A year ago as I struggled to make sense of a life that led itself to homelessness and loss I never would have guessed that today I am fully engaged in my new hometown Statesville, North Carolina as a candidate for City Council. During the last ten years I've been a proud Homeland Security TSA Officer who stood up with thousands to serve our country and get our economy and our planes moving again. I was elected the founding president of AFGE Local 1, the national union dedicated to standing up for those who serve in TSA. When I spoke out publicly against the open culture of discrimination against African-American screeners I was given a two year reprimand; when I wrote in The Washington Post that TSA was failing to meet the standard set by Congress requiring adequate training I was fired.

From that moment on my path led to Statesville. After losing my wife, house and car TSA admitted they were wrong and allowed me to serve once again. My follow-up opinion piece in the Post's Sunday Close to Home section decrying TSA's destructive personnel system led to another termination attempt. On the third try I quit and served as a union organizer for SEIU where I discovered my 'old school' labor values did not resonate with the 'new school' of labor 'activists'.

So after 24 months of unemployment I was homeless and wrote about my first day in this space leading to an invitation from a former SEIU co-worker. I had a home in Statesville. Six months later I found a job as a part-time janitor and registered to vote. I found my 'old school' ways still intact and my core values and passion for speaking out for workers still burning inside me.

The first time I attended a Statesville City Council meeting I spoke out against the way city leaders chose to freeze their workers' pay for the third year in a row. City residents are allowed to speak at the second meeting of the month for no longer than three minutes. I decided that while this city and county are dominated by GOP elected officials that I believed that any community that is majority working class is majority Democrat. At the very least a city of working people should be represented by a City Council that respects workers. In my opinion the pay freeze was just one indication that working people are not just powerless but dismissed as having nothing of value to add to the discussion.

On October 11 the voters of Statesville Ward 4 will choose. I am on the ballot. Pretty amazing story right? After Wisconsin et al, an actual old school labor man, a worker who lost everything in the struggle but rose up still fighting the good fight is irresistible to support.

But that has not been the case. I discovered that the new school apparently defines society as social media and rarely ventures out to engage on such mundane matters as local politics. My hope that a few hundred would donate $10 to make a stand against the continued assault against public workers was not realized.

I understand that running a campaign and fundraising are skills and that the new school does not operate on simple loyalty. But the opportunity to win a race in a district that elected Virginia Foxx to Congress and that will be just miles away from the next Democratic National Convention should have been a cause to celebrate and support.

I may have let down my own cause to be sure, but if people like me, non-elite working class citizens, are shunned by the political elite we cannot build a movement and only a movement can prevail in a post-Citizens United world. I plan to win, I intend to continue to speak out and I hope effectively organize. I will do it alone, but we can do better for working people if the political elites from both camps simply take that first step on the road to respect. Listen to us. Then recruit the best of us to run for office and let's equip working people to take back their communities. I believe it can happen and Statesville is a good place to start.