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LAURIE DOPPMAN

The Metro-North station in the village of Brewster, which gets passengers to Manhattan in an hour.

BY EILEEN MCDERMOTT

Community News Group

Putnam County, New York: you may know it from Broadways The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee or perhaps youve gone apple picking here recently. Putnam is just north of Westchester, and youre most likely to have visited Cold Spring, which is on the Hudson River at the western end of the county, about 20 minutes south of Beacon, the Brooklyn of the Lower Hudson Valley. Cold Spring is near Breakneck Ridge and other popular hiking trails accessible by Metro-North from Manhattan.

But its less likely youve heard of communities farther east in Putnam Putnam Valley, Mahopac, Carmel, Kent, and Brewster. These are actually the more populated villages in the county, but they are less of a pull for tourists and decidedly more conservative than their counterparts on the Hudson. The particulars of their location and history have created a progressive desert of sorts even as Manhattans ongoing ejection of its middle class and swiftly-rising costs in Hudson River towns sends more progressives, including those of us in the LGBTQ community, to the eastern reaches of Putnam County.

My wife Laurie and I moved to Brewster, located at Putnams east edge, next to Danbury, Connecticut, in 2016. I had lived in Manhattan since 2001; she since 2005. Our individual love affairs with New York City had enjoyed good runs but its many wonders had begun to pale in comparison with its many inconveniences and a growing sense of angst. And as a couple we dont shun clichs: we hike, snowboard, and have a pit bull, so we looked northward in our search for a new home, anticipating woods, more space, less traffic.

After months of searching in the usual Gay Flight meccas of Beacon, Cold Spring, Peekskill, Cortlandt Manor, and other Hudson River spots, our realtor forced us to face reality we could not afford or handle a fixer-upper, and the prices and taxes for move-in ready houses in Westchester and Putnams riverfront communities were beyond us. So, she showed us a house in Brewster wherever that was.

It was perfect.

It was a modest ranch but were only two people and a dog. It had a decent sized yard, the taxes were low (around $8,500 compared to $10,000 and up in most Westchester towns), there were state-protected woods across the street, and most importantly the house had just been gut-rehabbed to be flipped. We didnt have to do a thing, and that was good, because after 15 years of depending on supers, neither of us knew an oil tank from a hot water heater. Brewster is a little further from the city than we would have liked, and we knew little about the town or surrounding area, but the village was quaint, the house four minutes from the Metro-North Harlem Line, and only an hour from Manhattan.

How different could it be?

Six months after we moved, we would find out.

On November 8, Donald Trump won the presidency, and at 3 a.m. the next morning, we were awoken to a celebratory booming bass our neighbors were elated. I had gone to bed hours earlier after sending off an angry Facebook fuck-you to no one in particular. Stirred by a party in our midst, I felt crushed, angry, and actually scared where was this place that I now lived? For weeks leading up to the election I had seen the Trump banners, bumper stickers, and lawn signs, but I wrote them off as the desperate rantings of a few local good ole boys. Turns out, there are a lot of those up here.

Five of the six officially-defined towns that make up Putnam County voted Trump in 2016. Philipstown, which includes Cold Spring, was the only one that went for Hillary. Trump won nearly 56 percent of the vote countywide and 61 percent in the town of Carmel. Compare that to Westchester County a five to ten-minute drive away where Trump got about 31 percent of the vote.

Looking at the racial makeup of Putnam County, this really shouldnt have come as a surprise according to the Census Bureau, the population is about 78 percent white, 16 percent Hispanic or Latinx, and just 3.7% black.

Yet Brewster has a large migrant worker community in the village of 2,360 residents, Hispanics/ Latinx make up 63.4 percent of the total. As of the 2010 Census, Brewster Village, which is within the Town of Southeast, had the highest concentration of Guatemalan residents in all of the US, at 38.2 percent of the population.

The villages atypical demographics for this area of Putnam County have not played out well. Some of my first encounters on local social media pages included current and former white residents of the area referring to Brewster Village as Little Mexico and to the residents in far more pejorative terms. When I challenged such comments and even called out to the page administrators to police them, I got kicked off some pages. The demographics have also resulted in a starkly segregated community as well as a proposed plan to redevelop Brewster Village in an effort to attract more white residents from New York. This is all framed in the plans language as attracting millennials, but the true intent is clear to those who live here. The redevelopment plan would bulldoze many of the villages historic buildings to the ground and replace them with condominiums and office space. If carried out, it would undoubtedly chase out a significant number of Latinx residents, many of whom own businesses in the village that would be affected or eliminated.

