Andrew Raseij is running for Public Advocate in New York City on a platform of free wireless for all -- as a public service. Nice progressive thinking.

The NY Times just profiled him too.

For Mr. Rasiej (pronounced ra-SHAY), being public advocate - the person who succeeds the mayor if he or she is incapacitated - is not just about triaging complaints from the public. It is also about fostering a revolution in the way people and government exchange information.

"The traditional model is that we elect a public official and they're going to solve all our problems," said Mr. Rasiej, 47. "I don't believe that model works anymore. I don't believe that one politician can solve the problems of eight million New Yorkers. I do believe that eight million New Yorkers can solve their own problems."

He thinks that the Internet can help people organize and share ideas, and that the public advocate should make it possible for New Yorkers to use it. He has ideas aplenty about how that high-speed Wi-Fi could look.

For instance, Mr. Rasiej has begun a Web site (www.wefixnyc.com) where people can e-mail pictures of potholes with their locations, which become part of a photographic map.

After he found himself the sole person to testify at a City Council public hearing on education early this year, he created a new way for people to submit testimony over the Internet that produced about 700 submissions to a Council commission on school reform, said Melorra Sochet, the commission's deputy director. Mr. Rasiej said that as public advocate, he would encourage people to submit testimony and view hearings over the Web.

Here is the entire text in case the link goes bad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/nyregion/metrocampaigns/02lives.html?oref=login
A Man With a Vision for Getting New York Wired

By ROBIN SHULMAN
Published: September 2, 2005

A recent steaming Tuesday found Andrew Rasiej at the 74th Street-Broadway stop of the No. 7 train in Jackson Heights, damp across the brow at 8 a.m. A novice politician running for public advocate - a kind of ombudsman for New Yorkers - he was proselytizing his faith in citywide wireless access to the Internet.

"I don't believe that one politician can solve the problems of eight million New Yorkers." Andrew Rasiej

"It's about connecting the knowledge with the need!" he yelled to a reporter as the train sped into the station; then, as passengers rushed off the train, he offered them his fliers and his too-genuine-for-a-politician smile.

For Mr. Rasiej (pronounced ra-SHAY), being public advocate - the person who succeeds the mayor if he or she is incapacitated - is not just about triaging complaints from the public. It is also about fostering a revolution in the way people and government exchange information.

"The traditional model is that we elect a public official and they're going to solve all our problems," said Mr. Rasiej, 47. "I don't believe that model works anymore. I don't believe that one politician can solve the problems of eight million New Yorkers. I do believe that eight million New Yorkers can solve their own problems."

He thinks that the Internet can help people organize and share ideas, and that the public advocate should make it possible for New Yorkers to use it. He has ideas aplenty about how that high-speed Wi-Fi could look.

For instance, Mr. Rasiej has begun a Web site (www.wefixnyc.com) where people can e-mail pictures of potholes with their locations, which become part of a photographic map.

After he found himself the sole person to testify at a City Council public hearing on education early this year, he created a new way for people to submit testimony over the Internet that produced about 700 submissions to a Council commission on school reform, said Melorra Sochet, the commission's deputy director. Mr. Rasiej said that as public advocate, he would encourage people to submit testimony and view hearings over the Web.

Mr. Rasiej also says that more civic uses should be found for Web sites like Meetup.com that connect people to others nearby interested in the same issue. For instance, a mother in the Bronx who is frustrated because emergency rooms in local hospitals lack equipment to handle asthma cases should be able to go to a Web site to connect with a mother in Brooklyn fighting for the same thing, he says.

But Mr. Rasiej faces an uphill fight in his effort to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Betsy Gotbaum, in the primary, since she enjoys wide support among the city's most powerful politicians. And even if Mr. Rasiej were elected, his ambitious plans could prove hard to turn into reality, particularly given the limited powers of the public advocate's job.

MR. RASIEJ, unmarried and with a girlfriend, lives in Manhattan at Spring and Lafayette Streets. He was raised in Bogota, N.J., by Polish immigrant parents; his father is a retired electrical engineer, his mother a homemaker. He attended Fordham Preparatory School, then - feeling guilty because his father had paid for his high school education - applied to a tuition-free arts, engineering and architecture college, Cooper Union, without ever having taken an art course. His undergraduate study of art and architecture taught him to be creative, he said.

He spent some time working in real estate, then got into the nightclub business. He owned Irving Plaza, the small concert hall near Union Square, and founded and directed the New York Nightlife Association.

But then he found technology, and became his own kind of public advocate. In recent years he has nominated himself to respond to problems - terrorism, miscommunication, a shortage of computer expertise in New York City schools - with innovations for the use of technology.

In 1997, he started the Mouse program that trains students to fix computers in New York City schools and administer the networks. After 9/11, he organized technology experts to volunteer to help small businesses in Lower Manhattan get back into operation.

Soon after that, he lobbied for the technology equivalent of a National Guard, a cadre of fiber-optic cable installers, network administrators and others to repair downed communications systems in an emergency and create new ones. A federal National Emergency Technology Guard, or NET Guard initiative, folded into a Homeland Security bill, was passed in 2002 but has yet to be carried out.

He also recently invested in Mideastwire.com, a new service that translates Arabic and Farsi news and opinion pieces into English to improve understanding of the Middle East.

But still frustrated by the relatively poor flow of information in New York City, he decided to run for public advocate. The wireless platform came out of Mr. Rasiej's sense that access to the Internet is a basic civil right.

In New York, citywide wireless access would cost $80 million, Mr. Rasiej said, and while as public advocate he could not finance it, he said he would push for legislation for the City Council to do so.

"If you create a wireless network, a whole host of things will happen that I can't control," he said.

Emergency medical workers could have instant information on the patient they are treating, he said. Firefighters could glance at the floor plans of buildings on their way to a fire. Police officers could look up license plate numbers and gain access to databases from any location.

Of his race for the advocate's office, Mr. Rasiej said: "It's the perfect office in that it has the most potential to be reinvented. It's so poorly defined."

"I can't live in a society where the political process is so dysfunctional," he said, "that collecting information to make the city function better is a politicized thing."