and the plants they pollinate) Social studies can involve learning local plants, medicines, foods, and lessons from native tribes.  Field trips to plant native species’ food sources before their insects are released. Making seed bombs in art class with clay and local flora seeds. Partnerships with farmers, artists, gardeners, native tribes  Making poster boards and organizing a Children Science Expo in the Common presenting on their efforts during the spring as well as during the summer games Partnerships with museums like Children’s and Science Museums, as well as with colleges and universities. Reaffirming that places of education are of the people and for collective betterment, not of government and elites  One week will specifically be a science week, where streets parks and public spaces are turned into educational galleries of how our material world is produced, the damage done by spread of consumerism and chemicals of capital, and ongoing efforts to right the ship Basically I want Boston to produce the kind of leaders other cities and states turn to for guidance. Bostonians will spread our principles, help stabilize the nation, establish new ways of living, and form strong ties and collaborations.  Artists Showcases Woodworkers, metalsmiths, clothes makers, glass blowers, sculptors, dancers etc. are under-appreciated and dying breeds. The City can bring them to the forefront once again.  Link them to volunteer and teach at community centers, emphasizing local arts and artisans Days where local craftspeople are highlighted and people are encouraged to buy from them. Buy furniture, clothes shoes, things that will last you decades, that’ll you want to repair, not industrialized crap that will break in months just to buy again next year Organizing collectives and craft spaces to bridge the capital hurdle most single craftspeople cannot afford.  Guaranteed vending spaces across the many events I have proposed, like the Harvest Festival or Summer Games Nightlife in Boston Focus on activities not centered around drinking, with spaces set aside for teens and younger adults. Have businesses set up their own night themed events, establish a district that stays open later (closed down by 4 am). Preferably separate from residential areas that would be asleep at those hours. Work with community orgs to create a noise plan.  Escape rooms, movies, late night dining, comedy shows, live music, the list is truly endless for those with the entrepreneurial spirit. Boston is notorious for its universities and hosptials. These students and professionals would certainly provide a constant stream of people in need of late night activities. Plus date nights for parents who finally get time for themselves. The City is currently trying to expand nightlife through scattered loans and grants. I propose the city organize a series of meetings/conferences with capital investors and entrepreneurs/businesses to identify which sector of the city is best primed for a night life development. Rather than trying to inject money without direction, the city should be providing the scaffolding for these groups to develop a cohesive vision, and then support them through the permitting, red tape, and necessary studies (per the role of the business liaisons identified in my "The Pro-Business Candidate" policy). This effort will be supported by modified T hours. Different people operate on different schedules. It should not be hard to find enough night owls to support this evening T division. At this hour of the night, since traffic will be lighter and to minimize overhead, bus service makes the most sense. Another reason why I am seeking to consolidate night life, to maximize the utility of these late night T routes. Boston Summer Games This will be the flagship event of the summer, unfolding over 3 months. Our own personal Olympics.  These games are the vehicles to highlight and push comprehensive street redesign, including: pedestrian, bike, transit focus; capital investment and redevelopment of neglected areas; streets that invite you to stay and enjoy the art or little pockets of peace.  Starting late May, kicked off by the City Wide Scavenger Hunt, every weekend, 2-3 neighborhoods in the city will basically have neighborhood wide block parties. Each neighborhood will have to figure out how they make their teams and who gets to move on to the city wide events. Team and individual registration will require litter clean up. This project will scale from the block parties organized by Dept of Parks and Recreation.  The Mayor’s Youth Council can lead the charge in organizing the under 18 games. Neighborhoods will run their own basketball, baseball, soccer tourneys, swimming competitions, the usual smattering of track and field events, and fun new events voted in by the city. They will organize the litter collection and tracking, classification and drop off.  Cleaning up garbage from their neighborhoods with their teams is an excellent team/community building exercise. Kids/athletes will feel a sense of ownership over their homes, and this experience will make them less likely to litter and more willing to confront those who treat the city like a dump. Active citizenship all the way down.  Local foods, vendors, and businesses will be spotlighted, as well as the unique cultures of neighborhoods. Kids present their school projects (like how many critically endangered native species they raised and released, their findings, their future plans), art, and literature.  Once all neighborhoods have made their teams and individuals have placed in local races, the city wide tournaments will commence (I'm thinking July 4th),  The big final event will happen around mid August. Like a new Boston Marathon exclusively for city residents. The route I propose starts at Franklin Park, down Legionnaires Highway, through the Neponset Greenway, the Harborwalk, Seaport, around the harbor into the North End, over the Longfellow Bridge back, into Boston through Mass Ave, along the Charles through to Brighton, doubling back to end on Boylston St.  Each person is competing for themselves, but each neighborhood/district will also have a running total of points. The ones with the most points win priority, in terms of choosing and dates, of the new community centers I want to build with the city. Each neighborhood/district will get these, so the next year, previous years winners will still get prizes, but the neighborhood centers will go down the line.  Excellent opportunity to invite non-Boston neighborhoods and cities to join in on festivities if they make a longer term commitment with Boston, to govern for the mutual interest of all regions. Can eventually spread statewide.  College students who are in the city for the summer are encouraged to join. Basically, I want Boston to be the hub for the USA’s most promising Olympic prospects. I want our city to cheer collectively for every Bostonian we see on the largest world stage  At the closing ceremonies, awards are given out based on neighborhoods' collective performances in the games, but also recognitions for which cleaned up most litter, diverted the most compost from waste, the ones that produced the least trash. We will highlight the individuals of every age that went above and beyond to be true city leaders.  Community Centers The community centers are neighborhood defining places owned by neighborhoods and residents. Other city residents are welcome, but priority is given to neighborhood residents, and it is closed off to others at certain hours. These places are meant to be a combination of community creation, art, local business and food, and activity. They are to be connected along mass transit routes, or even on commuter rail for ones that need more space I will detail them more in another document but here are some ideas   South Bay shopping center has enormous parking lots. Turn them into a skate park, with small gravity coasters, a changing mural wall, with spray paints that people can add to (if you fuck around with this privilege you will lose it, aka no nazi, racist, general asshole nonsense) There is a massive delinquency problem in the area already. Give kids a goal to work towards. If they cannot respect basic laws/rules/stay in good academic standing, they cannot enter these centers until they’re making consistent effort.  Outdoor Adventure Park. This one’s more likely to go on the outskirts of the city.  Longer bike tracks, larger gravity coasters, go karts, dirt bike tracks.  Integration of trades, keeping the bikes/karts in working order (these are the bikes impounded from the people violating noise ordinances in the city) Arcade, combination of chuck-e-cheese, sky zone, escape rooms.  residents are encouraged to partner to develop their own games. Building coding, gaming, artistic, and technical ability within the city Multi media art studio: learn glass blowing, work with clay, 3d printing, coding,  weaving and textiles, etc. Rotating cast of visiting professionals and artists, classes you have to sign up for. Sports complex, rock climbing wall, diving pools, specialized courts, places for kids to invent their own games and sports and maybe feature them at next Boston Summer Games  So many more ideas and possibilities.  These community centers will welcome families and people of every age. They are for the people of Boston. The centers will have time slots for different groups/ages. For example some time slots will be only for neighborhood residents, and wider city residents will be allowed in at other times.  However, I am targeting the ages of 10-22, a demographic that is sidelined in creating the City’s identity. I want to recognize them for their effort. These spaces are “free” if you're in good standing with academics and civics. Neighborhoods will have to come up with their own rules of conduct, on top of common city wide ones.

