Rights & Democracy (RAD) is excited to announce that it is endorsing candidates in each of the upcoming City Council races!
Our members have said it is important for us, as part of RAD’s ongoing commitment to the issues facing our communities, to elect folks to office who will listen to the people on the most important issue facing our neighborhoods—the lack of affordable housing, livable wages, systemic discrimination and oppression, and climate change.
Over the past three weeks, a nine-person, member-led endorsement committee has convened, reviewed, and then voted unanimously to endorse:
- Kienan Christianson, North District
- Perri Freeman, Central District
- Jack Hanson, East District
- Mohamed Jafar, South District
With this endorsement, RAD members and supporters in Burlington will be asked to support the candidates by knocking on doors, calling friends and neighbors, and much more.
In recent Burlington elections, RAD members helped elect City Councilor Ali Dieng to office – twice – and recently worked in support of Democrat Bob Hooper in his successful bid to unseat Republican Kurt Wright in the New North End. During the 2018 midterm elections, RAD members helped to flip almost a dozen seats statewide and secure a legislative veto-proof majority.
In Burlington, prospective candidates were asked a wide range of questions about their support for key items on RAD’s Burlington People’s Platform. That platform includes supporting an expansion of affordable housing, citizen oversight of fair and impartial policing, putting the public interest before private interests, investing in our immigrant and New American communities, raising the minimum wage, ensuring our role in keeping Lake Champlain clean, and being a leader in tackling climate change.
These endorsed candidates placed raising the minimum wage, creating truly affordable housing, listening to the people rather than special interests, protecting the most vulnerable in our community, and ensuring clean water and less reliance on fossil fuels as priorities as top priorities if elected.
So, get in touch with these campaigns and see how you can be of help to them and let’s do all we can to get these folks elected to City Council on March 5th!
SAVE THE DATE – MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11TH
On February 11th at City Hall, Rights & Democracy as well as several other grassroots organizations in Burlington will be holding a Save Our City! rally at City Hall. From selling off Burlington Telecom to expanding private control of the city’s downtown and refusing to put ballot questions before voters, the Mayor and City Council have been listening more to special interests and not the voices of the people. This rally is to show there is sustained, and growing, opposition to the current city policies and actions and more must be done to ensure that all voices are valued and included in citywide decisions. RSVP on Facebook today!