Halting the movement for increased commercial zoning and reversing further expansion by Harvard and MIT are two other steps Iskovitz hopes to take to ameliorate the affordable housing shortage in Cambridge.
Iskovitz says one of the first steps towards putting his plans into action is ensuring a more democratic political system. Chief among his complaints is the fact that City Manager Robert W. Healy—the most powerful official in Cambridge—is unelected, with his now two-decade tenure extended periodically by the City Council.
“I realize that it would be a lot of work to change the system. But until then, the City Council needs to control the city manager—right now they treat him as their boss,” Iskovitz says.
Though he says he knows it is unlikely that in a single term as a city councillor he could succeed in achieving all these goals, he says it is important to just get those issues on the table.
“I’ll put them on the agenda,” Iskovitz says. “It’s party-building.”
It’s Not Easy Being Green
For Iskovitz, his campaign—the first Green Party candidacy for the Cambridge City Council—represents an opportunity, both for himself and the Mass. Green Party.
Iskovitz says Cambridge’s proportional representation system is ideal for a third-party movement—and an excellent way to grab a foothold in Massachusetts politics.
First he will need to overcome the drawbacks of being a third-party candidate, says local political pundit Glenn S. Koocher ’71.
“I’ve watched dozens of beginnings of small movements come and go,” Koocher says. “They might find it at the state or national level, but not on the local level.”
Iskovitz came to the Green Party after participating in anti-globalization protests in Washington, D.C. and Quebec which he says were too radical to effect any real change.
He started working with the Mass. Greens on a State House campaign, never thinking it would lead to his own candidacy.
“I wasn’t expecting to work on a City Council race—and I definitely wasn’t expecting it to be my own,” Iskovitz says.
Iskovitz says he is much more comfortable talking about policies than politics.
He is most animated when explaining the intracacies of why passive solar heating works or, when at an intersection near Central Square, he stops in the middle of the street to point out how little time is allowed for pedestrians to cross—yet another example, he says, of how traffic reduces the quality of life in Cambridge.
“I’d be a much better Cambridge city councillor than a Cambridge City Council candidate,” he says.
—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.