The following Rationale I presented to my advisor as part of the graduation requirements for NYU's School of Individualized Study Alex Alex Receives an Award from Gallatin Recognizing Academic Excellence Concentration: Critical Systems Studies Human civilization has entered a new era of Climate Collapse. For the past two decades, year after year, Western nations(specifically the USA) have watched as hurricanes, floods, droughts, fires, disease and famine increased in frequency and intensity. Rather than confronting the behaviors and economic structures that have created these conditions, we have doubled down on over-consuming and polluting, and disengaged from multilateral efforts to address the impact we have on the plane t. The UN Environment Programme, due to current efforts not doing enough to stay below the 1.5 °C limit in warming of average temperatures, recently released a report stating  “incremental change is no longer an option: broad-based economy-wide transformations are r equired to avoid closing the window of opportunity to limit global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C ” (UNEP, p. XVI). My studies at Gallatin deconstruct why “developed” countries have driven our planet to the brink of collapse, and how a handful of privileged economic, social, political elite have trapped, persuaded, or disoriented the majority of the global population to allow the abuse of the planet for personal gain. I pursued this study through distinct domestic and international lenses, drawing on the disciplines of politics, law, history, economics, and language. The first set of classes focus on the state of democracy in the USA and the dynamics that have kept it suppressed; the second set trace how these domestic abuses of citizens have translated to the abuse of politically weaker nations. These classes speak to the multiple impending, interrelated catastrophes threatening the current level of human civilization: severe malnutrition, ecosystem collapse, disease outbreak, resurgence of authoritarianism/nationalism, and numerous mental health crises gripping nations, from the USA and Brazil to China and Japan.  The USA, as the world's most powerful country since the early 1900s (when its military aid turned the tide in both WW1 and WW2), inherited the mantle of Western Civilization. It has been the single most influential director of western development, and in turn of global development, in the modern era. Before we can fully understand how the USA operates on the global stage, we must critically examine the claims this country makes to democracy.  William G. Howell in Relic claims that the source of political decline in the USA is the Constitution itself (Howell, 2016); despite its famous proclamation of the equality of all men, the very compromise that formed the union was slavery. This nation would not have been founded, nor launched a revolution against the Crown, had it not “compromised” to allow slavers to chain, mutilate, torture, and generally abuse black people. Can you found a nation based on slavery and then claim the title of democracy? The perverse hell Black People were forced to endure, through repeated and concerted efforts to crystallize slavery in legislation, is antithetical to democracy. Without this compromise, Southern States would have never joined the union. In fact, less than a century later, they waged the Civil War(1861-65) to secede because the federal government dared to infringe on state “rights” to keep people in chains: James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time  gives voice to the stories of enslaved and silenced peoples, their bodies raped by violent slavers and overseers; families separated when sold like cattle at auctions; countless unnamed people murdered, their bodies left to rot as warnings to those who sought freedom through flight or rebellion. He links those grave injustices to the current subjugation of Black People (Baldwin, 1993).  Beyond the inherent hypocrisy of a slave-owning democracy, the framers and signers of the Constitution were 39 landed, elite, white men –men who drafted laws extending suffrage to only their class of people (Howell, 2016). The 1828 presidential election was the first in which non-property-holding white males could vote in the vast majority of states; women were not granted suffrage until 1920(19th Amendment). Fifty years of wealthy white men making most of the political decisions were followed by another ninety of men alone electing political leaders and passing laws.  Though Black People were “emancipated” in 1863, and the 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote in 1870, the slate of vote suppressing legislation meant that many black people in the South could not reliably exercise that right until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Looking at this truncated version of political speech and rights challenges Americans to question when democracy was realized in this country, if it has been at all. By denying women’s suffrage, less than fifty percent of people by necessity have decided the political direction of this country, directed by the tracks set down by wealthy white founders. The true percentage is even smaller accounting for the exclusion and persecution of Natives and Black People.  I looked to Ancient Greek texts to understand how the facade of American Democracy persists. Intellectual domination by men, a tradition alive and well in the “birthplace of democracy”, has allowed academia to paint Athens as a democracy, even though only land-owning males could vote. Plato, respected for his pursuit of metaphysical truth, writes the following of women: “do you know of anything practiced by human beings in which the male sex isn’t superior to the female in all these ways (Pl. Resp. 455d.), clarifying that the things “in which the female sex is believed to excel . . . is most ridiculous of all for it to be inferior” (Pl. Resp . 