Sam Gurwitt Photo
State Rep. Mike D’Agostino” There is a difference between a candidate and a catalyst.”
Mike D’Agostino is “feeling the Bern” — about the presidential race, and about how Connecticut goes about legalizing cannabis.
D’Agostino became the first Connecticut state legislator this week to endorse the presidential campaign of fellow Democrat Bernie Sanders.
Four years ago D’Agostino backed Hillary Clinton against Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. He said he learned a lesson in the process.
“I fell into the trap [that] I have to support Hillary because ‘she’s the only one who can win,” D’Agostino said Friday during an appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden” program.
D’Agostino, a Democrat who represents Hamden in the state House of Representatives, joins a wave of progressives nationwide who in recent weeks have chosen to back Sanders over the other leading left-leaning candidate for the party’s nomination, Elizabeth Warren, and propel him in the polls.
D’Agostino did so after examining their issue differences, such as Sanders’ more “consistent” history of voting against excessive military spending. But most of all, D’Agostino said, Sanders won his endorsement because of his broader approach to systemic change and lifelong “consistency.”
“There is a difference between a candidate and a catalyst,” he said, dubbing Sanders the latter. “He is inspiring people across the country, young and old, across the political spectrum” and has “consistently worked for structural change his entire life.”
The “tipping point” along those lines was Sanders’ “consistent support for organized labor,” D’Agostino said. He argued that organized labor represents the strongest bulwark against corporate dominance of government and politics. “You can’t just rely on government to take on these entrenched interests,” he argued. “Labor needs friends who have been there from the beginning.”
Sanders also has proved the most effective at reframing public debate, in D’Agostino’s view. “The sea change we’ve had about [debating] Obamacare to Medicare for All is because of Bernie Sanders.”
Making Legalization Work For Burned Communities
Sam Gurwitt Photo
New Haven Sanders supporters at a Manchester field office last weekend.
Meanwhile, D’Agostino pledged to work this coming legislative session to ensure that cannabis legalization benefits communities burned by the War on Drugs.
A bill to legalize the sale and recreational use of cannabis, which failed last year, is expected to arise again in the legislative session that starts next month, with new momentum.
D’Agostino supports legalization. As co-chair of the legislature’s General Law Committee, D’Agostino will play a role in crafting the details of the plan.
He vowed to push for the creation of an “equity commission” to make sure that legalization benefits communities “disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs” at both the “front end” and the “back end.”
On the front end, he called for “head start” preferences in state issuance of licenses and micro-loans. The preferences would go to applicants who live in census tracts where people were disproportionately locked up for marijuana-related offenses or if they have connections to those affected.
On the back end, he called for the annual tax proceeds — estimated to start at $60-$100 million, growing to $250 million — be directed to those same communities. The money should flow directly to community groups working in those areas rather than to local governments, he argued.
Click on the video below to watch the full interview with State Rep Mike D’Agostino on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden,” which included discussion of magnet schools and desegregation.