This video has been removed at the candidate’s request.
About the Candidate
Name: David Mihalyfy
DOB: Jan. 6, 1980
Family: Single
Occupation: After a midlife switch from working in higher ed as a freshman writing teacher, assisted living aide (with the elderly and people with disabilities).
Political Experience: I’ve fought in multiple workplace unionization drives, including 2 recent drives that brought 2500+ workers into AFT-IFT and 200+ workers into Teamsters Local 743.
As a freelance writer, I’ve also done financial investigative reporting into student debt and “where the money goes,” most notably a 2014 article that showed how 8 University of Chicago administrators got $7.6 million in pay raises over 5 years, even as the school moved toward and received a credit downgrade.
Website: letourlightshine11thward.com
Candidate Statement
Like a lot of people nowadays, I have been trapped and exploited by short-term and low-wage jobs.
But, you know what else?
I fought back.
I have been part of multiple unionization campaigns, including 2 recent drives that brought more than 2500 workers into AFT-IFT and more than 200 workers into Teamsters Local 743.
And even more than that, on my own time, because it was the right thing to do, I’ve done financial investigative reporting into college student debt and “where the money goes."
Now, I’m running for alderman in the 11th Ward. We could be doing better, especially with youth, and especially with helping people with cost of living.
With youth, we should have more activities for young people, and we should do improvements with neighborhood high schools. That’s uplift for existing schools, and a newly built neighborhood high school up towards Chinatown and University Village.
With cost of living, instead of giving handouts to big developers, we do ‘free installation’ for home solar with houses where it makes financial sense, where people start saving on their bills immediately, and then the city gets paid back over time and the money rolls forward to help other people out.
Most of all with cost of living, too, we could be doing fairer taxation, where we tax big banks and luxury goods first, before working people pay any more. Unfortunately our current alderman Patrick Daley Thompson just went straight to the property taxes and straight to the monthly garbage collection tax, and at a time when a lot of families were already being squeezed financially. He’s done a lot of good stuff, and I don’t want to take away from that, but you look at that choice, you look at those values, and you just got to consider, we could be doing things better.
You know, I’m about fairness, I’m about common sense, I’m about service. I’ve lived my life that way, and I’d be in office that way.
I would appreciate your consideration.
Candidate Q&A
What is your vision for this office?
Above and beyond basic constituent services, our city council members should be innovative common sense legislators and use their platform to both facilitate positive change and investigate and expose wrongdoing, particularly financial malfeasance.
What is the most pressing issue facing constituents, and how can you help address it?
We need to do more for youth and to help people with cost-of-living, and everyone knows that both problems are actually the same single problem of the bad budgets that come from the bad values in city hall.
Youth deserve positive pathways in a range of activities and improvements in neighborhood high schools, but too much money that could go to that is being siphoned off to corporations and these well-connected developers who always go and turn around and buy off our representatives.
Cost-of-living comes from rising bills like Peoples Gas, but most of all from unfair taxation. Because Rahm Emanuel wanted it, the majority of the current city council went straightaway to property taxes and the monthly garbage collection tax, rather than pursue reasonable, viable proposals to tax big banks and luxury goods first, before working people pay any more.
I’d be one more voice in city council to fight for this fairer taxation and this better use of finances, and I’d be like a bulldog to go and try to find out wherever money’s getting skimmed off.