455d.). He unequivocally states that the elevation in status of women in the theoretically ideal state does not change that by nature, men are superior to women in all things that matter. To try to demystify or explain the human experience while intentionally excluding the female narrative and lived experience opposes Plato’s goal to arrive at the true forms; it is this exact dynamic that the powerful use to weaponize academia and delegitimize all worldviews but their own. With a history documenting the USA’s democratic experiment’s tendency towards an oligarchic rule of duopoly, why have US citizens not caught on as well? Freire, through his critique of education in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed , suggests that the intentional defunding of education while passing budgets of $773,000,000,000 ( USAspending.gov ) for an ever expanding military –and subsidies for the same corporations that fund political campaigns– has conspired to keep Americans just educated enough to reliably generate profits for the elites, but ignorant enough that they can't fully articulate the frustrations they feel with their political systems themselves. Fifty-two percent of American adults have a literacy level lower than a 3, as measured by the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). They struggle with longer, denser, often digital, texts. They have limited ability to make meaning across multiple texts by using inferences and identifying rhetorical structures. With the amount of information one needs to consume to understand how the US government and its actors operate, you present them with an impossible task. The two party political system that has existed in some form since the nation's earliest days oversimplifies the national discourse of a nation of 350 million into out-versus-in-group conflict (Howell 2016). A duopolist political system where the leaders run in the same circles, benefit from the same policies, and are funded by the same corporations (corporations give to politicians regardless of party, they primarily seek access to political power) has robbed Americans of all but the performative aspects of democracy.  The amputation of citizens' capacity for political discourse and action has had horrific consequences on the fabric of American life, and the safety of the world. Kimbrell’s Fatal Harvest  notes that food waste in the USA exceeds 100,000,000,000 lbs annually, 40% of the food supply (Kimbrell, 2002). The Economic Research Service for the USDA calculated 33.8 million Americans suffered food insecurity in 2021, yet somehow two-thirds of Americans are obese or overweight (USDA ERS - Obesity). How do these statistics make any sense? US politicians, lobbied by food corporations like Nestle and Tyson, have allowed industries to create foods designed to be incredibly addicting, filled with chemicals that not only blow up American waistlines, but also threaten their health. Kimbrell shares that despite excessive caloric intake, over 90% of Americans suffer from some vitamin deficiency, most more than one (Kimbrell, 2002).  The decay of American health goes beyond individual bodies: Marcuse, in Cities Without Capitalism , investigates how auto companies have redesigned American cities and suburbs to accommodate their product at the expense of citizens' health and taxes (Marcuse, 2021). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with the US DoT, released a study estimating that over forty-thousand Americans died in auto-related accidents in 2021; the number is on the rise. Street parking dominates cities, occupying space that could be better used to consolidate waste collection, de-pave roads to prevent floods by allowing water to percolate, or grow food in cities to combat malnutrition and food insecurity (which will only increase due to the imminent collapse of industrial agriculture). All of this, combined with capitalism's urging to consume to forget about the horrific realities we live in, means Americans are eating themselves to death, and condemning the rest of the world to die slowly with us. The USA’s death spiral cannot have happened without its inheriting the colonial legacy of the West, or without liberal theorists’ efforts to bring the peoples and lands of the rest of the world under the power of capital. We export to them our trash; their suffering, stolen homes, and lack of food subsidizes the inordinate amount that we consume and waste. Roy deconstructs the West’s push for industrialization as the sole path towards modernization and economic independence in Poverty Capital , and industrialization’s relation to the control of resources and people through labor dynamics and overwhelming capital might (Roy, 2010).  Decades, and sometimes centuries, of colonialism fractured various native populations’ civic capacity –leaving hundreds of regions in political turmoil as different factions fought to fill the power vacuum left by colonial powers. The West, led by the USA and its arsenal of international economic institutions like the World Bank, pounced on that instability to fund actors friendly to western commercial interests (Roy, 2010), or pass legislation enshrining the rights of foreign capital at the expense of the people and earth. The West, having completed much of the process of industrialization by the early 1900s, sought to expand the reach of its markets in the rest of the world. The Green Revolution(1950s-60s) ushered in the age of industrial agriculture, destroying modes of sustenance that millions of native peoples worldwide had used: growing their own crops but also maintaining forests and plains to forage for nuts, fruits, medicines, game and wood.  By the 1970’s, the USA flooded poor nations with subsidized wheat and corn exports, amounting to 30% and 50% of global exports, respectively (Roy, 2010). Many farmers were forced off their lands, as they could not compete with the subsidized grains. Using the Lockean labor theory of property, Western Nations pressured national governments to allow corporations to appropriate land because native populations had not practiced European agriculture, and thus had not claimed the land for themselves. Millions were displaced to the slums in city outskirts (Roy, 2010), to create the surplus of labor needed to operate factories –but also keep wages as low as possible, as every worker is infinitely replaceable.  Liberal capitalists claim that “free” markets are the most efficient ways to organize resources, but theoretical economic paradigms divorced from political realities and the Earth’s health as prior to large-scale human civilization construct too narrow a definition of  “efficient”. Modes of food production that require intensive input of petro-chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc) and the subsequent waste of hundreds of billions pounds of food raise the question of the utility of efficiency as defined by output per input. Claims of liberal efficiency in agriculture are challenged by the loss of biodiversity and billions of tons of topsoil, irresponsible water use, and reduced monoculture harvest due to climate change or fungus/pest infestations (Kimbrell, 2002). National and global paradigms are the creation of elites (often white, often male) seeking to redesign the world. They have unilaterally imposed their vision of the world without the consent of their own nationals, much less the global population.  