I’m Dan Plaat and I’m running to be your representative on the Common Council for the 3 rd Ward. I’m a member of the Green Party and running Independent because I’m unattached to establishment politics, ideas, and thinking. Instead, I’m beholden to you and doing what’s right. Together we will put peace over poverty and bring power to the people.
Issues
Public Works and Jobs / Cooperative Economy
Through more public employment, infrastructure, city sponsored or cooperative business development, we need the means for bottom-up community control of the economy.
Reduce Waste and Increase Access
To get more and spend less, we need planning and programs for production, sharing, and reusing to reduce trash, cut city expenses, and save household budgets.
End Political Monopoly
To thrive we need to break out of centuries of citywide oligarchy: with election and voting reform, opening city budgeting to public participation, and delegating to neighborhoods we can empower directly or with better representation.
Why I'm Running
I’m an educated millennial who, like millions of others, has been failed by a system that needs a change in the direction of community and sustainability. I am a lifelong resident of Albany who has spent the first half of my life enraged by the blight and injustice around me, and the next half spent figuring out what to do about it.
State of the Hood
3rd Ward
The Ward is an in-between area. Nothing except the most hyperlocal activity is located here. 15 years ago this ward was the poster child of blight, since that time tools like the land bank and many efforts from nonprofits and socially minded business owners. We need a strategy for building out of poverty and blight. We can focus on making these points as developed as possible, the chapman center, the churches, the lot gardens to serve those who are here create a sustainable neighborhood; or we focus on developing the spaces that cause the ward to fit and connect into the city better, otherwise we are a place to be avoided, past through feeling that despite the progress, the ills of our society collect here and regardless of any small investments in ourselves the larger system sees us as a sacrifice zone.