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For Immediate Release
June, 09 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Derrick Crowe, 512.516.5067, d.crowe@peoplesaction.org
People's Action Endorses New York Movement Politics Candidates
People's Action today endorsed a slate of five New York state-level candidates in the upcoming June 23 New York Democratic primary election. The candidates are running movement-politics, people-powered campaigns and will fight for the People's Action agenda once elected. Each of these candidates is also endorsed by one of People's Actions' New York member organizations, VOCAL-NY or Citizen Action of New York.
Today's endorsed candidates include:
WASHINGTON
People's Action today endorsed a slate of five New York state-level candidates in the upcoming June 23 New York Democratic primary election. The candidates are running movement-politics, people-powered campaigns and will fight for the People's Action agenda once elected. Each of these candidates is also endorsed by one of People's Actions' New York member organizations, VOCAL-NY or Citizen Action of New York.
Today's endorsed candidates include:
- Adam Bojak - State Assembly District 149
- Sam Fein - State Assembly District 108
- Matt Toporowski - Albany County District Attorney
- Diana Richardson - State AssemblyDistrict 43
- Kim Smith - State Senate District 61
"Candidates who put people and the planet first are essential to repairing the damage that corporations and the rich have done to New York State," People's Action Director of Movement Governing Brooke Adams said. "The candidates we endorsed today run people-powered campaigns and are already champions for the multiracial working class. We are proud to have their backs."
Adam Bojak, State Assembly District 149
Adam Bojak is a tenants' rights attorney and housing activist in Western New York, running a grassroots, people-powered campaign.
"Our campaign is excited and honored to have the endorsement of People's Action," Bojak said. "Attending the People's Wave convention in Washington, D.C. last year was a formative experience in my politics, and the People's Platform underscores our own platform from top to bottom, and we will fight to achieve those goals for the residents of New York."
Sam Fein, State Assembly District 108
Sam Fein fights for a society that values everyday people over the interests of corporations. As a two-term Albany County legislator, he won improvements for working families across the county. He co-sponsored legislation to guarantee all employees paid sick leave, led the fight to turn vacant buildings into community-owned housing and passed legislation to "ban the box," ending employment discrimination for formerly incarcerated people.
"I'm excited to have the endorsement of People's Action, because we both believe that the road to progress must go through our communities," Fein said.
Matt Toporowski, Albany County District Attorney
Matt Toporowski, an Upstate New York native, has worked for appellate judges, tried cases as a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, and been appointed as a special prosecutor. An active member of his community, leading his neighborhood association and serving on the board of a local high school, Matt cares deeply about people and helping to solve problems.
"I'm ready to tackle the long history of mass incarceration and structural racism that has harmed so many people for so long," Toporowski said. "The old approach to the justice system can't continue. I'm proud to work with People's Action to demand and implement a different vision for the justice system - one that's rooted in truth, transfers power to the community, and invests in people."
Diana Richardson, State Assembly District 43
Diana Richardson is the incumbent Assemblywoman for the 43rd Assembly District in Brooklyn, New York representing the neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Wingate, and East Flatbush in the state capitol. She was first elected in 2015 in a special election and was the first elected official in New York State's history to be elected using only the Working Family Party line, and the first elected official in New York State to win her election refusing corporate and real estate donations. As assemblywoman, her accomplishments include passing the strongest tenant protections in our State's history, fighting for workers rights, and using her voice to fight police violence in our communities.
"As the assemblywoman for one of the districts in New York hardest hit by the COVID crisis, the housing crisis, and by police brutality, I am honored to stand with Peoples' Action and their affiliates in New York to fight for true justice," Richardson said. "This endorsement means the world to me and I will continue to make you proud in Albany!"
Kim Smith, State Senate District 61
Kim Smith spent 30 years in service pertaining to community outreach, policy work, coalition building, activism and organizing. She has learned that in order to fight for change, we need to be in the decision making room.
"Through gerrymandering, the Democratic voices of District 61 residents have been intentionally overlooked and undervalued," Smith said. "Having the endorsement of People's Action, a national organization that has stood with so many for so long, is not only an honor, but carries with it the expectation that I will deliver and restore our voice. And I will! We will not be silent!"
People's Action builds the power of poor and working people, in rural, suburban, and urban areas to win change through issue campaigns and elections.
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"The American people don't want this war," said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. "Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die in Iraq in the 2000s and if we don't learn that lesson then shame on every single one of us."
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Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut offered immediate push back on Sunday when CNN anchorJake Tapper said a vote against an expected $50 billion request by President Donald Trump to fund his attack on Iran would be seen as "voting against the troops."
"Oh come on," said Murphy, incredulous. "I mean, the American people don't want this war. They don't want this war—they have seen what happens when American troops go into places like Iraq, places like Afghanistan. Ultimately we get a lot of people killed, we waste a lot of dollars. The one thing the people of the American people have been clear about is that they don't want the United States dragged into another long-term war in the Middle East."
Polling has shown that Murphy is correct, with only one out of four people—a mere 25%—in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week showing any kind of support for Trump's war of choice against Iran.
"If you support the troops," said Murphy, "then you should vote against this war so that we get our troops out of harm's way. Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die in Iraq in the 2000s and if we don't learn that lesson then shame on every single one of us."
TAPPER: "You have said you're a 'hell no' on funding the war. We have seen this movie before. We know that vote will be cast as - especially if you run for higher office - you voting against the troops."
MURPHY: "Oh come on I mean, the American people don't want this war." pic.twitter.com/lTB5isM8I7
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) March 8, 2026
Trump has yet to make the formal request for the $50 billion in funding, but estimates for just one week of fighting have put the cost of the military operations thus far at something close to $1billion per day.
