Tallkin Socialism: The India Walton Campaign

 Talkin Socialism -- Socialist Independence Day

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Excerpt from Rolling Stone

Walton was born and raised in Buffalo. She became a mom at 14 years old and lived in a group home for young mothers outside of the city for two years before moving into her own apartment. “I was 17 years old, I had to have special permission to have utilities turned on in my name,” Walton told a local TV station earlier this year. She went on to have three more children — including a pair of twins, born premature when she was 19 — to become a nurse, and an organizer for the health care workers union. 

After moving into a neighborhood near the hospital where she worked, Walton became involved in housing activism, eventually rising to become the executive director of the Fruit Belt Land Trust, a nonprofit that returned ownership of the Buffalo neighborhood to its residents, one plot at a time. 

If elected in the general election this November, as is expected in the heavily Democratic city, Walton has promised to bring her experience as a housing advocate to city hall, instituting rent control and signing a tenant’s bill of rights into law. She’s also pledged to increase funding for public schools, institute a moratorium on charter schools, re-allocate funding from the police department, and end the practice of sending cops to respond to mental health calls.

“Buffalo, being the third poorest mid-size city in this country, we should be considering how we begin to eradicate concentrated poverty and disadvantage, and Democratic Socialist leanings are a big step toward getting us there,” Walton said on Tuesday night. “All that we are doing in this moment is claiming what is rightfully ours. We are the workers. We do the work. And we deserve a government that works with and for us.”

Walton’s victory is the latest example of what appears to be a trend emerging in the industrial Northeast: She is the third Black progressive to oust the incumbent mayor in the last three weeks, after Malik Evans’ win in Rochester and Ed Gainey’s in Pittsburgh.