Creative Commons
India Walton
When India Walton was growing up on the predominantly Black east side of Buffalo, New York, she watched her single mom work between fifty and sixty hours a week and still struggle to make ends meet. This seemed unfair.
Now thirty-eight, Walton is running, as a socialist, for mayor of her hometown on a platform that highlights police accountability as well as economic, racial, and environmental justice.
I’m a newcomer to politics, but I am not a newcomer to policy.
Walton’s June Democratic primary win against four-term incumbent Byron Brown stunned Buffalo’s political establishment. She did not initially have the backing of local Democrats, but her team’s extensive outreach has paid off. She now has the support of the Erie County Democratic Party and groups, including the Buffalo Teachers’ Federation, Progressive Women of New York, Our Revolution, Elect Black Women, the Working Families Party, and the Democratic Socialists of America. She will face Brown, who is running as an independent, in the November election.
Walton’s eclectic background—she has worked as a nurse, community organizer, tattoo artist, and nonprofit administrator—makes her the consummate outsider. “I’ve always been sharp and a quick learner,” she says. She also calls herself an “astute coalition builder,” which she credits for her success.
I recently spoke with Walton about her background and current run for mayor. Here’s what she had to say:
Q: How did your environment influence your political outlook?
India Walton: The east side had been redlined by the banking system for many years, so it was a neglected area. I was bused to a school in South Buffalo from age eleven until I was fourteen. South Buffalo was mostly Irish and Italian, and I was old enough to be aware of the differences between the two communities.
A lot of kids from my neighborhood attended school with me, but, while there were some white kids at the school, “white flight” had begun, and we knew that some white families sent their kids to private schools to stay separate from us. As a kid, I saw being bused as an inconvenience. If I missed the school bus, I’d need to take two city buses to get to South Buffalo, which was an annoyance.
Q: You had your first child when you were fourteen. Did that tie you to Buffalo?
Walton: My mom worked long hours, and I was often supervised by my older brother. When I found love from someone in my neighborhood, I took it and had a child with him. Having a baby at a young age helped me not give up. Another life was dependent on me, and I knew I needed to be responsible and focused.
Q: But you did drop out of high school, no?
Walton: Yes, I did. There was an entire high school dedicated to teenage mothers because the teen pregnancy rate at that time was sky high in Buffalo, but I did not go there. I chose to stay in the college prep program that I had fought hard to get into.
For a time, though, after I had my son, I lived in a group home in Lackawanna, New York. While I was there, I had access to accelerated coursework. I eventually amassed enough credits so that, by my junior year, I only needed two more classes to graduate.
Unfortunately, when I went back to my college prep program, they told me I had to attend classes for the entire day, for the entire twelfth grade. They wouldn’t let me take the two classes I needed to move on, so I dropped out and got a GED.
Being a person who grew up poor, I saw my mom work long hours and still need food stamps. I wondered why she worked so hard for so little. I also wondered why bosses were able to exploit their workers.
Q: You later became a nurse.
Walton: When I was nineteen, I had twins at six months gestation. They spent a long time in the neonatal ICU, and I was not always satisfied by the treatment they received. When I complained, I was told that if I didn’t like what was happening, I should become a nurse. The health care system was so racist and classist, and I often heard comments that made me uncomfortable, so I enrolled in Erie Community College’s nursing program and got my degree.
Q: You later left nursing to become a community organizer. How did that evolve?
Walton: It was a leap, but I realized that I wanted to work on broader policy issues and affect change on a wider level. I got my first organizing job in 2016 with a community-based organization called Open Buffalo, which was formed in 2014. I worked on criminal justice reform. As an organizer, I discovered that I was good at public narrative, telling the stories of people whose stories often go unheard and untold.
Q: How did you go from Open Buffalo to working at a community land trust?
Walton: I got involved initially because I wanted to help secure a Community Benefits Agreement with the Buffalo Niagara Medical Complex that had moved into the Fruit Belt community. Most of the residents in Fruit Belt are poor, and we wanted the Medical Complex to have a better relationship with them, to be more of an anchor in the community. We have still not seen the commitment we want.
Our goal was, and is, to stop displacement and provide residents with safe, permanently affordable housing. As we organized our campaign, we learned about land trusts.
Trusts are run by community members who are responsible for making sure that the community has a voice in leadership and decision-making. In addition, any housing created by a trust is protected and can’t revert to the private market. So far, we’ve built two four-bedroom homes, but another fifty are in the construction pipeline.
Q: How and when did you become a socialist?
Walton: Being a person who grew up poor, I saw my mom work long hours and still need food stamps. I wondered why she worked so hard for so little. I also wondered why bosses were able to exploit their workers.
I knew for a long time that something systemic was wrong, but I did not have the language until Senator Bernie Sanders ran for President [in 2016], and I was introduced to the Democratic Socialists of America. DSA supports everything I support, and members are always by my side, whether it’s fighting for safe staffing in medical facilities or fighting for affordable housing or better public schools. When I decided to run for mayor, I knew I’d need to put together a broad coalition, so I reached out to DSA and the Working Families Party.
Q: What will your top priorities be as mayor?
Walton: First, we’ll be more transparent; we’ll be accessible. I’m a newcomer to politics, but I am not a newcomer to policy, so our first priority will be housing. Tenants will have an ally in government. We’re facing a looming eviction crisis, and Buffalo has some of the oldest housing in the United States, and lead levels in many buildings are high. We have to deal with this.
Right now, one-third of the city’s budget goes to policing, but violent crimes are not being solved or stopped. People don’t trust the police. We will create a review mechanism so that police misconduct is investigated in a timely and robust way. We’ll also focus on health care access, education, and the climate crisis.
Q: Can you say more about your education platform?
Walton: Most of the issues students face are caused by poverty. Some kids didn’t have access to broadband during the year that schools were closed. Now that schools have reopened, we need to figure out how these students can make up what they missed. We also have to figure out how to keep classes small enough so that everyone can distance and stay safe.
There are sixty public schools and twenty-one charters in Buffalo, and while some of the charters are well performing, some are not. I see charters as a drain on our ecosystem. What really gets me is that many are not located in publicly owned buildings, so they’re taking public money and putting these dollars into the pockets of private companies and private property owners.
We’re going to be looking into how charters are run and demanding greater accountability. That’s our overall goal for every aspect of government.