Like many people in lower Manhattan, David Siffert has grown tired of the New York State’s legislature failure to address the concerns of his community.
He’s long been a community activist, but running for public office was a new idea.
“I’ve just gotten tired of waiting,” he says. When Assembly Member Deborah Glick decided not to run for re-election, he realized that “impatience can be a virtue.”
While he had never run for high elected office, he was already an active member of the Village Independent Democratic Club (VID) and had served as the downtown club’s president, and has for the past several months had led volunteers in a canvassing effort to protect immigrants from ICE.
Still, he approached the idea of running for the Assembly with trepidation. He had never run for public office, and wasn’t sure that spending his weeks in Albany would be good for him or his family. When he realized that his wife and child could join him in the Capitol, he couldn’t pass up the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put his experience to work on behalf of his community, his city, and his country.
Siffert, one of six candidates running in the Democratic primary for New York’s 66th Assembly District, which will be held on June 23, has one unique skill that no one else running has: the experience of actually writing legislation. He started when he was president of VID. “Elected officials knew I was an attorney and asked that I help them turn some of their bills into the legal language that bills require,” he says. He then began proposing his own legislation to some of those lawmakers.
Siffert has proposed ideas for addressing the concerns of the community, including small businesses, health care, and the creation of affordable housing. Unique among the candidates for the Assembly, he also has larger concerns that affect all residents of New York State and the entire country. One of them is regulating he rapid, even uncontrolled, growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He sees its uncontrolled growth as a threat to citizens’ privacy and individual freedom. The massive data centers they require also pose a huge threat to our environment.
“AI is already changing our lives — from schools to job applications to what we read online,” he says. “It poses a threat to every aspect of our lives, including civil rights, education, and the labor market. It may even present a potentially existential danger to our way of life. Will ChatGPT teach a user how to build a biological weapon? I want my child to grow up in a society where they have a chance to learn, work, and live without having to serve the whims of algorithmic overlords and tech billionaires.”
There is good news, he notes. “The New York State legislature has the power to decide how this technology will impact our society,” he says. “We can pass data protection laws and laws prohibiting algorithmic discrimination. We can get AI out of schools and prevent data centers from being powered by fossil fuels. We can protect jobs and protect against the catastrophic risks AI poses to our society.”
Siffert has already written bills to do most of these things but points out that “We have to pass and implement them. I’m running for Assembly because we can actually to do something about it.”
Siffert is already doing something about the incursion of federal agents in New York. Over the past several months, he’s coordinated the effort by VID to prepare local businesses and not-for-profit groups in the East and West Village for unauthorized visits by ICE. With the help of dozens of volunteers, they’ve provided guidance and printed information to more than 500 business owners and managers in the community. They’ve explained their rights, and the rights of their employees, and that ICE needs warrants or explicit permission to enter premises that aren’t open to the public.
This work was nothing new for the civil rights attorney. During the height of the migrant crisis several years ago, he went down to Texas and helped asylum seekers with their claims. “I’ve been defending immigrants for many years – from helping immigrants get Temporary Protected
Status back in 2008 to going down to the Texas border in 2018 to help free detained migrant families. I’ve been a member of the New York Immigration Coalition, and have worked with the NYCLU, Bronx Defenders, and other organizations to protect undocumented immigrants. I’m not new to this fight and I hope our community sees that this is a long-term commitment for me.”
For Siffert and his volunteers, resistance to ICE is a matter of conscience and commitment to the community and the country. “My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. When the secret police start rounding up my neighbors, I can’t ignore it. Our efforts to organize and resist are one way we prevent the growth of fascism in America.”
Whether or not he’s successful in his race for the Assembly, Siffert plans to continue to be an outspoken advocate for the community.
What drives him? “Impatience,” he says. “I want to make things right and I don’t want to wait.”
For more information about Village Independent Democrats and its mobilization against ICE, visit VillageDemocrats.org. Early voting ends tomorrow, Election Day is Tuesday.
