David Segal

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David Adam Segal is the Ward One City Councilman for Providence, Rhode Island. Elected in 2002, he became the first member of the Green Party to hold public office in Rhode Island's history. Segal is giving up his seat on the city council in 2006, and recently won a campaign for State Representative as a Democrat.

As City Council Minority Leader, Segal has worked to pass legislation promoting social justice, affordable housing, and civil liberties. He helped Providence to become the first capital city in the country to commit to using large sums of renewable energy, and to become the first city to divest from the Darfur genocide.

Segal's longtime campaign treasurer and right-hand man is Rhode Island left-wing activist Peter I. Asen. His recent campaign for state representative was managed by Ari Savitzky, 2006 senior class president and orator at the 2006 graduation at Brown University.

On September 12, 2006, Segal won the Democratic Primary for state representative in Rhode Island House District Two in a landslide, with 68.5 percent of the vote. He defeated Richard Pacheco.

Segal faced no opponent in the November 7 general election, taking home a solid 100% of the vote.

A native of Maryland and a Columbia University graduate, Segal worked as a grade-school teacher and tutor before becoming a councilman.

He is visible around Brown University's campus where he works with such student activist groups as the Student Labor Alliance and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Brown's anti-war group).

The council seat Segal is vacating was won by his political ally Seth Yurdin, a lawyer and political activist, and the chair of the Rhode Island chapter of Democracy for America.

Rumor has it that Segal will likely enter the Rhode Island General Assembly in January 2007 as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee as well as the Corporations Committee.

Segal was chairman and founder of the federal political action comittee, Greens for Impact, which ran a national media and direct-mail campaign in 2004, encouraging Greens and progressives in swing states to vote for John Kerry, and promoting electoral reform.

Segal is a regular contributor to Rhode Island's preeminent political blog, Rhode Island's Future.