My Path to My Passion of Politics, Part I

Politics has indirectly been my passion since I was in elementary school (I'll get to why 'indirectly' in a while.) It started when I was in elementary school when my 3rd grade teacher Mr. Kuba would tell us about all the visits he would take around the world; in particular his visits to Australia. He would go on and on about the different cultures and people and sights he’d see. My curiosity of how the world operated outside of Danbury was one that had me going to the library and looking at different pictures of the world. A few years later I remember being in Ms. Fulmer’s 5th grade social studies class and learning less about the world and more about American history. We were assigned projects on the civil war and slavery and I remember asking myself as a child “How could people let this happen?” We went to the Scott Fanton museum down the street from my elementary school once and I remember the museum representatives showing us the musket guns they’d use during the American revolution and the civil war and I remember asking myself again “Why would people fight and kill each other?”At such a young age, I was always perplexed by the reasons groups of people would bring themselves to killing others.

My constant questioning of why this and why that and why them was never fulfilled. If a teacher went over a war, I’d ask them why it happened. When they told me their answer, I’d ask what led to that. When they told me their answer, I’d ask them who started the war. When they told me that, I’d ask what led people to kill other people. When they told me that, I’d ask them more why’s and how’s and who’s than they knew how to answer. The truth is I was a pesky but inquisitive little boy. I was that kid who sat up front and asked the most questions everyday. I was never the best student when it came to grades or keeping myself focused on work, but when it came to asking the tough questions and wanting to learn, no one in any of my social studies or history classes ever came close. No answer was ever sufficient for me, because knowledge was my compensation for my lack of A’s and B’s. I remember one instance when one of my peers got into what was called the summit program in Rogers Park Middle School and gloated to me about how he was smarter than me because he got in and I didn’t. I told him “Fuck Summit, I’m still smarter than you.” Needless to say, I had a dirty mouth at a young age and maybe I didn’t take too well to being called stupid by some rich kid from King St., but the truth is I knew I was in fact smarter than him. Some kids are just better at regurgitating numbers and dates and they’re rewarded as being told they're more intelligent for it, but I saw the importance of putting rationale and meaning behind those numbers. While some of my peers were taught algebraic formulas and rewarded as being "smarter" for knowing them, I remember telling my friends those numbers wouldn’t matter when we got older. I was the kid who was always telling the teachers “I get it and I can do it, but HOW is this going to help me and my career when I'm an adult?” I was scolded every time for asking that question. Mrs. Miville yelled at me, Ms. Fulmer yelled at me, Mr. Allen yelled at me; they all got so damn mad when I asked them that very question. I’m a grown man at 24 years old and I don’t care what anyone says; at 11 and 12 and 13 years old, I was right. All but one teacher yelled at me: Mr. Scalzo. Again, I'll get to him later.

I’m a man now and I carry the same stubbornness with me today. Knowledge is less about the answers you can give and more about the questions you can ask. I didn’t need test scores or academic programs or teacher favoritism to know I was the best student in a lot of my classes. I didn’t get the A’s and B’s, but I asked the questions and got the answers. I didn’t know how to solve a quadratic formula for the life of me, but I could talk about American taxes and the importance of homeownership and world history and discrimination in America and the Vietnam war and civics and voting. I could talk about things I needed to know as an adult, at 13 years old..

Then September 11, 2001 came around… My mind, my passion and my thoughts would never be the same after that day.

Part I,
David.

Education Reform: What We Can Do Better

Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Unfortunately, our nation’s public education systems deprive our students of the very weapon Nelson Mandela spoke of.
All too often, students lack adequate accessibility to educational resources, and our communities are set back due to the plight caused by educational inequality.
Rates of poverty, drug addiction, domestic violence, homelessness, criminal activity and other social ills are directly and indirectly linked with one common factor: educational inequality.
With the proper access to a quality education and the guarantee of a more thorough understanding of their communities, their world and career prospects, students throughout the state and throughout the nation can become better informed individuals.
Our students are taught to understand the theories in calculus and chemistry, but leave high school and even college with little understanding on issues like taxes, financial budgeting or homeownership. Students are taught to memorize significant dates and names in American history, but they’re not taught or encouraged to thoroughly analyze and participate in their own political system.
The classes students are required to take are often outdated with old curricular materials and obsolete ideas. It is time that we take our educational system and comprehensively reform it from the ground up. We must keep what works, improve the things that need work, and rid our schools of what doesn’t.