We must now reckon with these legacies, and decide whether we are content to face the end of the modern era with the same gluttonous apathy, or if we will radically reform global relations in a bid to save our species and honestly confront the legacies that have produced our world.  The oppressive role the USA has come to play on the international stage, and in many of its own citizens' lives, stems from the reluctance to honestly examine its founding and institutions to preserve a myth of a patriotic and democratic revolution. These texts and my classes at Gallatin do not seek to simply identify and explain the roots of various existential crises; they engage each other in discussion of how we manage our communities, nations, and species through them, and what forms of social organization we ought to aspire to. James Baldwin proposes love  to achieve racial justice; how do we harness love (respect for life beyond our own, admiration for beings that never have and never will exist again) to globally confront the crimes that have produced us and the world we live in? The planet and mass civil unrest share a clear message; the Colloquium offers a space to discuss the limited power of reformist actions, but also the pitfalls of narrow minded and rushed radical revolution. Works Cited Adult Literacy in the United States . nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp . Accessed  28 Oct. 2022. “Early Estimates of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities and Fatality Rate by Sub-Categories in  2021.” NHTSA -DOT , May 2022, crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/ Public/ViewPublication/813298. Accessed 26 Oct. 2022. United Nations Environment Programme (2022). Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing  Window — Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies . Nairobi. https://www.unep.org/emissions-gap-report-2022 USAspending.gov . www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=2022 . Accessed 28  Oct. 2022. USDA ERS - Key Statistics and Graphics .  www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics . Accessed 28 Oct. 2022. USDA ERS - Obesity . www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-choices-health/obesity . Accessed 28 Oct.  2022. Premodern and Early Modern  Plato. Republic (380 B.C.E) . Translated by G.M.A Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing  Company, Inc, 1992. [HIS] Plato. Timaeus &  Critias (360 B.C.E). UK: Penguin Random House, 2008. [HIS] Aristotle. Politics (350 B.C.E).  Translated by C.D.C Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing  Company, Inc, 1998. [HIS] Akka Mahadevi. Songs for Siva: Vacanas of Akka Mahadevi (1130) . Translated by Vinaya  Chaitanya. Harper Perennial, 2017. [CPC] 鴨長明, Kamo no Chōmei. Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World (1212). Translated by Yasuhiko  Moriguchi and David Jenkins. Stone Bridge Press, 1996. [CPC] 兼好, Yoshida Kenko. 徒然草: Tsurezuregusa, Essays In Idleness (1330). Translated by Donald  Keene. Columbia University Press, 1998. [CPC] Juana Ines de la Cruz. El Divino Narciso (1689). Red Ediciones, S.L, 2016. [CPC] Humanities  Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time (1963). New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Friedman, Thomas. The World Is Flat.  New York: Picador, 2007. [HIS] Putnam, Robert D. . Bowling Alone. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. [HIS] Schwartz, Timothy T. Travesty in Haiti . 2008. [CPC] Social and Natural Sciences  Hall, Peter A. Varieties of Capitalism. Oxford University Press, 2001.  Kimbrell, Andrew. Fatal Harvest . Foundation for Deep Ecology, 2002.  Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness, A Restatement. Harvard University Press, 2001.  Roy, Ananya. Poverty Capital. Routledge, 2010. [CPC] Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action. Harvard University Press, 1971.  Concentration Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of The Earth. Grove Press, 2005. [CPC] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.  Greer, Jed & Bruno, Kenny. Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism.  Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997.  Howell, William G. Relic . Basic Books, 2016.  Marcuse, Peter. Cities Without Capitalism. Routledge, 2021.

No, you're right, everything would be better if your color controlled everything . . . Political Party Poem, Fragment 1 Stupid uneducated bigots  Always on the wrong side of history Betraying liberty for power  Though to admit, we admire The ruthless efficacy  with which you rule  But We  could never debase to Your particular brand of cruelty While y'all whipped and raped chased and chained We welcomed those negro wretches  with open arms  You denied them bonds of family  the liberation of literacy  We bestowed them the fruits  of slaved labor sent North    It is You  in red at fault  If only you backed the right elites  This country would know peace,  an end to the constitutional assault  Me?! – NO  – how dare you  I posted the #black  square I wore the kente cloth When my daughter brings it around I even use they/them pronouns I fought for the Illegals,  I told the raving morons  when they go back to Mexico who will keep your fridge full? My pink pussy hat,  framed on my wall  next to clapping Pelosi in the bigender bathroom stall I was first to drive electric  eat only pasture-raised eggs When I travel to poor countries  I speak their funny little words instead What more could you want? Are land acknowledgements not enough  Must I kill myself  for what my ancestors did? Will that make you happy? Political Party Poem, Fragment 2 lib : capitaliberalism is the best vehicle to manage resources minimal gov’t serves capital: con  Catch a glinting eye       A spinning coin  always landing face up  Pointed nose Iron collar Devote your life chase Washington, Jefferson Lincoln, Hamilton  Jackson and Grant  Sat atop, Franklin Great men and leaders  Immortalized in Green  Lifeblood of this greatest country  Footnoted —erased,       enslaved girls  framed by the dollar  beyond the rooms, sky clad towers  overlooking parceled  owned developed land,  millions more  growing ~cotton~ Raising children while theirs  grow up nuffin That’s the past, move on  We’re tired of endless  Victimization  We are Free  A global beacon for Hope Markets and Democracy Where all this excess comes from  where all our trash goes  Who cares Who knows So long I get my fix Sugar, Caffeine Dopamine   Children of the Slums  be happy   for the privilege  to produce for me Political Party Poem, Fragment 3 con con con  con conservative con  congress conservative con  I am            I am  I am       I am                     Conservative!  