By Patty Friend<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The voters of Buffalo have just made history by electing, against all odds, its first Democratic Socialist as the Democratic mayoral nominee. India Walton is smart, capable, experienced and a serious caregiver with a well-lived life to inform her politics and her decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India Walton grew up in the \u201cFruitbelt\u201d\nneighborhood on Buffalo\u2019s Eastside. She was responsible for her brothers and\nsisters, and helped her mother who was a single mother. At the age of 14, India\nherself became a single mom and five years later had twin boys with serious\nmedical problems, making it necessary both for her to ride the city buses with\nher twins and their strollers and accoutrements, and to work with hospital and\nsocial services\u2019 bureaucrats. Then, she had a fourth son in her twenties. In\nthese years, she got her GED and went to nursing school, eventually becoming a registered\nnurse working at different local hospitals. On top of all this, she became a\nhard-charging activist who always impressed people with her intelligence, great\nideas and presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As one of Buffalo\u2019s premier community organizers, she was the natural choice to run against Mayor Byron Brown. True, she lacked the \u201cconnections in high places\u201d or access to large amounts of money or wealthy donors, but she\u2019s been a magnificent and victorious candidate nonetheless, upsetting a well-funded machine politician in her first campaign. Walton\u2019s platform does an old Social Democrat\u2019s heart good. It includes but is not limited to the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Running the city of Buffalo\non this platform will be quite challenging. Buffalo is plagued with gentrification\nand a lack of affordable housing, a biased criminal justice system and police\nforce. There are issues around the maintenance\nof public buildings and disposition of older public buildings, infrastructure\nneeds and existing projects, tax collection, the aftermath of Covid-19, and Buffalo\u2019s\n(in)famous winter snow. Community organizations will have great expectations of\nher administration; \u2018old-timers\u2019 in government may want to sabotage her\nefforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She may not have a lot of experience\nin electoral politics or in management\/administration, but she is a quick\nstudy. She will need experienced advisers and lots of help from staff that she\ncan trust, who will \u2018have her back.\u2019 Hopefully, she can either fire the \u2018dead-weight\u2019\nemployees loyal to Mayor Brown or get them to work on her behalf. It\u2019s\nprecisely her not being from the Old Guard that could enable her to come up\nwith new ways to analyze problems and arrive at more creative solutions. As she\nsaid about herself to MSNBC\u2019s Rev. Al Sharpton, she may not be the perfect\ncandidate for mayor, but if we insist on perfection, we lose out on what a lot\nof talented and exciting people can do for us and the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She will make a good mayor of Buffalo, but there is still a General Election to win in November. Brown is launching a well-funded, hard-fought write-in campaign. Power doesn\u2019t give up easily, and Mayor Brown and his cronies certainly won\u2019t. Social Democrats USA has not only endorsed India Walton, but has pledged to contribute to her (as individuals) and work for her. Our members are already signed up to doorknock for her this summer and fall. I predict that our work will be extremely fulfilling and worth it. So good luck to India Walton \u2013 the next Mayor of Buffalo, New York – and good luck to us all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Patty Friend is the National Chair of Social Democrats USA.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Patty Friend The voters of Buffalo have just made history by electing, against all odds, its first Democratic Socialist as the Democratic mayoral nominee. India Walton is smart, capable, experienced and a serious caregiver with a well-lived life to … Continue reading