22 Facts About Ady Barkan

Ohad "Ady" Barkan was an American lawyer and activist.

Ady Barkan was co-founder of the Be a Hero PAC and was an organizer for the Center for Popular Democracy, where he led the Fed Up campaign.

Ady Barkan, who was diagnosed with the terminal neurodegenerative disease ALS in 2016 shortly after the birth of his son, was called "the most powerful activist in America" in a headline from 2019 in Politico Magazine.

Ady Barkan's mother, Diana L Kormos-Buchwald, is a professor of the history of science at the California Institute of Technology and his father, Elazar Barkan, is a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University.

Ady Barkan grew up first in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then in Claremont and Pasadena, California, in what he described as a "secular Jewish household".

Ady Barkan attended high school in Claremont, where he took an early interest in progressive activism like the fight against anti-gay rights legislation.

Ady Barkan went on to Yale Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 2010.

Between college and law school, Ady Barkan worked on the campaign of Democrat Victoria Wells Wulsin, serving as communications director for Wulsin's longshot and ultimately unsuccessful effort to win a congressional seat in a strongly Republican area of Cincinnati.

Ady Barkan grew the network to over 1,000 participants and helped win paid sick leave in New York City in 2013 and a $15 minimum wage in Seattle in 2014.

Ady Barkan met with then Chairwoman Janet Yellen and reportedly influenced her to increase prioritization of minimizing unemployment in the Federal Reserve's dual mandate.

In December 2017, Ady Barkan engaged Republican US Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona about Flake's impending vote on the proposed tax cuts, an exchange captured on video by another activist, Liz Jaff, when they were on the same cross-country flight.

Ady Barkan pressed Flake on the PAYGO cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that such large tax cuts would trigger, endangering programs that Ady Barkan's disease meant his survival would soon depend on.

Ady Barkan pleaded with Flake to "be an American hero" and vote against the tax cuts to ensure that patients like Barkan would not lose access, for instance, to the ventilator Barkan would eventually need to be able to breathe.

The effort sought crowd-funded donations in the amount of $20.20 to back a Democratic challenger to Collins's 2020 reelection campaign in the event that Collins supported Kavanaugh; Ady Barkan used the Crowdpac platform to collect pledges that would have been refunded to donors if Collins voted to oppose Kavanaugh's nomination.

Ady Barkan ultimately voted to confirm and the campaign raised $4 million from more than 100,000 donors to fund 2020 challenger Sara Gideon.

Ady Barkan, who had ALS, used augmentative and alternative communication to testify to the House panel about why he believed America needs single-payer health care.

Ady Barkan was named one of the Top 50 Political Thinkers in 2016 by Politico and in 2018, he was listed in the 50 most influential American Jews by Forward.

Ady Barkan spoke with Cory Booker and discussed Booker's plans for healthcare reform.

In September 2023, Ady Barkan was honored with the "Freedom from Want" award from the Roosevelt Institute, one of the annual Four Freedoms Awards, "for his unapologetic work fighting for freedom from economic want and for a more just health-care system in the United States".

King and Ady Barkan, who met as undergraduates at Columbia, had two children: a son, born in 2016, and a daughter, born in 2019.

Ady Barkan was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Ady Barkan died from complications of ALS at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital on November 1,2023, at age 39.