With many Latinx residents worried about endangering their own or family members immigration status ICE raids have surged in Putnam and Westchester lately that community has been broadly afraid to speak up in the debate over redevelopment and other public concerns.

And even as some are trying to attract city people to Brewster, the dynamics at play, in fact, dont bode well for progressive and LGBTQ newcomers. While Putnam libraries and some organizations have hosted Pride events in recent years and some schools have Gay-Straight Alliance groups, there is no nearby LGBTQ Community Center, no gay bar in Putnam or even within reasonable driving distance, and there has never been a Pride Parade. LGBTQ people and artists can often be the lifeblood of progressive communities, but without public spaces for queer people to convene and be visible, communities remain insular and conservative, keeping progressive values in the shadows.

One bright spot in Brewster is the Studio Around the Corner, owned by the Cultural Arts Coalition, a non-profit dedicated to creating and sustaining cultural arts within the Town of Southeast and its surrounding region. The Studio serves as a space for artists and theater geeks to gather, hosts ESL classes and support groups, and is spearheading an effort to restore Brewster Villages historic theater. At the same time, it is funded partially by the local Republican-run government and is sometimes pressured not to host events that might be viewed as too partisan.

Putnam needs more.

In response to this climate, Ive joined with some other Putnam residents in an effort to launch the first-ever Putnam Pride Parade in Cold Spring next year.

The event is badly needed, not just for Putnams LGBTQ residents who have nowhere to congregate, but to energize and bring visibility to the countys queer community and to ensure that the arc of New York State politics continues to bend forward rather than backward.

To be sure, other Lower Hudson Valley counties voted Trump in 2016, but Putnams margins stand alone and its local governments are broadly Republican-controlled. The County Legislature recently passed resolutions opposing the New York State Reproductive Health Act (RHA) as sanctioning infanticide and objecting to New York States Green Light bill to grant drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. During the hearing to approve the RHA resolution, one supporter of the effort sitting near me held a sign that decried abortion on one side and homosexuality on the other as if he were hopping from one protest to another that night.

Putnam also hosts a federal government facility that may be harboring unaccompanied minors children who have been separated from their families at the border. Attempts so far to verify the conditions for these children have been largely resisted, with only one Republican elected official being granted a carefully-guided tour without a Spanish translator.

These kinds of politics persist only because the progressive community in this part of Putnam County has been silenced or become apathetic and disillusioned in light of it being a decades-long conservative stronghold. Like Beacon and Cold Spring, other communities in Putnam County have great potential for LGBTQ and other progressive families looking for more space, easy access to Manhattan via Metro-North, local arts, nature, farms, and more. But as long as the queer community is encouraged to stay quiet, the dynamic will not change.

There are certainly many forces working for change the Putnam Progressives, Putnam Young Democrats, and Putnam County Democratic Committee, to name a few with some recent successes that indicate Putnam may be trending toward change.

But we need more help. Join us for Putnam Pride on June 6 next year or lend your support, open an LGBTQ-friendly business in Putnam, or even consider moving here. If youre up for helping to foster change somewhere not too far away, Putnam needs you.

For more information on Putnam Pride, contact Eileen McDermott at putnamnypride@gmail.com.

Updated 12:05 pm, November 29, 2019

2019

Excerpt from:
In Search of Progressive Putnam - gaycitynews.nyc

From the beginning, there were good reasons for progressive leftists not to trust that Elizabeth Warren was on their side. For one thing, she had spent much of her career as a Republican, and only recently become a champion of progressive causes. Warren worked at Harvard Law School training generations of elite corporate lawyers; did legal work for big corporations accused of wrongdoing; collected donations from billionaires; held secret meetings with investment bankers and major Democratic party donors; and stood up and applauded when Donald Trump vowed that America would never become a socialist country. Even at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her most prominent initiative on behalf of ordinary borrowers, Warren brought in former Wall Street bankers, tasking financial foxes with guarding the henhouse.

Yet Warrens campaign debuted with a populist note. She chose to make her kick-off speech in Lawrence, Massachusetts, site of the famous 1912 Bread and Roses textile industry strike, and she explicitly invoked the spirit of organized labor in her campaign announcement. Warren unveiled a series of ambitious social policy plans designed to please leftists, and some of us praised her promises to levy new taxes on wealth, expand childcare and give workers new power within their companies. In debates, the more centrist candidates accused both Warren and Sanders of being too radical. Warren memorably snapped back at those who ran for president to tell the country that change was impossible.

