Dimitri Cherny – South Carolina CD01 – U.S. Congress
The American Radical Candidate - Thinking Outside the Box
Real Progressives Interview w/ Savage Joy
My name is Dimitri Cherny and I'm running to replace Mark Sanford in Congress. I'm very concerned about the corrupting influence big money - billionaire money - is having on our politics, our government, our businesses and the bleak future it forebodes for our kids and grandkids.
After a long successful career in the high-tech industry, followed by a fall into homelessness and then truck driving after the great recession, I studied economics and learned that the free-market is not a law of nature. The free-market is a game with rules that we-the-people determine via legislation created by our elected representatives.
I want to make America the place where we ARE our brother's keeper - where we ensure that every American, regardless of the advantages they were born with or without, with forty hours a week of doing ANY job, can live a comfortable, safe and fulfilling life without fear of financial failure from unforeseen medical expenses, college debts, or off-shoring of their job.
I want to make America into a country where people are less interested in becoming obscenely wealthy and are more interested in doing good and leaving a hopeful future for our kids and grandkids. That's why I'm running for a third time for South Carolina's 1st Congressional District - the Lowcountry's seat in the US House of Representatives.
And this time, I’m getting radical and running in the Open Primary on Tuesday June 12th on the Republican ballot, after proving in 2016 that six out of seven Congressional districts in South Carolina are too well gerrymandered in favor of Republicans, that any race other than the Republican primary is a waste of your and my time. Join my fight for liberty and justice for ALL of us so we can leave our kids and grandkids a better world.
CHERNY is the American Radical candidate, thinking outside the box for the future of We the People of the Lowcountry, America, and the entire planet. Removing Mark Sanford in 2018 as the representative for South Carolina's 1st Congressional district.
Disgusted that the leadership of both parties have migrated toward big money and away from We the People, CHERNY is not a blue Democrat and not a red Republican.
Like most of us, CHERNY is somewhere in the purple middle, beholden to no political party, eager to work with anyone willing to improve the quality of life of ALL Americans, committed to providing equal opportunity and justice for ALL, and determined to help ensure the long-term survival and advancement of our civilization.
With your vote in the Republican Open Primary on Tuesday, June 12th, using all he's learned in his previous two runs for Congress in 2014 and 2016, Dimitri Cherny will remove Mark Sanford as South Carolina's 1st Congressional district representative in Washington and give you a real choice in November. Vote in the Open Primary on Tuesday June 12th and ask for the Republican ballot to cast your vote for the Radical We the People need in Washington to make our future better.
Dimitri Cherny is a champion for the people. At one time he had it all - a long career in the high-tech industry which took him all over the world, a custom home in an exclusive seaside community, a hefty salary, and a large 401k. Then the recession hit and he lost everything. Unable to find work, his resources drained away until he found himself homeless.
Dimitri eventually found work as a long distance truck driver, where he met an America he didn’t know existed. Many lived paycheck to paycheck, one car repair or medical bill away from disaster. He also met heroes - people who had taken a stand to make the world a better place. Forever changed by his experience, he joined them, working on issues of racial justice, education, gun violence, public transit, homelessness, and equal rights for all.
Getting into Congress is the next step. Dimitri believes that many of the challenges of a community can be met by addressing the root-causes of our societal problems. That requires making changes in the federal laws that determine the winners and losers in America. In order to further his fight to improve the quality of life in the Lowcountry, Dimitri is running to replace Mark Sanford in Congress for the First Congressional District.
Dimitri’s Story
Born in 1960, Dimitri was the second child and first son in a family of seven. His parents were Eastern European World War II refugees. Childhood friends recall him as a “little scientist,” always curious about the world. He spent much of his youth in the mountains of New England, hiking, sailing, climbing and canoeing. After earning an electrical engineering degree, he began a successful career in the high-tech industry as a product manager who would think outside the box to create radical solutions that his competitors had never considered. That work first took him all over the country, working for a number of startups, two of his own, and then all over the world.