Salute True  The Red White and Blue This land of man, virtue, and value  Bear Arms, Stand Proud  Guard the genders we know to be Two  through His Light  protect the Children  in Womb  Abortion ok  only post birth  & in Exodus 12:23-32 Proud Proud Proud To tyranny we’ll not fall That’s why we fund  Military  1 trillion:  It keeps the government small Our forefathers spat at Blue  Our weapons are rights, not prizes To defend our domain from police  Which,           thanks to us,                             rapidly militarizes Red Red Red  We are God’s Chosen People  Noble, Pure, Thoroughbred Through us unfolds His Righteous Plan Forever fund Con and Garchs  fight their Wars,  live their Poisons fulfill their whims,               as God has said on your Land,  on your Backs  til you fall Dead But bootstraps for the children  sat in schools  expecting "free" bread Political Party Poem Postlude Sow poison into land water, food, air, bodies Steal our home and labor, sold piecemeal to highest bidder Sustain your destructive bender At our expense If we behave, reward will come from sky The very life of this planet goes into their system Used, Abused Turned out toxic sludge

The following story opens my memoir, Illegal . It is my aunt's telling of my time in Mexico. The English translations follow the original Spanish. Prologo: Eras Feliz Tu mamá andaba en el pueblo de vacaciones. Ya habían pasado unos años desde que el papá de Anna desapareció. Y por suerte estaba tu papá también, que había regresado del Norte. Ellos eran novios de niñez, y el paso el tiempo bajandole las estrellas al suelo. Cuando ella regresó al estado de México, él la persiguió. Pasaron un tiempo juntos antes de que regresó al Norte. Pero a los días Rosa supo que algo no estaba bien, y le llamó, que estaba embarazada.  Pues ni modo  le contestó él, yo ya estoy aquí y mandó dinero para ustedes . Y si le puso dinero como unas tres veces. A la cuarta vez, él le dijo que pusiera esta clave en la cuenta para el dinero, pero cuando fue Rosa, se dio cuenta que no existía. Rosa lo llamaba, pero nunca contestó y desconecto el número. Yo me fui con ella a la ciudad. Cumpli mis quinces allá, y le cuidaba a Anna mientras ella trabajaba en la maquiladora.  Fue un día que hubo mucha tormenta. Yo me quede con Anna, y Rosa se fue al hospital con un señor quien vendía verdura en la esquina. Él era el único con carro.  Al mes y medio, desde las seis de la mañana hasta las seis de la tarde, regreso a trabajar. Ninguno de los dos se agarraron cariño; ella se iba cuando estabas dormido, yo te daba tu mamila, y ella regresaba cuando te tocaba dormir otra vez. Se sentaba y te echaba la chichi y así se quedaba dormida. Pero no podía seguir así; a ti te hacía daño la fórmula barata, que todos los otros niños comían, y tu fórmula cara se comía más que la mitad de un cheque. Al fin le dijo Marta que ella la ayudaría si se quería venir para Boston.  Your mom was in town on vacation. A few years had passed since Anna’s father disappeared. By chance, your dad was there too, he had returned from some time up North. They were childhood sweethearts, and he spent his time laying the stars at her feet. When she returned to the state of Mexico, he followed her. They spent some time together before he returned north. But within days Rosa knew something was up; she called him –she was pregnant.  No matter,  he answered, I'm already up here and I'll send money for you.  He did send money over about three times. The fourth time, he told her to enter the code on a wire account to get the money, but when she went to withdraw some, she was told that account didn’t exist. She called, but no response. He disconnected the number. So I went with her to the city. I turned 15 over there, I spent a year looking after Anna while she worked in the factory.  She gave birth to you on a stormy Friday. I stayed home with Anna while Rosa went to the hospital with the man who ran a produce stand. He was the only one with a car.  Within a month and half, from six in the morning to six in the evening, she was back at work. Neither of you bonded with each other. She left for work while you were asleep, I fed you formula during the day, and she got home when you were down for the night. She sank into a seat and gave you her breast, and that's how she fell asleep. But we couldn't keep that up. The cheap formula all the other kids had made you sick, and your expensive formula burned through more than half a check. Finally our sister Marta told her she would help if she wanted to come to Boston. ✫✫✫✫✫ Nosotros somos de campo; mi hermanita dice que ya es diferente, pero si yo movía un cuadro, ahí había un alacrán. Y si movía una olla, ahí había una culebra.  Nosotros llegamos a casa de Mamá, donde también vivian Dani y Joaquin. Allá, las casas son pegaditas –nuestra ya era casa de tabique. Los vecinos tenían casas de lodo y de palma los techos. Habían tantos árboles de fruta, palos de mango, zapotes, anonas –se me hace agua la boca imaginando morder una de las frutas de casa. Al lado había un terreno de limones, y ahí nos metimos a robarlos. Era de un hermano de Mamá, con quien no se llevaba.  Tu eras muy feliz con todo lo que tenías. Entre yo, Dani, y Mamá te cuidamos. Eras el consentido, un niño necio y terco. Si querías que Yeni te hiciera la mamila, Yeni te la tenía que hacer. Ibas a todo lado, y decias tengo hambre , y todos te daban de comer. Llegabas a casa de Mamá Chewi, diciendo que querías tacos de queso y un día le mandabas dinero del norte si solo te daba un taquito de queso.  Tu abuela de parte de papá se enteró que eras su nieto y te vino a buscar. Rosa no quería, pero a Mamá no le molesto y tu abuela también te cuido mucho. Dani siempre quería ir contigo a visitarla porque daba un dinero para comprarte algo y siempre dejaba que se quedara el cambio.  