Friends – It has been a busy two weeks since I was elected to Newton City Council: I've been at an Engine 6 meeting, a Newton Democratic Executive Committee meeting, a Newton Highlands Area Council meeting, the Waban Area Council meeting, a community event in Waban on Climate Change policy, a Ward 5 Democrats meeting, an Ed Markey campaign event (read my endorsement here), the Troop 9 Scouts' annual spaghetti dinner in Waban, and various other City Council hearings and Transition meetings.

As is evident from the above items, the calendar doesn't stop just for us to catch our breaths from an election – and the only way we make change happen is by pressing forward constantly.

While I'm looking forward to taking office on City Council on January 1 and getting down to work here in Ward 5, there's also a once-in-four-years opportunity coming up for me to make a difference on another, parallel avenue in Democratic Party politics, which most of you know I've been active in for a long time.

Since before I was old enough to vote, I've been part of the national project to re-align the Democratic Party. Our party has only one path forward to victory & to meaningful change for our country: to become a mass-member, multi-racial, environmental party of the US working class.

We cannot continue to be a party that repeatedly loses the presidency and our governorship to people who destroy our air & water, bust our labor unions, and implement racist policies. We can't tinker at the edges and leave problems to be solved by markets with no reason to do so.

For these reasons, this week I put my name on the March 2020 Massachusetts Democratic Primary ballot for elected male representative on the Democratic State Committee for our state senate district (Newton, Brookline, and Wellesley). I have to stand with my peers from the party’s left flank in reconstructing the party for all of us.

People who have known me for a long time know that I am particularly fascinated with the mechanics of institutional and party machinery, which makes this small role in the current struggle a good fit for me. I hope you’ll support my DSC candidacy to add my voice to our efforts.

Other elected officials in our district have held seats on the Democratic State Committee while serving in office, and I view both of these positions as complementing each other in advancing my agenda to move us in a new direction, given how important the Party is in Massachusetts.