(NEW YORK) Mint Press — The March on the RNC has begun, and the protests are expected to continue all week. “We are a Coalition uniting groups from around the country to say NO to this political system that only works for the 1%,” said organizers in a statement. “We therefore are marching at the Republican National Convention to let our voices be heard. We need to take things into our own hands.”
New York activist George Martinez, who is associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, has his own way of doing that. Martinez recently ran as a Democratic candidate for Brooklyn’s new 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
After losing his bid in this summer’s primary, Martinez said in a letter to the Occupied Wall Street Journal, “Campaigns themselves are part of a serious, long-term citizen engagement strategy, and an effective tool for Occupy to move community empowerment initiatives forward. I am proud to have participated.”
Martinez had named his campaign “Bum Rush the Vote” to signify the people-led movement.
“Bum Rush the Vote successfully completed its inaugural campaign achieving remarkable success; it put forth a first time congressional candidate and Occupy Wall Street activist, with the aim of inspiring people to take back our political institutions—by getting money out of politics and putting people in,” he wrote.
“Against all odds—the giants of corporately controlled, political machines, and the ballot challenges and attempts at voter suppression that come with them—we forged through and created a new space for transformational hopefulness with measurable results.”
Charismatic figure
New York native Martinez, 38, came of age with hip-hop, and he spent much of his early years composing rap music. In college, he continued in the underground hip-hop scene but also began studying and organizing politics.
His mother had moved to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico and raised her son on her own. He was the first in his family to graduate high school and college.
After his graduate degree, Martinez joined Hunter College as an adjunct professor, teaching political literacy, which he now does at Pace University.
In 2001, he led an unsuccessful campaign for City Council in Brooklyn’s Red Hook, but in 2002, he was elected district leader in Brooklyn’s 51st Assembly District. After that, he landed a job with the New York Attorney General’s office, where he worked as an assistant director for Latino issues.
At the same time, Martinez continued to be involved in rap and founded a nonprofit, the Global Block Foundation, that used hip-hop as a form of youth empowerment.
That led to the State Department naming him a « hip-hop ambassador » for youth outreach to Asia and Latin America.
Introduction to Occupy
Martinez had just returned from an 11-week trip to Colombia in this capacity when he first visited Zuccotti Park in September 2011.
« I got emotional at my first General Assembly. « I’d never seen my country work like this,” he recalled. “When I got to the park, I was skeptical. But you see it working. You realize that you may not always like the outcomes, but you see that the process itself is building something for the future. Anyone who went down to Zuccotti had this feeling that community matters again. »
Martinez gave his own speech. “I told them, ‘I came back to my city to see real Americans taking over what is already ours,’” he said of the speech. “And people erupted, and I felt inspired.”
Martinez soon cut a rap video about the movement using the park as a backdrop: « I take money from the rich and invest it in the poor/Been a long time comin’, time we settled the score.”
His wife, Clara, also contributed a few bars: « Occupy government, ain’t no either or/We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. »
Political platform
Martinez’s involvement with Occupy compelled him to run for public office.
“It comes down to this,” he told the Village Voice. “I see people who are hurting and struggling, and I just know that I — that we — we could do something about it.
“If you know you could do something about that, and you don’t … if you don’t, that’s failure. And I want to encourage us not to fail.”
The main tenet of his campaign was the push for more affordable housing. “I think we absolutely need to take over city-owned land,” he said at the time about what he would like to see at hundreds of unused, vacant lots across New York City.
“But right now, if neighbors say we want to take this lot over, they’re going to run into a city that’s going to criminalize their actions,” he added, suggesting a change to the law. “What starts as a direct action can become a formal empowerment.”
Other goals included better student debt relief, the protection of local schools and hospitals and reform of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.
Martinez’s deputy campaign manager, Cecily McMillan, a longtime member of Occupy, acknowledged that there was some dissent in the movement over his run.
“I think there’s a small minority of purists that believe what George is doing isn’t part of the movement,” she said. “They wanted the Zuccotti encampments to take over and said, ‘We don’t want to participate in the hierarchical societies anymore.’ But it’s a small minority.”
Future plans
Now, Martinez and McMillan are supporting the next Occupy candidate.
“This was never about quick fixes, for there are no easy solutions to empowering marginalized communities. There is only hard work, dedication and innovation,” wrote Martinez in his letter to the Occupied Wall Street Journal.
“Bum Rush will continue this summer with voter registration, people’s assemblies, candidate recruitment and issue literacy. In New York, Jelani Mashariki, co-founder of the Global Block Foundation, will Bum Rush the Vote for the open seat in the 57th Assembly District to replace outgoing assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries,” he revealed.
“This is a Bum Rush, we are running up the halls of power, and we cannot be ignored.”