When you decide you're going to be a public servant, you should not be able to take on interests that conflict with the city.

I am an independent reform candidate. I do not represent the past.

I'm not affiliated with Ed Burke, Joe Berrios or anyone else who represents the old, corrupt Chicago way. I am offering voters a complete break from that past and pushing us forward in a way that brings people together and makes government more inclusive.

Obviously, I believe that Rahm Emanuel's leadership has failed. Obviously, I believe we need change.

I had amazing intellectual privilege as a kid. My mom taught me to read when I was two or three. When I was five, I read and wrote well enough to do my nine-year older brother's homework in exchange for chocolate or cigarettes. By the time I was 10, I was reading Orwell, Tolstoy's 'War and Peace,' and the Koran. I was reading comic books, too.

The goal of my University education was to get into a medical college and equip myself to run a hospital in Kumbakonam left behind by my father, M.K. Sambasivan, who died at a young age in 1936.

When you're teaching a hard concept and the students all have puzzled looks on their faces and then suddenly you can see that 'aha' moment, that they got it, that's just an incredible thing.

Education is important. And the difference of the zip code you grow up in or the zip code you are born in and how you turn out really isn't fair to the kids of our world.