From the American Solidarity Party website--"Amar Patel was born to Indian immigrants who came to this country in the late 1960s. His father worked as a civil engineer for the city of Chicago and his mother worked as a union laborer in cleaning supply factory. His parents sponsored the immigration of many family members during his childhood and he grew up with several aunts, uncles, and cousins in his family home at once. He received Bachelor’s Degrees in Math, Chemistry, and Psychology and a Master’s in Education from the University of Illinois. After meeting his wife at the Newman Center during college they moved to the Chicago suburbs where they have been teachers for the last 20 years. They have two children in high school.Amar has spent years on many committees for school and curriculum development, given talks at state conferences, worked on several church councils, and organized major speech competitions. He has coached speech team, math team, tennis, golf, soccer and basketball. He serves his community through the Knights of Columbus and other local organizations. He is a published novelist, lead singer for a band, member of a competitive softball team, but his passion is in building community and bringing people together."-----------------------------------------------------------------------I voted Republican in the larger state wide and national elections and would sometimes crossover on local elections when the position was basically non-partisan. I wasn't always happy with the Republican candidates and choosing the lesser of two evils definitely began to weigh on me.Not before the last couple of years, no.Catholic Social Teaching as a concept refers to the applications of moral attitudes in public life. Issues like economic justice, subsidiarity, promotion of the common good, and the role of the state can be understood with reason based on natural law but have been studied back to the time of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The focus of CST would be a particular attention to the flourishing of human dignity.Often, you see the Republicans touting themselves as Pro-life for their abortion stance and the Democrats decrying the GOP for not valuing life after birth through societal protections like healthcare, welfare, and social security.In the ASP, we declare that all policy decisions should be weighed on its impact towards the flourishing of all human life and that the common good is best served when society sacrifices their own personal interests for the benefit of the least among us.The founder of the AFSP is a current member of the ASP. They have 30 followers on Facebook where we almost have 10000. While we subscribe to principles of traditional Christian Democracy as formulated most clearly in Europe and South America, we consider our platform to be a secular platform that can be appreciated by both people belonging to faith traditions and those who don't.That race was clearly a race that wasn't going to involve the lesser of two evils. I met with Congressman Lipinski at the March For Life and told him that he is a rare candidate that seeks the common good in his policy making and politicking.The national media, social media, and politicians have long fueled this intense tribalism that causes erstwhile clear thinking individuals to not only defend the lesser of two evils, but then to double and triple down on their support. I remember doing mental gymnastics to defend the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years even though deep down I knew they were unjust actions. I feel that the time for a reminder that we are indeed our brother's keeper and loving our neighbor as ourselves are mottoes that should be spoken easier for Christians than "Make America Great Again" or "Build the wall"Yes and yes, but also people who radically never fell in either party fully because both parties have always fallen short of the Christian Democratic set of principles.The toughest thing I have to do is convince passionately pro-life people that refusing to work in a whole life manner is detrimental in completing the mission of saving the unborn in the long run. From the left, we are generally summarily dismissed because we are pro-life so discussion don't get very far.The platform is very clear on what we oppose as a matter of policy and what we emphatically support as a matter of principle. The conclusion of that section of the platform is "In order to promote stable families, it is in the interest of the state to support marriage recognized as the exclusive union of one man and one woman for life. At the same time, we recognize that the state must support the needs of people—especially children, as well as the elderly and disabled—in families of all kinds."Identifying the ideal doesn't preclude state care of all people.In the upcoming election Brian Carroll and I will be very clear about immigration reform, the environment, economic justice and universal health care. The GOP would like to ignore us and the Democrats have moved so far to the left on abortion that anything short of full term abortion is anti-abortion, misogynistic and a war on women. We will see what we can do.There are several states where we will be on the actual ballot and will likely be write-ins in the rest. The exact number will generally come down to elbow grease and fundraising. We have some other candidates who will be running in local races. The exact number will be determined after we fully launch the campaign.There is no specific region that dominates. California, Texas, Illinois, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina all have active chapters.My primary role is that of support, which is fairly traditional. Since I am also serving as ASP Chair, I am also in a role of creating structures that I hope will out live the campaign and carry us into the upcoming years for more growth and more candidates. One of my aims is to clearly articulate what Christian Democracy is, what distributism is, and what the Consistent Life Ethic is and how the American Solidarity Party falls at the intersection of all three.No, "Discomfort" is my middle name. I am sure there will be challenges yet to come. Since we haven't quite gotten our ducks in a row to take "the show on the road" it is hard to predict what will happen.Ha! My band is called Hard Lockdown. We play once a year at a fundraiser for scholarships for students in my school district. We have a Facebook page that you can look up. I wroteunder my pen name of Mark Andrews.