Its been difficult for progressives to know what to make of Warren. Shes been antagonizing the super-rich, but some of them also seem fond of her, perhaps because they recognize that her regulatory proposals are actually a modest and pragmatic way of staving off a populist revolution. She has long been attacked for supporting Medicare for All, but she has also been troublingly vague about the details in ways that left single-payer proponents unsure whether she was with them or against them. (Harry Reid, having been Warrens colleague in the Senate, said she would probably ditch single-payer when she was actually in office, in favor of something more pragmatic.)

But lately, Warren has finally begun to make her true feelings clear, and progressives no longer need to wonder whether shes with us or not. Shes not. Warren released a Medicare for All plan that called it a long-term plan, which leftwing political analyst Ben Studebaker pointed out is code to rich people for this is all pretend.

A few weeks later, Warren confirmed that while in theory she supported single-payer healthcare, it would not be one of her primary initiatives, and she would initially push for a more moderate proposal similar to those advocated by Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. Political analysts quickly saw Warrens statement for what it was: an admission that she did not really intend to pass single-payer at all. Doug Henwood noted that Barclays bank put out an analysis assuring Wall Street that Warrens plan to put off Medicare for All until late in the first term decreases the likelihood that this plan comes to fruition. So much for big structural change.

Then theres foreign policy. Warren has never been particularly progressive on foreign policy, or even shown much interest in it at all. She has defended US military aid to Israel, and infamously, when Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians including children playing on the beach, Warren spoke up for Israels right to defend itself.

Recently Warren has given progressives even more cause for alarm. Instead of condemning an obvious rightwing coup in Bolivia (as Bernie Sanders did), and denouncing the seizure of power by Christian theocrats, Warren gave a tepid statement that recognized the legitimacy of the countrys new interim leadership. On Venezuela, Warrens statements were even worse; she recently told Pod Save America that she believes the US should recognize the leader of the opposition as the legitimate president, and should maintain the sanctions that economist Jeffrey Sachs has said are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuelas economy and thereby lead to regime change. Sachs has called sanctions a fruitless, heartless, illegal and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people, yet Warren says she sides with Trump on the matter.

This is not trivial. Foreign policy is one of the most important parts of a presidents role. A president who is not a progressive in their dealings with the rest of the world is not a progressive at all. US policy has the potential to destroy lives and undermine popular movements, or to save lives and support those movements. It is critical to have a president who will take on human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and who will stand up for authentic democracy around the world. Nobody on the left can support someone who casually supports the Trump administrations crippling sanctions, who excuses the wanton killing of Palestinians, and who declines to call a military coup a military coup.

It is helpful, at least, that we can now see more clearly the distinction between Warren and Sanders. She is not just a more wonkish and pragmatic advocate of the same politics. The politics themselves are very different. Sanders quickly denounced the Bolivian coup as a coup, and stuck to his assessment. He promised that Medicare for All would be a top priority, introduced in his first week. Sanders is far from a perfect candidate, but Warren has made it clear that she is no radical, that she accepts much of the Washington consensus that Sanders has devoted his career to disrupting and questioning.

Because candidates will typically try to tell voters whatever they think we want to hear, it is useful when they take actions that show us where they really stand and how we can expect them to act in office. Questions about the sincerity of Warrens progressivism are rapidly being answered by her public statements. Shes telling us shes not one of us, and we should believe her.

The rest is here:
Progressives, trust your gut: Elizabeth Warren is not one of us - The Guardian

Regardless of the timeline, the move could illustrate what City Hall might look like over the next few years, according to SF State's McDaniel.

"I think you'll continue to see things like that," he said, especially when it comes to measures on issues like mental health, health care and housing.

Another example of emerging political dynamics, McDaniel said, came after supervisors unanimously passed legislation that aims to create more housing funding for the city's middle to low-income workers.

Breed didn't veto or sign the legislation, which was introduced by Haney. Rather, she returned it unsigned, allowing the measure to become law but not without expressing her reservations.

In a letter to the board, Breed said she does support generating cash for affordable housing, but she voiced frustration over the particular measure, saying it wasn't financially feasible and that it could hurt small businesses, among other issues.

"I remain concerned that this legislation, while well intended, will not produce the revenue it promises for affordable housing," Breed wrote, arguing that the measure's $400 million funding promise was misleading.

For Haney, it was clear that the mayor was trying to send a message.

