Ten Years In

January 2026 marks ten years since we launched the Bernie 2016 office in Lakewood.

From the moment the doors opened, it was clear this wasn’t just a local campaign office. It was the first in the state, and completly volunteer run and supported. Hundreds of people packed into the space, filling the room and spilling out onto the sidewalk and into the street. There was an immediate sense that we were part of something far bigger than ourselves, something happening not just in Lakewood or Cleveland, but across the country.

Later that month, many of us organized and were elected as Bernie delegates to the national convention.

That winter reshaped my life.

I met most of my closest friends then. I found a community. I learned what it means to be part of something larger than yourself. Not a project. Not a job. But a group of people rooted in a place, supporting one another, and believing that collective action could actually change the direction of our lives and our city.

Bernie 2016 was that moment for me.

It started in my living room, just as it was starting in living rooms, barbershops, parks, and Panera Breads across the country. Ordinary people, often at the same time, arrive at the realization that the status quo wasn’t working and that waiting quietly for change was no longer an option.

Looking back now, it’s clear the nation was at an inflection point.

There were two responses to the same underlying failure. One movement named inequality, corporate power, and greed, and insisted that we could build an economy that worked for everyone. The other took that same frustration and redirected it toward immigrants, toward government itself, and toward anyone easier to blame than the systems actually rigging the game. Fear traveled faster. It still does.

Bernie lost that race. But the movement didn’t disappear.

For me, it became a ten-year journey. It led to fights to raise the minimum wage in Cleveland. To opposing sweetheart stadium deals that funneled public dollars into billionaire pockets. To standing up for our public city hospital when it was threatened with closure. Over time, it led me to run for and win a seat on my local city council.

From there, we turned values into policy. We raised wages for city employees. We committed our city to zero carbon emissions. We passed Lakewood’s first Climate Action Plan. We proved that progressive politics could deliver real, measurable improvements in people’s lives.

In 2024, I ran for state representative. I won.

The country, meanwhile, moved in a darker direction. Trump won again. And now, in 2026, the political moment feels uncomfortably familiar. The same forces of fear and division are loud. The same greed continues to shape too much of American life.

But so does the lesson I learned ten years ago in that crowded office in Lakewood.

Community matters. Organizing works. Ordinary people, acting together, can confront concentrated power and win lasting change. That belief carried me from a living room to city hall to the Ohio Statehouse.

Ten years in, I’m still on that path. More clear-eyed. More grounded. Still guided by the same conviction that brought so many of us together in January 2016: a better future is possible, and we build it the same way we always have. Together.