One of the many, but most significant, issues with our education system is resource allocation. The amount of money a school receives tends to largely depend on the amount of property tax dollars its district collects. For areas like Greenwich, this works in their favor. For areas like Hartford and Bridgeport, however, it does not.
In communities that have substantially lower average property values due to crime and poverty, this form of resource allocation does not work. Impoverished communities with large student bodies require more funding, but the amount of funds they receive are not conducive to the student bodies’ educational needs.
Cities and states need to do away with the current form of education funding where property values dictate the quality of a student’s education. The value of any student’s education should not be determined primarily by the property values of the communities they live in, but by the drive and potential of that very student.
When it comes to laws regarding education, it is time we replace the ones currently in the books with more contemporary ones designed to improve our schools and the value of education for schools everywhere.


For starters, the dropout age can be raised from 16 to 18 to prevent minors from making the adult—yet most often detrimental—decision of prematurely dropping out of school. It does not make sense to give a minor the power to make such an influential decision at such an early stage in their life.
Requiring adequate career centers in every high school would greatly improve the career prospects of students who will eventually pursue careers of their own. Requiring a certain amount of volunteer, internship or apprenticeship hours would also improve students’ understanding of the communities and industries related to their professions of interest.
Hiring additional teachers and limiting class sizes would help guarantee that students are given the proper tools and attention for their educational needs. Reforming school calendars and schedules to allow for student, teacher and parent flexibility would also dramatically improve the educational experiences within our schools.
Finally, our schools need to update and better incorporate technologies—both in and out of the classroom—in order to better accommodate the needs of their students.
Education reform is a bold idea. It requires much thought, much research, and perhaps most daunting—much debate. The need for reform, however, is undeniable.


As our students are falling through the cracks of the current education system, they are falling behind in so many ways—but through no fault of their own. While education reform may seem extreme or difficult, it is in fact necessary and essential.
The time for a discussion on how to improve our education system is now.  There will inevitably be heated debates between parents, teachers, administrators, union leaders and government officials. These debates must not be avoided and reform must not be delayed.
Education reform will require drastic changes and a lot of work, but the worst thing we could do to our students is do nothing at all. Education reform must come first, and it must come now.

My Take on Intervention In Syria

Syria has undergone a civil war for the past two years where hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and two million have been forced into refuge with their families by fleeing Syria. Bashar Assad has used ruthless force against rebel troops, all while rebel troops with connections to regional terrorist organizations have shown their brutality with captured Syrian troops as well. The atrocities of war between these two forces have increased as time has passed and hit a peak when chemical weapons armed with the poison gas of sarin were used on civilians in a suburb of Damascus on August 21st.

It is said that nearly 1,400 men, women and children died on that day due to those weapons being used. The extent of disregard for lives and international law were demonstrated by this heinous attack and while very few people doubt these chemical attacks took place, the questions that sprout from these events taking place are numerous and essential to answer before committing American military weapons to be used against Bashar Assad's government troops in order to assist terrorist-linked rebel troops. My questions are these:

1. If Bashar Assad was gaining advantage over the rebels in the civil war, why then would he have authorized chemical weapons to be used? Which side REALLY stood to gain most from chemical weapons being used?

2. Why does Obama want to go to Congress for authorization to attack Syria if he still insists that he'll attack Syria anyway even without that authorization?

3. Looking back at the most recent military interventions of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan; why should the American people have ANY confidence that military strikes in Syria would do anything to help with America's national security or even the security of the Syrian people where they are at war with one another?

4. If Syrian forces were to shoot down an American plane or sink an American vessel in retaliation to American attacks, does Obama STILL rule out American troops on the ground?

5. If Obama's military team says this intervention is also to prevent "chemical weapons from going into the hands of terrorists", yet weapons have already been used against innocent civilians, who's to say military strikes would prevent that or even decrease the likelihood of it happening again?

