Ady Barkan

Ady Barkan died 2023, was Strategic Advisor, Local Progress, Center for Popular Democracy.

Ady helped launch Local Progress and served as co-director until February 2018. He is currently the co-director of Fed Up, an initiative also housed at CPD. Before joining CPD, Ady was a law clerk to the Hon. Shira A. Scheindlin in the Southern District of New York. Prior to that he was a Liman Fellow with Make The Road New York, where he represented low-wage workers seeking to recover unpaid wages, engage in collective action, and obtain safe and dignified working conditions. He helped design and draft policy proposals to enhance the quality of low-wage jobs in New York City including the right to paid sick days, regulation of major retailers, and unionization of the car wash industry. He graduated from Yale Law School and Columbia College, cum laude.^[1]

Lives in Santa Barbara. Partner of Rachael King. He is a member of Democratic Socialists of America.^[2]

Activist life

Ady Barkan, a well-known activist who campaigned for Medicare for all while struggling with the neurodegenerative disease A.L.S., died November 2023 in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 39.

His death, at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, was announced by Be a Hero, the political organization he co-founded in 2018.

Mr. Barkan was diagnosed with A.L.S., or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in 2016, four months after the birth of his son, Carl.

As Mr. Barkan confronted his mortality, he dedicated the rest of his life to changing the American health care system.

His profile and influence grew even as his health deteriorated, in part because he had a knack for blending his personal story with calls to action. He testified before Congress, interviewed Democratic presidential candidates and spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Ohad Barkan was born on Dec. 18, 1983, in Boston. His mother, Diana Kormos Buchwald, is a professor of the history of science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. His father, Elazar Barkan, is a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. Both emigrated to the United States from Israel.

Mr. Barkan was raised in Cambridge, Mass., where his parents were graduate students, and later in California, where he attended high school in Claremont. One of his first forays into politics was volunteering on an election campaign for Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California.

He met his wife, Rachael King, who is now a professor of English literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at Columbia University’s student newspaper when they were undergraduates there.

Initially wanting to be a lawyer, Mr. Barkan was a clerk for a federal judge in New York after law school. But he decided to become a full-time activist after being drawn to the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in Lower Manhattan in 2011.

Before his A.L.S. diagnosis, Mr. Barkan was an energetic but relatively anonymous foot soldier for progressive causes, including rights for immigrants and workers, ending mass incarceration and reforming the Federal Reserve. After getting sick, he became a hero of the left and a social media star. Politico called him “the most powerful activist in America.”

He was adept at attracting public attention to his progressive causes. On an airplane in 2017, he confronted Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, over a Republican tax bill that he believed could lead to steep cuts in social services, like health care.

“Think about the legacy that you will have for my son and your grandchildren if you take your principles and turn them into votes,” Mr. Barkan said. “You can save my life.”

In 2018, he was arrested in his wheelchair in a Senate office building as he protested the Supreme Court nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Be a Hero, which was formally founded that year, eventually grew to include two nonprofits and a political action committee. Among other issues, the group campaigned to protect nurses during the pandemic, and to replace Senate Republicans, who it said were the chamber's “most dangerous voices” in the 2022 midterm elections. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in September that she had watched Mr. Barkan “pick a lot of really good fights” over the years, and that he had been instrumental in stopping Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

“Thanks to his persistence, he hasn’t just been in the fight,” Ms. Warren said, speaking virtually to an audience at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., where Mr. Barkan was accepting an award from the Roosevelt Institute for his activism. “He’s been leading these fights, and helping win them.”

In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Barkan made clear that while he endorsed the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, he disagreed with the candidate on health care policy. (President Biden opposes Medicare for all, and Mr. Barkan had initially endorsed Ms. Warren and later Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for the party’s nomination.)

In a 2020 discussion with Mr. Barkan over Zoom, Mr. Biden would not commit to doubling the budget for the National Institutes of Health, saying that he would “significantly increase the budget” and ensure that “we spend another $50 billion on biomedical research” over the next several years.

“I think that is not enough,” said Mr. Barkan, who by that point could speak only through a computerized voice using eye gaze technology.

“Well, maybe when I get elected, you can come and help me figure out what’s enough,” Mr. Biden told him.

“Thank you, Mr. Vice President,” Mr. Barkan replied. “I’ll take you up on that.”

Can't Care Wait Summit

Gina Raimondo, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Devon Still, Alicia Garza, Cristela Alonzo, Dawn Lyen-Gardner, Tina Tchen, Lauren Miller Rogen, Ady Barkan, Ai-jen Poo.

"Health Care Justice"

September 23 2020 with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rev. William J. Barber II, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Ady Barkan, Sarah Nelson.

Emergency organizing call

Ady Barkan🔥🌹 @AdyBarkan

Congress is about to spend a trillion dollars! Will it be used to enrich the 1%, or help the American people?

Please join

@ewarren

,

@PramilaJayapal

,

@NNUBonnie

,

@NelStamp

,

@WorkingFamilies

,

@BeAHeroTeam and me tonight for an emergency organizing call.

Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, Bonnie Castillo, Nelini Stamp.

Socialist healthcare lobbying

Santa Barbara Democratic Socialists of America May 13 at 7:51 PM:

Today we met with Salud Carbajal as part of a coalition led by Santa Barbara resident and Medicare for All hero Ady Barkan. Salud listened to our healthcare horror stories, agreed that healthcare is a right and Medicare for All should be our goal, but stopped short of signing on to Medicare for All (H.R. 1384) even as he cited that it would save us $2 trillion dollars and prevent millions of deaths. Why won’t Salud sign on to this bill if he agrees with us? Does he lack the courage necessary to stand with us and fight?