Walter Adler

I remember being a young man and coming to the realization, that nothing in the world resembled even slightly the place in which I was born. I could name those faraway places on a map, but not until my coming of age could I fully appreciate my true fortune in being born an American. New York is a citadel of refuge. It is the place where some of the toughest, luckiest and most tenacious of the humanity have fled to attempt fulfillment of their human rights in the United State and not look back at the world they left behind. For those who remain in their countries of origin, which is to say the bulk of humanity, there is a grinding and elaborate menace that forever threatens their dignity and their lives.

I am a paramedic and development practitioner. I am bound by my duty to act. From a young age, invested with idealism and education, I reasoned these were not inevitabilities, but injustices born of negligence, malice, apathy and shattered capability. Surely a new generation of women and men, armed with science, innovation and boldness of vision might correct these problems were they to possess the will and more importantly the organizational solidarity.

It was in places like Palestine and Haiti that I first realized that were I to make myself a student of indigenous knowledge; to listen to the true aspirations of the struggling and oppressed; that only then would I be a worthy ally. I believe in my family, my City and the future though above all else I understand that age-old adage that to teach a person to fish is a high form of self-determination. I have medical skills and development training to empower others in these abilities and I am prepared to travel extensively where needed to teach this modal to any that will replicate it on a mass level.