WASHINGTON, D.C. — Shiva Ayyadurai, the man who is credited with inventing email among several other life-improving creations such as EchoMail, Systems Health, and CytoSolve, has announced that he is challenging Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for her seat in the 2018 elections.
“I consider myself an embodiment of the American dream: an all-American Indian,” Ayyadurai told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview shortly after he launched his campaign.
He went on to say, “Massachusetts ignited the American Revolution. Now, we need to fight for the American dream. That victory will only be possible if we dialogue and educate each other to solve problems, together, as Americans.”
Ayyadurai landed in America on his 7th birthday in 1970. At age 14, while working as a Research Fellow at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in Newark, NJ, he created the first electronic system that replicated the old- fashioned paper-based interoffice mail system (inbox, outbox, folders, address book, attachments, etc.), which he named “email.”
Ayyadurai went on to receive the first U.S. Copyright for his invention on August 30, 1982, recognizing him as the inventor of email. At the time, copyright was the only way to protect software inventions. His work and documents are displayed in the Smithsonian.
He recalled the discrimination he and his family suffered under India’s caste system, a harrowing experience he says has shaped him into who he is today.
“Those experiences inspired me to be fighter for those who suffered injustices. It also inspired me to use science and engineering to invent solutions that solved real problems,” Ayyadurai said.
He criticized Warren for her divisive and irrational approach, which he said, “…is leading us nowhere. My whole life has been about fighting for the truth while creating tangible solutions to real problems across the fields of communication, health, education, governance and commerce.”
“Engineering is about finding solutions with a commitment to ongoing refinement. That’s what engineering training teaches you.” Ayyadurai said. He suggested that politicians like Warren have “no idea that governance is about solving complex systems problems. Irrational outbursts create drama and only serve to generate advertising dollars for the mainstream media (MSM). People are tired of this partisan nonsense and elitism.”
Ayyadurai said his decision to run for Senate was about timing.
He had never registered to vote until last year, when he voted for Trump. “I saw Trump as a necessary force to disrupt a broken system that was no longer serving the American people,” he told Breitbart News. “I’ve always had a deep distaste, since 1984, for both Republicans and Democrats.” He said he’d initially shown some interest in the Democratic Party, but he broke from them that year, after Jesse Jackson, like Bernie Sanders, sold out the populist movement. “Trump never sold out his movement,” he said.
“After 1984, I broke with Republicans and Democrats.” He said he figured out as a teenager that “both these Establishment parties were two heads of the same snake — tweedle dee and tweedle dum.” Ayyadurai’s study of history has shown that only people’s movements create change.
He saw Trump’s victory as ushering in real change and said Trump’s victory was “bound to occur…. You can’t get away with fooling people over and over again. The truth is what intellectual and Hollywood Elites are upset at … [It] is not Trump, but that they lost control over everyday people, who they discounted as inferior — a lower caste.”
Ayyadurai said he wants to “be of service to everyday people who are getting bamboozled and lied to by the same people who claim to be their saviors. My journey to the American dream provides me a unique perspective on seeing through all the propaganda, so we can find solutions, based on fact not opinions, for such issues as immigration, education and innovation. ”
Ayyadurai opened a campaign office on Concord Avenue in Cambridge just over a week ago:
He launched his campaign on the auspicious Hindu holiday known as “ShivaRatri,” which signifies the struggle the Hindu God Shiva underwent so light or truth (good) could overcome darkness and ignorance (evil).
Ayyadurai holds four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including a Ph.D. in biological engineering. As an undergraduate at MIT, Shiva started a student newspaper called The Student that exposed both major political parties. He was also an activist who fought “for making sure more women, more poor whites, and minorities could come to MIT.” He fought for the rights of food-service workers to get better working conditions and a fair wage.
While he was there, he led one of the biggest protests against MIT investments in apartheid South Africa. What distinguished his leadership, unlike other campus divestment movements, was his efforts to connect the injustice of the South African worker 10,000 miles away with the struggles of the local MIT food service workers, who were being paid very low wages, despite the massive endowment the school receives.
“My politics were always about connecting the realities here at home,” he said. “I burned the flag of South Africa right on the steps of the MIT Student Center to send a message. The funny thing was the cops didn’t stop me. They let me douse it in gasoline and burn it, right in front of them.” He blasted the “hypocrisy of those who attempted to disconnect the struggles of workers right at home at MIT with those in South Africa.”
Ayyadurai said:
These same people would not talk about the poor whites and the poor blacks in this country. It was like these elite hippies who were MIT students [found it] easier to talk about things 10,000 miles away. Many of these students were afraid to go to poor neighborhoods right in Boston. It’s easy for them to take pictures of themselves doing “missionary” work 10,000 miles away to make themselves feel better.
But, he said, they wouldn’t “get their hands dirty by going to neighborhoods like Dorchester and Roxbury, two predominantly black communities right in Massachusetts.”
“The truth is that the Democratic Party is the party of codependency, based on making everyday people dependent on them for their ‘kindness and goodwill.'” He added, “they just have better PR and use duplicity to keep the masses in chains by making them believe that the way out of this is through them.”
Ayyadurai cited the welfare state as an example of the Democratic Party’s attempts to keep people “in bondage so they don’t rise up on their own two feet. It’s no different than the old plantation model.”
Ayyadurai concluded by stating:
The Founding Fathers created a revolutionary nation in which innovation, education, creativity, and meritocracy flourished. Those core values drew my family to immigrate to the United States, and I’ll always be grateful. Now I’m committed to preserving, protecting, and expanding those opportunities for the citizens of Massachusetts and for all Americans. That’s the new American Revolution, and I hope others will join me in this fight.
Shiva’s website for his Senate run is here: http://shiva4senate.com/
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter and Periscope @AdelleNaz
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