The Daily Cardinal - Friday, 02 December 2005
Written by Nick Osiecki
A UW-Madison student activist hopes to fill the vacancy on the Dane County Board of Supervisors left by long-time member Echnaton Vedder, who represented a district containing 85 percent students.
Student Labor Action Coalition member and UW-Madison junior Ashok Kumar announced his candidacy for the Dane County board Thursday.
"He is one of the foremost leaders on campus right now, and one of the things that he's done is organizing anti-violence efforts," Ald. Austin King, District 8, said at the announcement conference.
King added that Kumar has been extensively involved in the student labor movement on campus.
Yet Kumar's brand of activism has attracted controversy. His participation in the labor movement with SLAC on campus led him to take part in the construction of a Facebook profile used to criticize UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley's stance on a SLAC-supported sweatshop proposal.
Like Kumar, Vedder was also 21 years old when he took the board position.
"Ashok has been far more involved in the campus community than I was, and I think he is a better fit for the position than I was," Vedder said. "One of the reasons I'm not running again is because I think the campus deserves someone more in touch with the citizens."
Vedder has been a main proponent of social justice on the county board and said that Kumar will fill his spot well because their politics are closely aligned.
Kumar highlighted a few points of concern during his speech. Among them was the unequal proportion of blacks in the jail system in Dane County.
"I want to make sure if a specific cop arrests an abnormally high number of African-Americans, then that cop should go under a review," Kumar said. "We [Madisonians] have a problem and it needs to be addressed."
He also is a strong advocate of a "big box" living wage, which would require any large establishment, such as Wal-Mart, to pay its workers a living wage.
"It would require that these places pay their workers enough to feed their families," Kumar said. "This way it won't affect small businesses in the area."
As of Thursday, Kumar was running unopposed.
Vedder said he supports Kumar but also said he supports the frame of democracy within which government should work.
"I sure hope he has opponents, in the name of democracy," Vedder said. "If there is a heated race, it helps students learn more about the county board."