Steve Greenfield, a New Paltz firefighter and long-time activitist for alternative and third-party candidates explains the self-defeating votes we’ve just seen by working class people and minority men. Democrats need to understand why this happened and act to prevent it — yet again — from costing them an election

Steve Greenfield, 63, of New Paltz, is a past member of the New Paltz Board of Education, the current Captain and former Secretary and Executive Board member of the New Paltz Fire Department, and has served the village, town, and school district of New Paltz in appointed positions for more than 20 years. He is a former New York State and National Committee member of the Green Party. He resigned from that job in 2020 in a disagreement over failing party strategy, and ran for Congress in the Hudson Valley in 2002, 2018, and 2020. He has been an organizer of civil disobedience actions against non-defensive war, fossil fuel use, and ICE and police misconduct, and has been arrested many times. He was the press officer for the New Paltz Green Party at the time of the first illegal same-sex marriages conducted in New York State by then-Mayor Jason West, the first Green Party elected official in New York State history. In 2005, Steve generated a brief national media frenzy by entering the Democratic Party primary for US Senate against Hillary Clinton, on an anti-war and progressive platform, in protest against Clinton's support for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

In his youth and young adulthood, he became an Eagle Scout, earned his bachelor's degree in economics at Columbia, and has traveled the world engaged in his career as a musician. He is also an endurance athlete for a variety of charities, including the 9-11 oriented Tunnel To Towers Foundation and the Sloop Clearwater.