Manhattan Young Democrat of the Year

Alec Barrett
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Adapted from my acceptance speech at the Demmys, the annual award ceremony of the Manhattan Democratic Party, where I received the award for Young Democrat of the Year.


Thank you so much, Manhattan Democrats. Thank you to our County Leader, Keith Wright, and our Executive Director, my friend and colleague on Community Board 9, Barry Weinberg.

I want to thank my club, Community Free Democrats, my fellow District Leaders, Joan Paylo, Marc Landis, Janice Oppenheimer, and club president Stephanie Lasher.

I also want to say thank you to my mom, Didi Barrett, who is here, and is the inspiration for so much of my work in public service.

Since I’m receiving the Young Democrat of the Year award, I guess I should say something about my generation. We are the Obama generation, which means we know what good national leadership looks like. In fact, it’s all we’ve ever known, as long as we’ve been able to vote, until this year.

We see that education and jobs don’t look like they did thirty years ago. We are embracing new ways of balancing our vocations and our passions.

We want to live in diverse cities and minimize our environmental impact. This means we like getting around on bikes and driving smaller cars.

We know our way around the Internet, and how important it is to use two-factor authentication on our email.

The last several months have given the lie to the idea that the Republicans have some sort of coherent conservative ideology. By backing this president, their leaders in Congress have pulled back the curtains to reveal that they don’t believe in anything but protecting their own power.

While this president kowtows to Russia, the Democrats have become the protectors of national security. He made a fool of himself at the G20: we are the protectors of foreign policy. He outsources his own company’s jobs and uses his office to enrich himself: we are the party with credibility on the economy and creating 21st century jobs. All this means we are the patriotic party. I remember during the Iraq War when that word was used against us.

But we cannot be both parties at once, and we’re not going to win elections by acting like Republicans. We have to be true to Democratic values.

We’re going to win elections by supporting women’s, gay, and trans rights.

We’re going to win by being allies to the Black Lives Matter movement — it’s not anti-police to believe that unarmed citizens shouldn’t be gunned down in our streets.

We’re going to fight for voting rights. I was down in Georgia working for Jon Ossoff, and in Georgia they have weeks and weeks of early voting. New York does not, and I’m going to work to change that.

And finally, we’re going to fight to protect our healthcare. Today, that means defending Obamacare. In the future, it will mean pushing for single payer. But Democrats will be leading the way. Thank you.


  • This year I’m running for Democratic District Leader on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Please contribute to my campaign here.
  • I am a leader of Community Free Democrats, an official Democratic club on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Find us online, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

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