He traveled to third world countries with desperate poverty, where a few had incredible wealth while most suffered. He also visited nations where even a low wage worker could hope to own a home and not have to worry about illness or old age. Each time he returned to the US, where the country was embroiled in an unnecessary war while the middle class was rapidly disappearing, he questioned how things had become so unbalanced.
In 2007, Dimitri became disillusioned selling software to the Fortune 500 while civilization was seemingly heading for collapse. Looking for more meaningful work, his out-of-the-box thinking lead him to invent and receive a patent on an airborne wind energy system and start a company to develop it, which brought him to South Carolina.
When the recession hit, investors for renewable energy dried up. Unable to find another job, penniless and homeless, Dimitri found himself living in his car and off the kindness of friends and family. Desperate and ready to make a sign to beg at a highway off-ramp, he saw an ad for a no-money down truck driving school. He began a new career driving big-rigs, eventually traveling through 47 states.
While driving the highways of America, he met people in every state who he didn’t know existed. The majority were fearful and struggling, one small disaster away from ending up on the street. They couldn’t get ahead, couldn’t save even a dime, couldn’t afford healthcare, had no job security, and were increasingly discouraged about the future they were leaving behind for their children. It became clear that our current economy is a zero-sum game, rigged to keep the winners winning, and the losers losing. But what could one person do against such a system?
In 2014, while spending days driving trucks out of the ports of Charleston, and nights sleeping on a tiny houseboat he'd built and anchored in the Ashley river, Dimitri decided to run as an independent write-in candidate for Congress against Mark Sanford. After the votes were tallied that November, he had received more than 8,000 votes, almost six percent overall and ten percent of the vote in Charleston, an unusually high percentage for a write-in candidate.
After the election, Dimitri stepped up his social justice work. He became one of the founding members of Black Lives Matter Charleston. He helped form the Charleston chapter of SURJ, Showing Up for Racial Justice. After the Emanuel AME murders, he spearheaded an effort to remove the flag from the South Carolina Statehouse and helped to get more than a million signatures, which pressured the governor to take action. Within a couple of months of the murders, Dimitri helped form Gun Sense SC to educate South Carolinians on the efficacy of gun purchase background checks.
Dimitri also works to promote equal educational opportunities, encourages art for social justice, assists in the movement to expand the public transit system in Charleston, stands up for the LGBTQ community, participates in the movement to prevent offshore drilling, and is passionate about helping the homeless. He has worked to find resources and land for a tiny house village or micro-apartments and connected the numerous people and organizations working on similar projects helping the homeless. His goal has been to make a lasting positive difference in the lives of as many people as possible and to fight for those without a voice. He's working to ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for ALL people, regardless of where they started in life.
After the 2016 election, Dimitri visited his family in Vermont for Thanksgiving and quickly realized his mother was getting old very quickly. He stayed in Vermont for all of 2017 and was fortunate to spend more time with his mother that year than in the previous forty years combined. Family comes first. After working at Lowe's in the tools and hardware department for a few months, he joined a small high-tech company that was in need of an out-of-the-box thinking product manager. He's now left that job to begin campaigning in 2018.
Dimitri’s successful rise and unpredictable fall through the American economy made him realize how easily and unexpectedly any one of us could find ourselves in a similar situation. Roughly 75 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, many earning starvation wages and unable to put anything away in savings. Even those who are making larger salaries are on shaky ground, denied cost of living increases and robbed of job security and pensions.
Looking to make an even bigger difference in the quality of life of Lowcountry residents, Dimitri believes that what's really needed is radical out-of-the-box thinking to help We The People make America what we've always known it can be - a more perfect country, with equal Justice for ALL and freedom from the fear that keeps us from moving forward and and taking the actions that must be taken if we intend to have our civilization survive and thrive for our children and grandchildren. Dimitri thinks the only way to do that is via federal legislation.
That's why he's running for Congress.
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