"It's a little unclear to me what the point of it was, at this stage, when it is going to become law," he said. "It certainly raises questions as to whether she's going to be able to be independent from some of the bigger developers and different forces in the city to be able to work with us when we challenge the status quo."

Of course, both the progressive faction and Breed's wing have more upcoming elections to consider as they navigate changing power dynamics.

In November 2020, six seats on the Board of Supervisors will be open, which could be an opportunity for progressives to further isolate the mayor. It could also be an opportunity for Breed to regain allies. Four years later, the mayor will be up for re-election once again.

How things turn out could come down to two things: Whether Breed will be able to use internal rifts within the progressive block that inevitably come along with a growing majority to her advantage, and whether progressives can pin Breed between a rock and hard place by passing pieces of legislation that, as McDaniel puts it, "make her oppose things that are popular in the city as a whole," like more affordable housing and police reform.

View original post here:
After SF Progressives Win Big, a Shift in Dynamics at City Hall - KQED

When news broke that Donald Trump had decided to hold the 2020 G7 summit at one of his Florida resorts, meaning payments from foreign visitors would go to his private benefit, even some Republicans long accustomed to the Presidents casual lawlessness reacted with alarm, ultimately forcing him into a rare retreat. But U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, thought Trumps plan was praiseworthy.

It may seem careless politically, he allowed, but on the other hand, theres tremendous integrity in his boldness and his transparency.

Wow. Thats taking brown-nosing to a whole new level. If Trump followed through on his musings about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, Cramer would no doubt laud him for not trying to hide his murderous instincts, as a common criminal might. (One of Trumps personal lawyers actually argued in court that the President could not be arrested or even investigated should he in fact commit a Fifth Avenue murder.)

Similiarly, when Trump likened the impeachment proceedings against him to a lynching, much of the nation was taken aback. Could he really be so callous and ignorant as to use such an analogy, given the horrific role of lynching in our nations past?

Not only could but should, opined U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. This is a lynching, in every sense, Graham asserted. This is un-American. He said lynching involves people who are out to get somebody for no good reason and who take the law in their own hands.

Actually, lynching involves extra-judicial mob killingoften involving hanging people by their necks until they diewhich between 1882 and 1968 happened at least 4,743 times, mostly to people of African descent. But Graham, who once correctly identified Trump as a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot, has become a shameless, groveling apologist for the President, like much of his party.

Republicans keep lowering the bar for Trump and he keeps crashing into it, splintering it to shreds.

Thats one of the truly tragic things about Donald Trumphow he diminishes the people around him, by bringing them down to his tawdry level. Some Republicans, including Senators Cramer and Graham, will likely never rise from the muck, although Graham did briefly rouse from his moral coma to dissent from Trumps sudden and reckless decision to invite slaughter on the Kurds in Syria, to the delight of the despots the President kowtows to in Turkey and Russia.

Congressional Republicans keep lowering the bar for Trump, in terms of what constitutes acceptable presidential conduct, and he keeps crashing into it, splintering it to shreds.

George Will, the conservative pundit, laments in a recent column that aside from some rhetorical bleats, Republicans are acquiescing as Trump makes public display of his gross and comprehensive incompetence. He argues that if Trump continues to get away with insisting that the Constitutions impeachment provisions are unconstitutional, the instrument of impeachment will be rendered useless as a check on all future Presidents.

There may also be a political price to pay, as Will notes in issuing a warning that to Democrats surely sounds like a dream: If Congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trumps altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severelosing the House, the Senate, and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and even Texasthat even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw.

That conservatives like Will are at the forefront of opposition to Trump creates opportunities for alliances that were once unthinkable. MSNBC commentator Charlie Sykes, a conservative from Wisconsin, says in an interview for this editorial that Trumps unfitness has the potential to unite the citizenry.

I would like to think theres a coalition of the decent out there who are just horrified by watching Donald Trump, by watching what hes doing, but also what hes doing to us, Sykes says. I would love to see the emergence of a coalition that would set aside ideological differences, at least temporarily, to deal with the current emergency.

Sykes, a longtime Wisconsin radio talk show host, is now editor-at-large of The Bulwark, a conservative website dedicated to preserving Americas democratic norms, values, and institutions. He believes Trump poses an existential threat to a lot of the democratic norms that we have right now, and I do think those cross party and ideological lines.