Murphy has said he is a "hell no" on any additional funding and other members of the Democratic caucus have echoed that message.
"Trump is already spending $1 BILLION PER DAY on his illegal regime change war of choice in Iran," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Thursday. "Now, he's going to ask Congress to give him up to $50 BILLION MORE. My vote: hell NO."
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Senator Susan Collins, said Platner outside the Republican senator's office in Portland, Maine, is more interested in the profits of weapons contractors "than the shame that we bring upon ourselves when we kill children."
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"We can all see what is happening right now," said Platner outside Collins' offices in downtown Portland, Maine on Saturday. "At least with the war in Iraq, they had the decency to try to trick us for months. At least they made Colin Powell go sully his name in front of the UN to try to trick us into thinking WMDs were real. At least then they tried to convince us that it was necessary. This time around, they're just doing it."
And the Trump administration is doing it, he continued, "because we have a system that does not hold people accountable. We have a Congress that for decades has abdicate its constitutional role in war making. It never should have been an option that a president can just start a huge regional conflict because he's afraid we're going to find out he might be a pedophile."
In a vote in the Senate on Wednesday, Collins sided against a War Powers Resolution that would have curbed Trump's ability to wage the war that has already killed more than 1,300 civilians, a large portion of them children. While the joint US-Israeli operation has unleashed chaos across the Middle East and been denounced as a criminal war of aggression by experts, Collins argued that passing the resolution "would send the wrong message to Iran and our troops."
"At least with the war in Iraq, they had the decency to try to trick us for months... This time around, they're just doing it."
Platner, who served multiple tours of combat duty in Afghanistan and Iraq as both a Marine and Army infantry soldier, expressed outrage at how willing politicians like Collins are to send young Americans off to kill and die for wars that bring such horror and carnage abroad while costing US taxpayers billions at home.
"Susan Collins is more interested in protecting the wealthy and the powerful. She is more interested in protecting the profits of the defense industry. She's more interested in protecting the interests of her AIPAC donors," Platner told the crowd, ripping Collins for her vote against the resolution. "She is more interested in all of that, than in protecting the sacred resource that is the lives of young American men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line for this country. She is more interested in their profits than the shame that we bring upon ourselves when we kill children."
On the first day of US bombing last week, a school in the southeastern town of Minab was struck, killing an estimated 165 civilians, most of them young students.
"She [Susan Collins] is more interested in their profits [AIPAC donors and the defense industry] than the shame that we bring upon ourselves when we kill children."
Watch Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate @grahamformaine confront Republican Senator Susan Collins. pic.twitter.com/9uaKqBcKix
— Zeteo (@zeteo_news) March 7, 2026
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Across the country, Solomon told Common Dreams, "members of Congress who’ve voted for more high-tech slaughter in Iran are smugly going on with routine business in their offices, insulated from the murderous effects of their political positions. They do not deserve insulation, they deserve nonviolent and militant confrontation."
Showing up at local district offices of their members of Congress, "to protest with clear moral messaging" like those in Maine over the weekend, said added Solomon, "is long overdue and should become widespread. Most of us don’t live far from such offices. Why should politicians who enable mass murder from the skies be able to run their offices every day as though nothing is amiss?"
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Platner has emerged as potent anti-war voice in the week since Trump launched the US assault on Iran, repeatedly invoking the trauma he suffered and the horrors of war he witnessed as a soldier as a way to condemn repeating history, especially by lawmaker like Collins who appeared to have learned no lessons from the experience of the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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In a separate post on Saturday, Platner reached out to Trump voters who may be disappointed or disillusioned after the warmongering of a president who told voters he would act to end wars in his second term, not start them.
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In the wake of infernos unleashed across portions of Tehran the night before, the people of Iran's capital woke up Sunday to the hideous sight of ominous gray clouds above, choking-levels of smoke, and black raindrops full of toxic oil falling across the city.
Critics described "scenes of Armageddon" and characterized the bombings and the destruction they triggered as the latest crimes committed by the US and Israel since they launched their unprovoked and illegal assault on the Middle East nation last week.
Iranian officials urged residents to stay in doors to avoid the health impacts of the air quality following Israel's intentional bombing of several oil storage and processing facilities in the city on Saturday.
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It is raining oil in Tehran this morning after major airstrikes on oil facilities in the South and West of the Iranian capital. @CNN @cnni pic.twitter.com/2FBD9EnO9p
— Frederik Pleitgen (@fpleitgenCNN) March 8, 2026
Pleitgen also traveled to the Shahran oil depot, among the facilities bombed Saturday, where dark gray smoke continued to billow into the air and he described the amount of damage as "immense":
Managed to film at the Shahran oil depot in Western Tehran that was targeted by airstrikes last night. The oil still seems to be burning. We saw flames coming from some of the destroyed oil storage tanks. Also destroyed tanker trucks outside the gate. Sorry for audio issues, was… pic.twitter.com/DYrsJbaY3t
— Frederik Pleitgen (@fpleitgenCNN) March 8, 2026
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Though it is day, the sun cannot be seen in Tehran today because of all the smoke following the US and Israel bombing Tehran's oil refineries. People on the ground describe it as armageddon.
History will not forgive Reza Pahlavi, Masih Alinejad, Nazanin Boniadi, and all other… pic.twitter.com/Sy3LhtaDEK
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) March 8, 2026
Parsi, who is of Iranian descent, also took aim at members of the Iranian diaspora who for weeks and months have pushed for the US and Israeli governments to attack their own country.
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