Jane Shevtsov understands that Democratic presidential candidate
Dennis Kucinich has almost no chance of winning.
Yet the third-year ecology, behavior and evolution student feels
an obligation to dedicate her time to being a research assistant on
national issues for the Kucinich campaign.
Moving about campus with a Kucinich sticker proudly displayed
among several environmental and anti-war stickers on the back of
her wheelchair, Shevtsov said she supports Kucinich because he is
the candidate with ideas most like her own.
Kucinich’s platforms include expanding health care,
funding for education, social security benefits and environmental
laws, as well as an ardent anti-war stance.
Shevtsov is not giving up on Kucinich, the congressman from
Ohio, though he has received less than 10 percent of the vote in
all of the past primaries and caucuses except for one.
As part of her duties, Shevtsov was able to find historical
precedents for the desire to create a Department of Peace during
wartime, which helped bolster Kucinich’s support for such a
department.
Shevtsov also helped to expand Kucinich’s senior citizen
policies by relating them with disability and pollution issues.
Besides researching policy issues, Shevtsov is also responsible
for tasks like replying to e-mails, editing papers and answering
questionnaires.
Shevtsov works under Tad Daley, the national issues director for
Kucinich, with whom she met and became friends when he was a
visiting scholar at UCLA.
Shevtsov said her support for Kucinich stems mainly from his
progressive ideas for peace, health care and education.
“He has bold ideas,” Shevtsov said.
“He’s working for a more just and humane
society.”
Shevtsov said the United States, as the wealthiest nation,
should strive to offer universal health care and free higher
education like some nations in Europe.
She also disagrees with the United States’ current level
of military spending.
“There’s so much good you can do if you just cut a
little percent of that $40 billion,” Shevtsov said.
Shevtsov believes that one of the most important things the
president does is set the tone for the nation.
“The president affects how we react to things, especially
when something bad happens,” Shevtsov said. “After 9/11
Bush set an “˜us against them.’ I think Kucinich would
have set a very different tone of mutual cooperation for
us.”
“The primary is not a time for compromise,” she
said. “It’s important to support him for his ideas. He
might not win this year, but someone else with the same ideas might
win four or eight years from now.”
Shevtsov said the one thing she likes to tell others is to act
on their hopes because decisions made out of fear, she said, have a
tendency not to work.
She called supporting Kucinich a matter of conscience for her
and said she is following her own advice by acting on her hopes for
a successful Kucinich campaign.
As an immigrant who came to the United States from Ukraine when
she was 7 years old, Jane Shevtsov thinks of herself as a world
citizen before being American or Ukranian.
Shevtsov said she was drawn to Kucinich the first time she heard
him speak because he talked about Americans as citizens of the
world.
Shevtsov said many people are realizing the increased
interdependence of different countries in recent times and
Kucinich’s progressive policies are a reflection of the
importance of viewing the world as a whole.
“I think if it weren’t for the fear dynamic, a lot
more people would be working for progressive ideas that support a
more united world,” Shevtsov said.