To this end, Sykes argues, progressives ought to be willing to make common cause with Republicans and conservatives who are willing to break with Trump. Thats not a surrender of principle. It doesnt mean that we dont disagree about things, but it means that at this particular moment in time, its more important to be allies than to dwell on what we disagree about. We can go back to debating the tax rates later, but if we want to get past this moment in history, theres going to have to be this alliance that recognizes the unique emergency that the country faces.

Its an intriguing possibility. While Trumps impeachment now appears certain, it will result in his removal from office only if twenty Republican Senators join Democrats in voting for it. This is unlikely, given the devotion that most Republicans have shown thus far, but its not impossible.

The impeachment inquiry has churned up massive new evidence of Trumps shocking and illegal conduct, as career civil servants reveal the extent to which he has sought to use the power of the presidency to his personal political advantage.

William Taylor, acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, described how Trump explicitly tied the release of Congressionally approved military aid to Ukraines willingness to dig up dirt on his political rivalsprecisely the quid pro quo that Trump has insisted did not occur. Others followed, sometimes defying White House orders not to testify, at great risk to themselves and their careers. Meanwhile, the Presidents allies, to their eternal discredit, have rushed to provide cover for the President, with Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, demanding that the whistleblower who got the ball rolling be exposed and punished.

As Sykes frames it, the question for Republicans is how much more pure humiliation they are willing to take.

What Republicans right now have to be asking is: Do they really want to support five more years of this? Were talking about five more years of Donald Trump as the commander-in-chief. Five more years of defending and enabling Donald Trump, particularly as he becomes more and more untethered, more and more unhinged, more and more contemptuous of the truth and of the law.

There can be little doubt that Republicans are driven largely by political self-interest, as are many Democrats. But that means some of them might still be persuaded to abandon Trump. Sykes, while immensely disappointed at the degree to which [Republicans] have rationalized and enabled Donald Trump, has not given up hope that they will turn against him. If a few Republicans do so, a few more will likely follow.

And progressives can be a part of this, as long as they can get beyond blaming their fellow citizens for having the bad judgment to support Trump and instead encourage them to honestly ask: Do you really want to be part of this anymore?

The answer, for a broad and growing swath of the American public, is no.

No, we do not want a President who constantly embarrasses us on the global stage.

No, we do not want a foul-mouthed bigot to be Americas face to the world.

No, we are not OK with separating children from their families and locking them in cages.

No, we dont want a President who doesnt know the name of his own Defense Secretary, refers to members of his party as Rupublicans, and thinks Colorado is on the Mexican border.

No, we will not normalize Donald Trump, his ignorance, his crudeness, his impulsiveness, his meanness of spirit, his contempt for the very notion of Constitutional checks and balances, his open corruption and gross incompetence.

Yet Republican politicians will never abandon Trump as long as they perceive that this will cost them politically. As of midautumn, nine in ten Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents opposed impeachment. But that may change.

To secure the deserved ouster of this President, we need to win over a critical mass of ordinary Trump supporters. That may happen just from the open Congressional debate over impeachment and the weight of daily mounting evidence as to the Presidents criminality.

To date, the Presidents every response to the possibility of impeachment underscores its necessity. He has set out to obstruct the process, even ordering public officials to refuse to testify about his misbehavior. It is getting clearer that anyone who stands with him stands in opposition to the rule of law.

In the end, there will be some Republicans who will support impeachmentperhaps not enough to oust Trump from office but enough to more plausibly put the lie to the notion that the push for impeachment is a Democratic plot. There will be more defections of principled conservatives and constituencies that realize, however belatedly, that Trump has been conning them. And the majority of Americans who oppose this President will continue to grow.

What a delightful irony it would be if, in the end, this most determinedly divisive of Presidents ended up bringing the people of this country together.

View original post here:
Comment: Join Together to Dump Trump - Progressive.org

As Californias 2020 primary election nears, congressional districts across the state face major changes

One of the most significant is the 53rd Congressional District in San Diego. For the past 19 years, the seat has been held by Democratic Rep. Susan Davis, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Administration.

Originally from Texas, Caballero said in an interview that his father was involved in drug dealing and money laundering.

A crowd of other candidates also want the job, including the presumptive front runner, San Diego City Council President Georgette Gomez, and Sara Jacobs, a former aide to Hillary Clinton.

In September, Davis announced she would not seek reelection.

Jose Caballero, a military veteran, Bernie Sanders supporter and political consultant who describes himself as a progressive Democrat, is running for the seat. Davis said that her decision was driven by a desire to live and work at home in San Diego, although Caballero contends that her retirement came as a result of intensifying pressure from her primary challengers and from unhappy constituents. Caballero had announced his intention to run before Daviss announcement.

