Cambridge is at a crossroads. For the first time in a lengthy generation, there is new executive leadership at the helm of our City. Sadly, and without in any way disparaging the estimable skills and talents of our new City Manager and his top staff, this leadership era is commencing under a cloud of suspicion left by the short-circuited process by which it was installed. When the search for our new City Manager began, the then City Council promised the citizens of Cambridge both an open, public and meaningful visioning process by which the people would determine what kind of leadership we wanted, and a open national search for that leadership. Neither ever happened. While a small minority of the council attempted to protest this process, it was too little effort by too few. Only a predominantly new council will have the ability to correct these mistakes. Our beloved city deserves no less. It is in this atmosphere of creating a new Cambridge City Council that will truly have the ability to restore a full sense of openness and accountability to our municipal government that I have chosen to seek a seat on that council. Never one to blindly accept the status quo or the presumed prerogatives of the self-appointed powers that be, I want to see a council that is both truly visionary in its guidance of Cambridge’s present and future, and also makes itself accessible and responsive to the needs and concerns of all those who live, work, study or visit here. In their training for professional ministry, students are introduced to the oft-quoted statement that their job will be “to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted”. I have long held to this rubric in my approach to political involvement, from my participating in the founding and leadership of the Progressive Democrats of Cambridge to my two terms as an elected district representative on the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee. It is with the passion to better the lives of our neighbors and the life of our city that I ask for your support – and most importantly, your No. 1 vote – on Nov. 5.