Sal Albanese

During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.

It's an intolerable abuse of power to have employees who are supposed to be advancing the public interest actually working on political campaigns.

Even the best parents have to spend so much time making ends meet that they cannot help their kids with homework or afford the extra tutoring that wealthier students enjoy. To address these unjust disparities, we need an early education revolution.

I can't solve the poverty problem, but there are things you can do to mitigate its effects on kids.

You can bring people together around the issue of economic fairness. I don't want to be a mayor that goes into one neighborhood and gets jeered, and goes into another neighborhood and gets cheered.

I'm not interested in being Don Quixote. I'm interested in running the City of New York.

I'd love to have our trains, our subway cars and our taxis built right here in New York City. You can create 40,000 living wage jobs... the city's contracting power is huge.

At the end of the day, New Yorkers need a mayor who understands the problems they face, brings a smart plan and good people to the table, and, more than anything, has the independence, courage and conviction to do the right thing.

If the City Council wants to hold the police accountable, it has the subpoena power and oversight responsibility to do so. They don't have the courage to do it.

By regulating marijuana, we can put black market drug dealers out of business and eliminate the rebellious allure that attracts young people.

The world's greatest city - New York City - deserves a government that works for all New Yorkers. That starts with a mayor who is independent from party bosses and special interests, who isn't afraid to be honest with the people, and who is focused on the issues New Yorkers care about most.

It's the story of New York. Storefronts change and languages change, but at the end of the day, people come here to find opportunity like my family did.