David Wells

Originally from Bogotá Colombia, I moved to the United States shortly before my thirteenth birthday. I moved to a suburb of Philadelphia, and later to McAlester Oklahoma, and Miami Florida before settling down in the countryside 25 miles north of Philadelphia. I traveled often as a child. My father was a reporter for the Associated Press and I would often accompany him on his travels to places like Jamaica, Aruba, The Dominican Republic, Panama, Venezuela, and many places within Colombia. During college, I caught the travel bug and have since traveled to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, and returned to Colombia to visit family and go fishing for payara and peacock bass in the Orinoco river and its tributaries. During my University studies I became very interested in politics and economics, and much of my reading focuses on leftist revolutions in Latin America including the Cuban revolution of 1959, and the Bolivarian revolution currently taking place in Venezuela, Bolivia, and to a lesser extent, Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Ecuador. I consider myself a democratic socialist, and my political views seem to focus on the responsible extraction and use of natural resources in order to benefit local populations. I am an avid proponent of renewable energy, such as solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, and geothermal energy. I ideologically support alternatives to capitalist development models, as long as they are respectful of human rights. I believe that it is the responsibility of government to secure basic human rights such as shelter, safe food, healthcare, education, and basic freedoms of self expression and religion for its subjects