Four years ago at this time, I decided to do something I never imagined I would do – run for state legislature, with no chance to win, despite the fact that doing so would mean losing my job (per my employer’s policy), putting a burden on my family until another one could be obtained, and exiting the public sector. Nothing else had had an impact, including writing reports like this one, writing letters to the editor, feeding information to reporters for articles like this one, and trying to point out the winners and losers in the state’s priorities in city publications that I was asked to write sections of, but which no one ever read. Voting did not and does not matter, because aside from a few districts competitive between Republicans and Democrats, there is generally only one name on the ballot (or only one who actually campaigns) for state legislature (and, for that matter, Congress) in November, and few primary challenges as well. After years of complaint about public policies that sold out our common future to benefit insiders today (if you’ve read posts here you know what those are; if not you can still read my platform here), simply complaining and not doing anything became morally unsupportable.

So after a few years of trying to convince people “someone should do something about this,” I decided that if no one else would, I would try. I didn’t make much of an impact, as I explained here