A crowd of other candidates also want the job, including the presumptive front runner, San Diego City Council President Georgette Gomez, and Sara Jacobs, a former aide to Hillary Clinton and a scholar in residence at the University of San Diego.

But Caballero deserves a look and his story is unusual.

Originally from Texas, Caballero said in an interview that his father was involved in drug dealing and money laundering. The activities prompted his mother to leave Texas with Jose and his sister.

[The club] brought the Bernie (Sanders) people into the room to create an intersection between the establishment and the Bernie progressives. Jose Caballero.

The family moved to the town of Mineral Wells in California, where they lived with grandparents in a one-bedroom apartment. As a teenager, Caballero joined the Navy and spent six years stationed on an aircraft carrier. Though he says that he originally joined the military out of patriotism, it was his experiences in the service that would push him towards his present politics.

Caballero describes watching planes take off from the carrier, and then later seeing footage of those same planes dropping bombs in Afghanistan, which caused him to question why he was taking part.

After his military service, Caballero moved to San Diego, where he studied political science at San Diego State University. He became active in local politics and in 2015 he founded the San Diego Progressive Democratic Club, which he said developed significant political clout in the county.

[The club] brought the Bernie (Sanders) people into the room to create an intersection between the establishment and the Bernie progressives, Caballero said.

The other Democratic candidates include Gomez, who has been endorsed by the state Democratic Party.

In 2016, Caballero made first attempt for public office with an unsuccessful run for the San Diego City Council. He served on the San Diego County Democratic Central Committee and as a delegate for the California Democratic Party.

For the past three years, Caballero has run a political consulting firm that works with labor unions and groups espousing tenants rights, animal rights and veterans rights.

Caballero says he decided to run for the 53rd CD because Davis was a seat-warmer and largely ineffective, contending that Davis has authored only two bills that were passed during her time in office. Additionally, he called her willingness to back legislation promoting military spending and offshore drilling as only doing what was politically advantageous at the time.

She was no longer where her district wanted her to be he says. Because she never had a legitimate challenger for the twenty years shes been in office, people didnt take the time to ask Who is this? Why are we voting for her every time.

Caballero isnt alone in seeking the seat: Currently, there are nine other candidates competing in the Democratic primary, according to the state elections officer. They include Jacobs and Gomez, who has been endorsed by the state Democratic Party.

I am a progressive veteran for peace. Most diehard progressives or democratic socialists are not veterans. Jose Caballero

Caballero acknowledges that he has an uphill fight, but notes that nearly one in two voters in the district voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016, which works to Caballeros advantage.Caballero supports Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and cancelling student debt all positions taken by Sanders.

Additionally, Caballero thinks his own background as a veteran could be the key to reaching more moderate voters.

I am an interesting flavor of progressive. I am a progressive veteran for peace. Most diehard progressives or democratic socialists are not veterans. They were, I guess, woke enough to not join the military industrial complex, he says.

In fact, his relationship to military service has become one of the defining features of Caballeros campaign. It is the impetus for what is essentially his flagship policy proposal the Heros Promise.

The Heros Promise is a proposal for what Caballero calls a military veteran Bill of Rights, with the intention of mitigating veteran suicide. It centers around reforming the military and providing a support system for both enlisted soldiers and veterans.

Under the proposed policy, active duty soldiers would first be granted meal and sleep time protection, an improvement that Caballero sees as basic but still necessary. The fact of the matter that our military soldiers are sleep deprivedand not getting all their mealscan cause massive vulnerabilities of [their] mental health and your morale, he says.

Additionally, the Heros Promise aims to ensure that service members would be able to file a grievance outside of the chain of command, and would have access to adequate mental health resources.

We need to protect mental health services Jose explains. As a reactor operator if I went and saw a therapist and said Hey Im not feeling great and they diagnosed me with depression, I lose my job. I lose my ability to serve as a reactor operator, which takes three and a half years to do. So a lot of people just sit quietly in depression for years and years at a time just so they can keep their head down and not have to suffer the consequence of being sad.

He also said that over 95% of our veterans are coming out with some form of PTSD. He said boot camp is a place where PTSD is administered.

People are yelling at you people are screaming at you, people are calling you a piece of garbage, and a lot of these young kids have never had anybody tell them those things before, he said, and because of that, that is a traumatic experience that they will live with for the rest of their lives.

More:
'Progressive veteran' faces uphill fight in 53rd CD - Capitol Weekly