Rosa llamaba todo el tiempo; siempre preguntaba por los dos. Tu nunca querias hablar con ella, que no la conocías. Anna le decía no quiero hablar contigo porque tú me dejaste aquí. Ella se apuraba por traerlos. Tu le llamabas Mamá a mi madre y Anna te decía esa no es tu mama  y te enseñaba la foto que cargaba. Ella siempre se cuidaba de ti.  Anna fue la quien más sufrió. Tu te acostumbrastes –fue lo único que conociste, pero Anna venía de la ciudad donde se crió. Aquí íbamos caminando al arroyo donde nos bañamos y lavamos la ropa. En mayo y junio, salían las chicatanas. Dejamos las luces en el patio prendida por la noche y agarramos montones de esas hormigas para cocinar. Por la mañana las pegábamos en el aire con un bejuco, y los niños las recogían. Todo la asustaba y se puso más seria extrañando su vida perdida. We are rural people; my younger sister says that the town’s changed, but I remember, if I moved a frame, there was a scorpion. And if I moved a pot, there was a serpent.  We arrived at mi Mamá’s house, where my two younger siblings Dani and Joaquin lived. The houses in our town are right up against each other. Ours was made of brick. Most neighbors had houses made of mud with palm frond roofs. There were so many fruit trees –mangoes, zapotes, anonas– my mouth waters thinking about biting into a fruit from home. To the side of the house was a lime orchard, where we would sneak in to steal some. The land belonged to Mamá’s brother, and they did not get along.  You were very happy with everything you had. We took care of you, myself, Dani, and Mamá. You were a spoiled, stubborn, defiant little boy. If you wanted Yeni to make your bottle, Yeni had to make it. If you said tengo hambre, everyone gave you something to eat. You would go to Mamá Chewi’s house, moaning that you needed a cheese taco and you would send money from the North if only she gave you un taquito de queso .  Your grandma on dad’s side found out you were her grandchild and came to look for you. Rosa didn’t want her around, but it didn't bother Mamá; your grandma cared for you. Dani always wanted to go with you to visit her because she would give her some money to buy you something and always let her keep the change.  Rosa called all the time; she always asked for you two. You never wanted to talk with her, you didn’t know her. Anna would tell her I don't want to talk to you because you left me here . She was desperate to bring you both over soon. You would call my mom Mamá  and everytime you did, Anna would show you the picture she carried and correct you, that is not your mom. She always worried about you.  Anna suffered the most. You adjusted –the pueblo was all you ever knew, but Anna came from the city. Here, we walked al arroyo where we bathed and washed clothes. In May and June, las chicatanas took to the air. We left the porch lights on at night and caught bunches of the flying ants to eat. In the mornings we struck them out of the sky with a vine and you kids picked them up. Everything frightened her; she became more serious, missing her lost life.  ✫✫✫✫✫ Yo no sabía de los planes de traerlos al Norte. Me había peleado con Mamá y me fui de la casa. Estuve en México trabajando de sirvienta para una prima que tenía peluquería en zona cara. Regresé un día al pueblo y me preguntaron si quería ir yo al norte para dejarlos en Nogales. Y como todavía estaba enojada, dije que sí.  Al principio de Agosto venimos de Morelos a Acapulco, adonde íbamos a coger un avión a Nogales. Pero éramos tres menores y no nos iban a dejar subir. Yo tenía diecisiete y Anna solo seis años. Entonces no hicimos tres días en bus desde Acapulco hasta Nogales. Tu te measte en el bus, que usabas pampers para dormir en casa, pero no teníamos. Apenas ibas a cumplir tres años.  Ahí en Nogales pasamos un mes en hotel, esperando el ride por ustedes. Mi primo, un coyote, buscaba alguien quien iba pasarlos como sus hijos por la frontera. Pero ustedes se pusieron a chillar, que no querían ir con personas extrañas. Al fin los regresaron al cuarto, donde yo me quedé esperando para pasar caminando. Me dijo que no le dijera nada a Rosa. Ella había pagado buen dinero para traerlos en línea, con documentos falsos.  A la semana, vinieron a traernos. Recuerdo que fue un viernes. Nos subimos en bus y nos bajamos en la última parada, ya no habían casas, sólo monte. Éramos dos mujeres, diez hombres, y nosotros tres. Todos los demás ya eran adultos. El guía –el coyote, nos dijo que nos metieramos al monte, para esperar a los otros quienes venían con provisiones. A los diez minutos llegaron dos hombres a robarnos. Nos hicieron quitarnos los zapatos para ver si escondímos algo. Yo tiré mi cartera al monte.  Tu chaqueta me gusta más que la mía . Un asaltante le quitó la chaqueta a uno de los hombres, y también los zapatos a otro. Fueron muy amables con ustedes dos, hasta les dieron dulces, pero yo no dejé que los comieran. Todos pensamos que era parte del plan de los coyotes, robarnos lo poquito que teníamos, pero nadie dijo nada. ¿Qué podríamos decir en ese momento?  Caminamos por el desierto sonora toda la noche. Cerro detrás cerro, subidas y bajadas. Pasábamos ropa tirada por otros cruzantes. En un punto estábamos debajo de unos túneles. No podíamos ver, pero sentimos el agua por los pies. Ustedes dos no caminaron, entre los hombres los cargaron todo el camino. Al fin descansamos por las dos, tres de la noche. Los gritos de los coyotes resonaban por las noche y ustedes se acercaban y me dijeron que es eso? Tenemos frío.  Al proximo dia, el sabado, yo me tire acostada. No me iba a levantar. Era mediodía, y ya no podía más. El sol caía fuerte y yo era gordita. Ya casi no podía ver a la última persona en fila sobre el cerro cuando sentí algo por mis piernas. Era un alacrán – brinque a mis pies y los alcance. Eso si me motivo. Al fin del día se nos acabó el agua, y se decidió que lo quedaba era para ustedes dos. Unos se enojaron pero continuamos así. En la cima de un cerrito el coyote señalaba y decía ¿ ven aquella lucecitas? Ahí es adonde vamos.  Unas horas antes de la madrugada empezamos a ver ranchos escasos, y perros que nos persiguieron. Me rasguño una cerca de alambre, cruzando a un pasto de vacas. Entonces llegamos a una carretera donde patrullaban la migra. Quedamos tirados en el estómago en el monte, sin respirar, esperando que el coyote nos dijera Corran!   