He was aware of the de facto segregation of the Cambridge schools and the inequity in education along race and class lines. And he believed that education was the bedrock of democracy, but that standardized test-based education was eroding that bedrock.

So after gauging that he had the support of his friends and family and the Green-Rainbow Party local, he decided to go for it.

The idea of running for office was planted back in 2001 in Chicago, at the founding convention of the Campus Greens as the student branch of the US Green Party. Luc attended a workshop on young people running for local office, led by a couple of Greens in their late 20s who were later elected to the Madison, Wisconsin city council. "And it was great," Luc said, "they talked about how much fun they had on their campaigns, organizing with their friends, having parties.

"They would throw a party, but instead of having it be just drinking, they integrated the politics also. So it was still fun, doing the same type of things you might do on a weekend with your friends, but they were registering people to vote at the same time."

Another inspiration came from two 2004 campaigns that he took part in. While volunteering during Green Party candidate David Cobb's presidential run, Luc saw Carolina Johnson's campaign for State Representative and was invigorated.

Johnson, then a 21-year-old senior at Harvard University, was putting herself out there and organizing her friends in Cambridge. She was even younger than he was!

Luc felt strongly that ordinary people should be running for office and populating the halls of our government buildings. These small grassroots campaigns only reinforced that feeling, and showed him it was possible, that you didn't have to be an expert.

"You can teach yourself as you go, and it's okay to make mistakes."

His main hesitation in running was that he hadn't been very involved with the Cambridge school committee and in fact had never attended one of their meetings when he decided to run for that very Committee.

"I was very different from many candidates who have been very involved in school committee or city council politics for a while, and are finally pushed over the edge and want to run themselves. I didn't feel like I was starting out with much expertise at all in terms of Cambridge-specific knowledge.

Ordinary people have the expertise

"But the more I thought about it, I realized I did have some expertise—being a recent graduate of the Cambridge schools and being a teacher. That is very relevant experience, and it helped differentiate me from the rest of the candidates."

Indeed, Luc drew on his connections to the Cambridge schools, building a campaign team of his friends at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School. His friends were students there when the debates and the restructuring of the high school were taking place, so they knew the issues personally and had strong feelings about them. When Green-Rainbow meetings in the late winter and early spring were talking about the municipal elections coming up, and whether anybody was thinking about running, Luc started to entertain the idea. Previously he had thought more about working as a campaign manager, where he could be very involved without having to put himself out there.

But as he got more involved in the local party and started going to some meetings, he realized he had a unique opportunity as a native Cantabrigian, "whereas most people active here came from elsewhere."

Schuster is committed to growing the party, and thinks this needs to be done locally at the same time as nationally. He was inspired by US Green presidential candidate David

Cobb's emphasis on building local parties through his national campaign—making himself accessible to local chapters and sharing his lists with them.

He says that Cambridge is a good place for the Green-Rainbow Party. "It's perceived to be progressive and left-leaning, it shouldn't be a one-party city. We should be able to break through."

Luc attributes the success of his campaign to the energetic people power behind it, as well as the power of strong community ties. There were even “city councilors who were supportive and who invited me to their kickoff events and their fundraisers and that was a great way to reach out to potential voters.

“I don't know what it would have felt like if I hadn't had the roots that I have in Cambridge."

Seeing both the promises and failings of Cambridge's unique approach to education, Luc campaigned on a platform of curricula that reflect Cambridge's values, democratizing the Cambridge schools, and educating all students.

The campaign team focused on door-to-door efforts in specific neighborhoods, and in the end saw the direct impact of that work. The three wards where they amassed the most votes were the three wards with the biggest door-to-door effort.

Throughout the four months of the campaign, Luc cultivated his connections. Green-Rainbow folks did weekly standouts in front of T stops, his high school friends went door-to-door once or twice a week, and people from the Porter Square housing cooperative where Luc grew up organized phonebanking down the stretch.

On election day nearly 50 volunteers stood at the polls across the city.

In the end, Luc bested three incumbents, placing 5th in an 8-person race for 6 seats, becoming the first "third-party" candidate since before World War I to be elected in Cambridge.

An ongoing force

The challenge now is to turn the energy and organizing behind the campaign into an ongoing force, moving from the electoral process into participation in governance.

It will take a tremendous movement to reverse the centralizing trend that has been moving control over education away from local communities.

With the State Education Reform Act of 1993, the introduction of charter schools and the MCAS test, and the Federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, the challenge has become greater than ever.