As a member of the Rochester City Council, I will continue to organize community support for the political and economic reconstruction of our City, with a priority on people and planet rather than corporate profit.  Upon election, I will focus on implementing the following programs:

City Office for Cooperative Development

Corporate welfare as a strategy for economic development has clearly failed our communities, with an extreme lack of living wage work available to our citizens.  Instead, we must use our City's resources to create new jobs in the form of worker-owned cooperatives.  Using the Mondragon Cooperatives of Spain and the Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland, OH as models, we can rebuild our urban economy to provide living wage jobs for all that need them.  The Office of Cooperative Development will play a  crucial role by overseeing the distribution of start-up funds, providing technical assistance for these democratically-managed workplaces, and leveraging economic support from community anchor institutions such as the University of Rochester.

Neighborhood Councils & Participatory Budgeting

I will introduce a Charter revision to establish elected neighborhood-level councils that will be given authority over certain aspects of City administration.  Bringing democracy down to this level will encourage and enable more Rochesterians to be involved in our community's political processes and be more invested in their neighborhood's success.  As part of this decentralization, the neighborhood councils will administer a participatory budgeting process, in which all members of the community will be able to designate City budget funds for needed projects.

Other policies that I would support as your next Councilmember:

1. An Independent Civilian Review Board overseeing the Rochester Police Department
2. Restorative justice, that heals rather than punishes for crime
3. Guarantee quality food as a human right
4. End the use of City resources for home foreclosures
5. Introduce curbside compost pickup
6. Divest City funds from national banks
7. Prioritize mass and active transportation in all City planning
8. Encourage the use of City-owned land for urban agriculture
9. Extend existing hydrofracking moratorium to a permanent ban, and pursue legal action against New York State if fracking is allowed anywhere near Hemlock & Canadice Lakes.
10. End the profiling and criminalization of Rochester's communities of color, particularly youth, by the RPD

Drew Langdon grew up in rural upstate New York, in small town called Oakfield.  After spending several years studying at Houghton College, Langdon made the decision to move into the City of Rochester’s Plymouth-Exchange neighborhood to become a worker-owner at Small World Bakery.  

Small World was Langdon’s introduction to cooperative ownership models, which he has since embraced wholeheartedly as the solution to many of our community’s problems.  Other cooperative projects which he has been a part of include a housing cooperative, Ant Hill,  and the recently-formed Rochester Organization for Workplace Democracy.  He is also working on the incubation of a worker-owned grocery store in Rochester’s southwest neighborhoods to help eliminate a large urban food desert.

Langdon has also been active in combating discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in communities across the country.  He was a member of the 2010 Soulforce Equality, traveling to Christian colleges to educate on the intersections of faith, sexuality, and gender.  He has also been active in statewide campaigns for marriage equality and the passage of the Gender Expression Non-discrimination Act (GENDA).

In 2012, Langdon was the Green Party’s candidate for New York State Assembly in the 137th District.  In this two-way race against Democratic incumbent David Gantt, he received 4498 , or approximately 12%, of votes cast.  He has previously worked on Alex White’s campaigns for mayor and City Council in 2011, as well as Dr. Jill Stein’s 2012 presidential campaign.  In December, he was elected as a co-chair of the Green Party of Monroe County.

Growing Our Future: Food Security & Urban Agriculture
Posted by Drew Langdon 🌻 · October 14, 2013 11:49 AM · 1 reaction

How Democracy At Work Can Revive Rochester's Economy
Posted by Drew Langdon 🌻 · October 13, 2013 5:05 PM

Pride & Poverty
Posted by Drew Langdon 🌻 · September 18, 2013 8:22 PM