Al otro lado, quedamos también tirados en el monte. Todos sentíamos que nos subían algo. Gusanos, serpientes –no sabíamos. Yo les dije que no es nada, son hojas , porque el coyote me decía que los callara, si no nos agarran. Esperamos unos diez minutos cuando sonó un chiflido, una señal que el guía contestó con su propio chiflido. Llegó una camioneta. Todos se subieron atrás pero a nosotros nos metieron en frente; ustedes dos iban sentados entre nuestras piernas. ¡Que no se muevan! Dejaron a los demás en una casa, pero no me dejaron bajar: no, tú no te bajas. te quedas en el carro. Alcance a ver un montón de personas apachurradas en esa casa cuando abrieron la puerta, pero no me contestaban a donde nosotros íbamos. Al fin vi a alguien que reconocí: mi primo Arlo. Llegamos a su casa y nos quedamos una semana más, mientras él arreglaba nuestro ride a Boston. Nos compro ropa y comida, que tu querías cereal. Su mujer se enojó porque tu te miaste sobre el sofá y nos hizo dormir en el piso. Arlo nos vio en el piso y le dijo que parara con las tonterías. Cumpliste los tres años ahí en Arizona.  Continuamos al norte en un van normal, con diez personas. Íbamos repartiendo por todo lado, Georgia, las Carolinas. Un hombre que ya vivía acá nos invitó a todos un gatorade de su propio dinero, porque los que iban manejando no nos daban nada. Alcance a escuchar a Arlo sobre el teléfono el segundo día y le grite estos pinchos no nos dan nada de comer ! Como Arlo era mero jefe, les dijo que todos en el van ya habían pagado muy bien y necesitábamos agua y comida. Él me habló y me advirtió que no dijera que era mi primo. Estábamos en compañía peligrosa.  Por Norte Carolina nos agarró un huracán muy poderoso. Ya solo quedamos nosotros en el van, pero en ningún lado nos dejaron rentar un cuarto. Teníamos cara de montañero. Esperamos en un área de descanso, navegando por los árboles caídos. El coyote buscaba alguien en que nos dejaría pasar la tormenta y tú llorabas yo no quería venir al Norte. Yo quería quedarme con mi mama.  Al fin llegamos a casa de Choli en Chelsea. Entramos a East Boston por el Callahan Tunnel y el coyote nos dijo ven ese carro rojo? Ese es su carro. Rodney nos siguió a casa de su mamá. Yo solo me quedé una noche más con ustedes. El próximo día Marta vino a recogerme para llevarme a Waltham. Ella había pagado por mi cruzada y fui a trabajar como niñera para ella. Yo no quería ir. No la conocía, Rosa fue la hermana con quien mi cree. Pensaba que me iba a quedar con ella. Pero a mi no me preguntaron nada.  Yo vine porque me dijeron que me iba a subir en un avión. Yo vivía una vida pobre, simple, feliz en Morelos. Nunca nunca estuvo en mis planes venir al Norte.  My approximation of the journey through Mexico I didn’t know about the plans to bring you two north. I had fought with Mamá and I left the house. I was in Mexico, working as a servant for a cousin who owned a salon in an expensive part of the city. I came back to the pueblo one day and they asked me if I wanted to take you up north to Nogales. I was still mad at Mamá, so I said yes.  We left Morelos for Acapulco in early August, where we were supposed to catch a plane to Nogales. But we were three minors so they wouldn't let us board. I was seventeen and Anna only six. We made a three day trip by bus to Nogales instead. You peed yourself on the bus, because you still used diapers to sleep at home, but we didn’t have any. You were barely turning three in a month. We spent a month in Nogales living at a hotel, waiting for your ride. My cousin was a coyote and he was looking for people to pass you off as their children through the border. But you two began to cry, that you didn't want to go with strangers. Finally he returned you to the room, where I had stayed waiting to cross on foot. He told me to say nothing to Rosa. She had paid good money to bring you en linea, with false documents.  Within a week, they came for us. I remember it was a Friday. We got onto a bus and rode it to the end of the route; there were no houses, just countryside. We were two women, ten men, and us three. Everyone else was an adult. The guide –the coyote, told us to get into the brush to wait for the other guides who were bringing provisions. Ten minutes later two men showed up to rob us. They made us take off our shoes to see if we hid anything. I threw my wallet into the grass.  I like your jacket more than mine. One of the muggers took a jacket from one of the men, and the shoes from another. They were pleasant with you two, even giving you candy, but I did not let you eat it. We all thought it was part of the coyotes’ ruse, to steal the little we had left, but no one said anything. What could we have said in that moment? We walked all night through the sonoran desert. Hill after hill, up and down. We passed clothes left behind by other migrants. At one point we walked through some tunnels. We couldn't see, but I felt the water over my feet. You two didn’t walk. The men all took turns carrying you the whole way. Finally we stopped to rest around two, three at night. The coyotes’ shrieks pierced the night and you two huddled up and said what is that? We’re cold.  The next day, Saturday, I threw myself flat on my back. I did not intend to get up. It was midday and I just couldn't anymore. The sun beat down and I was fat. You guys got further, the last person in line was disappearing over a hill when I felt something on my legs. A scorpion – I jumped onto my feet and caught up with the group. That motivated me. The water ran out at the end of the day, and it was decided the remaining would be for you two. Some people got mad but we continued on. At the top of hills the coyote would point and say see those little lights over there? That's where we're going.  A few hours before sunrise we began to see spaced out ranches, and dogs that would chase us. I scratched my leg squeezing through barbed wire into a cow pasture. Then we got to a road where the migra patrolled. We laid on our stomachs in the brush, not daring to breathe, waiting for the coyote to tell us Corran!  On the other side we hid in the brush again. We all felt something crawling over us. Bugs, snakes – we didn't know. I told you not to worry, it's nothing, just some leaves,  because the coyote told me to shut you up lest we get caught. We waited ten minutes, until we heard a whistle that the coyote responded to with his own. A truck had arrived. Everyone piled into the back but they put us in front; you two were sat on the floor between our legs. Do not move! The others were dropped off at a house, but they wouldn't let me get out: no, you stay in the car . I managed to see a mass of packed migrants in that house when they opened the door, but they would not answer me when I asked where we were going. Finally I saw someone I recognized: my cousin Arlo. We arrived at his house, where we stayed another week while he arranged transportation to Boston. He bought us clothes and food. You wanted cereal. His wife got mad because you peed the couch and she told us to sleep on the floor. Arlo saw us there and told her to stop with the nonsense. You turned three there in Arizona.   