6. Obama said his goal of military strikes isn't for "regime change", yet he insists Bashar Assad step down and is arming and training rebels while plotting out which sites in Syria are worth striking. Why not just say the truth and say his strikes aim is for "regime change"?

7. If the U.S. military strikes the chemical weapon sites, what would be the consequence of those poisons and toxic chemicals making it into the air among civilians?

8. U.S. attacks Syria, Hezbollah attacks American interests, Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Lebanon spirals out of control due to the pressure of war and Syrian refugees, Iran supplies Hezbollah to attack Israel, then the region loses some of it's infrastructure and stability.... Should these series of events take place, then what?


I've missed out on several credible questions and scenarios, but I feel these are all questions worth exploring in the days to come. It is my utmost belief that what we're seeing manifest and unfold in Syria is part of a larger elaborate scheme on someone's part; an orchestrated set of events meant to evoke chaos and instability in order to gain an upper hand. I don't feel Syria threatens the livelihood of the United States or it's interests, I don't feel we've seen evidence Bashar Assad himself authorized these chemical attacks and I don't feel it is in the middle east or the international community's best interests to intervene militarily and help the already proven terrorist-linked Syrian Rebels into power. It does not make sense to me that we take a heinous secular dictator out of power and replace him with a heinous Islamist terrorist-backed group of rebels.

Obama and his backers say "History will judge us if we do not intervene"..

... but the truth is history has already judged us by our failed and flawed interventions. It's time we stop giving history books any more reason to look down on our nation and it's insatiable appetite for foreign intervention.

From me to the world,
- David.

A Dreamer's Dreams Unfulfilled Just Yet.

When I was a child, I naively felt that as I grew older and became a man, all things negative would vanish and the world would simply be at my doorstep WAITING for me to change it. I thought all it took to change the society I grew up in were simple speeches and well wishes, and all would be fine.

It was my naivete that kept me from the realities of this world; it won't change off of well wishes and speeches. Societies and communities don't transform because we merely want them to, they transform because we force it to through action, through collective effort and through self-transformations within ourselves.

How can I as just one man expect to win over hearts and change the minds of others if I cannot do this within myself?

I've realized that in order to change the mentality of one community, you've got to change the mentalities of the families within that one community. However, I can't promote health if I can't take my own advice. I can't promote education if I do not engage in education myself. I can't advocate on behalf of the homeless and ask others to feed the homeless if I have never done so myself. In all acts of community advancement I call for, I now realize that the best advocacy in the world is advocacy that is demonstrated by example.

What are my words without actions to follow them?

What are my goals without efforts to achieve them?

What are my dreams without waking up to live them?

Words, without action, mean nothing.



Here's to us changing the world through example; one day at a time.

- David

The Burden Of Aspiration

When we were young children, we were vivid dreamers. Some of us continue to be so, but some of us have allowed that ability within us to die through the years. Sometimes we forget what it is we dream and hope for because we are so occupied with what we must do day to day. We make time for work, but make little time for progress.

How do we measure progress? How do we measure success? Most importantly, why do we stop dreaming and aspiring?

I challenge anyone to put aside their worries with work, school and family for just a moment and think on why you're not 100% content with your life. We all have our circumstances we've been dealt; yet the approaches we take in life are entirely up to us. Do we sit and become complacent, or we aspire to excel and do our best? That choice is in our hands.

A Toast To Always Doing Better...

- David

A video that will TRUTHFULLY inspire you

America is falling from the top, and falling FAST.

America is failing its children.

America is falling from the top.

America's vision for its children and its future generations has fallen incredibly short sighted and distantly far behind the progresses the industrial world has made. To the detriment of the children of this nation and workers of our economy, we are approaching a new century with expired ideas and fall short of what we are all collectively capable of doing. The errors in our curriculum and the failed educational policies implemented for decades have fallen short, and American families everywhere are bearing the brunt of it in one form or another.

Join me in starting the conversation on education reform and what we can do better for ourselves, for our futures, for our children and for the progress of our country.

To thoughts that must be provoked and conversations that must be had...

- David.