Meet Mr. Paterson

Paterson

A June 2003 issue of the Metroland, our alternative weekly rag, featured a great article on our soon-to-be governor, David Paterson.  Frankly I really had no idea who he was and was pleasantly surprised by this article (honestly, until yesterday I didn't know he was even blind or black, but I do tend to get most of my news from radio and the internets, so that's my excuse fwiw, haha).  Check out a few snips (links and emphasis mine):

    ...in October 2002 when he was arrested for blocking the entrance to Gov. George Pataki’s Manhattan office to protest the state’s Rockefeller Drug Laws. It was his third arrest: Previously, he had been motivated to civil disobedience by apartheid and the excessive force used to kill Amadou Diallo.

    “But I think the Rockefeller Drug Laws have unfairly put people behind bars and destroyed their lives over, sometimes, one evening’s mistake in which no one else got hurt,” Paterson says. “You know, I’m not talking about drug dealing and cartels and that sort of thing. I’m talking about people who are young and being experimental, and the only difference between me and them is they got caught.”

    Paterson’s astuteness to the needs of the disenfranchised was apparent during the debate over the Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act in December 2002. As the final draft of the three-decade-old bill was being debated on the Senate floor, it became apparent that New York’s transgender population would be excluded from the change to the state’s civil-rights law. Paterson was a vocal advocate for the transgenders’ inclusion.

    “I don’t think I’m transgendered and I don’t really understand the definition totally,” Paterson says, “but I know that they are people who live their life in a different kind of way and they feel ostracized. In my opinion, as long as they are not selling drugs to people, killing people, or abusing people they deserve to work and live in our society. And what makes our society great is that we champion the uniqueness of people and the differences among us.”

    “The reason I voted for it was that I’d once killed a hate-crimes bill in 1987—that was my own bill—because the Republicans didn’t want to include gay and lesbians, they didn’t want to include sexual orientation,” Paterson says. “But I realized that in killing the bill I killed the movement. What I’m beginning to understand now is that you do allow for incremental change because what inspires people are not the injustices—what inspires people is hope.”

The Nation also has a good post on him you may want to check out as well.