We continued north in a normal van, filled with ten people. They dropped people off all over – Georgia,  the Carolinas. . . A man that already lived here treated all of us to a gatorade with his own money because the drivers wouldn't give us anything. I managed to catch Arlo’s voice over the phone on the second day and yelled these bastards aren't giving us anything to eat!  Because Arlo was the big boss, he told them that everyone in that van had already paid them very well and needed water and food. He spoke to me and warned against saying we were related. We were in dangerous company.  We got caught in a strong hurricane in North Carolina. We were the only ones left in the van, but no place we went to would let us rent a room. We had the face of migrants. We waited part of the storm out in a rest area, navigating around fallen trees. The coyote looked for someone who would let us ride out the storm and you cried that I didn’t want to come to the North. I wanted to stay with mi mamá.  We finally arrived at Choli's house in Chelsea. We entered East Boston through the Callahan Tunnel and at the bridge to Chelsea, the coyote told us, see that red car? That’s your car. Rodney escorted us to his mom’s. I only spent one night with you there. The next day, Marta came to take me to Waltham. She had paid for my crossing and I went to work as her nanny. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t know her, Rosa was the sister I grew up with. I thought I was going to stay with her. But no one asked me anything.  I came because they told me that I would get to ride an airplane. I lived a simple, poor, happy life in Morelos. I had never-ever planned to come North.  ✫✫✫✫✫

The darkest demons are those of our own creation . . . It first appeared on the faces of dazed animals wandering around in a stupor. They had been lured in by the scent of food, sealing their fates. Animals infected wandered through suburbs and cities all over. Sometimes, a samaritan would remove the covering with whatever blade they had handy. The rescued animal would scurry back into the foliage, hoping to forget the entire encounter. Mostly, we just pulled out our phones to record and laugh at the dumb animals bumping into walls. Then It invaded our waterways. Odd floating pieces of every shape and color. Tangled on the banks, clogging up rivers, floating out to sea. But below each one, hundreds more sank towards the sands. The rainbow rain a fantastical feast for the fish that filled their bellies. The bottom dwellers took to them, making homes in the ones concave and sturdy. We would read stories of sharks killed and gutted for hunting human catches; their bellies always packed full of these unnatural shapes. Could they have caused the erratic behavior? Before we realized, we were all spreading It, as if we couldn’t help It cover the planet fast enough. We bought and brought to feed Its mass, dropping pieces of It wherever we went. The loudest patriots left festering wounds on their countries’ surfaces. Some tried in vain to contain It. Desperate attempts that seem so naive now, as if metal bins could have ever caged a virus. We dug massive pits in the earth to bury It with the other mistakes we made; we built playgrounds and lives atop the horror, hoping It would never wake. We shipped It off to lands out of sight, where people eked out lives on the refuse of our follies. But It soon came in overwhelming waves, inundating us as we tried incinerating shredding dissolving It, anything to make It go away, but wherever we looked, more of It had consumed our lives Only later did we realize the toxins of the fumes we’d inhaled the lacing of the food we ate the million ways we had absorbed It through our skin the eety-teeny-tiny particles flowed through us, in our blood, to our brains, and finally our children, born into this world tainted by the sins. Of hubris and greed —of our species’ forefathers; the few who were not kind nor loving guardians of our people, but greedy, shortsighted souls who hungered for an immortality they would build out of fire, tears, and power. They had fed us to It, a devil deal signed in the earth’s blood, paid out to them and theirs. We cried to them do you not care what you have done to the children!? These children, born into a world that never knew a time before It; It was these children’s first companions as they formed in the womb. It sat on their lips, feeding them their milk, leaching bits of Itself in the liquid we drank, the clothes we wore, the spaces we lived in. It took the form of social icons and iconography, cajoling the kids, take me into your home through an endless wall of screens . We resigned, accepting Its numbing gifts, empty of substance, hoping to pretend to enjoy our demise. It lived in all of us. We hosts pined for a time of an earth uninfected. A pristine wild, crystal lakes, soaring birds touring their songs. We began dying of cancers and diseases in rates and forms unprecedented. The doctors and experts could not say where they came from. But we all knew. The whales, cousins who had taken to the sea, dragged themselves onto beaches by the hundreds, gasping for air. Their lungs had collapsed before they beached, under the weight of all they'd swallowed. It clumped in dams to rival beavers’; the subsequent flooding washed us out of our homes. With each particle that settled in our brains, we lost pieces of ourselves: mother’s smile, father’s hands, a love’s laugh, our own faces. Strangers sat in our homes, they stared at us, knowing that one day they too would join us in the fog. Our global species may die out in 10,000 years, 500, or tomorrow, but if far flung relatives on the vine of universal life ever find our sheltered rock, they would know we were here. Not for the grand monuments or radioactive imprints of the Blinking War, but because It would still fill the sands of the beaches. Suspended in the air. Raining down on peaks we thought we’d conquered. Only we could have made It. Taken by Alex Alex on a Tour of the Sims Recycling Plant in Red Hook, NYC