Hercules decides to suspend his campaign for City Council, with still a mission to serve his community.

The 26-year-old is the youngest candidate in the 11-person race. As a young community organizer, he first started advocating for fairer higher education. As a student he fought against tuition hikes at CUNY and advocated for more capital funding. He graduated from City Tech, a CUNY school, in 2017 where he received a bachelors in Architectural Technology.

Hercules Reid recounted his time as a CUNY student advocate. “Very often the narrative is that students go to CUNY for free, very often the narrative also leaves out that these same students are food insecure, they lack mental health services, they do not receive financial aid, and they are homeless. Throughout the six years that I was a CUNY student and advocate, tuition hikes and budget cuts have been more reliable than the officials I spoke to.

On the Million Dollar Staircase in the State Capitol Wednesday, student-government leaders, union officers and more than 100 student activists rallied for public funding — not tuition increases — to improve the quality of public higher education.

NYS Senate Public Hearing on Student Loans.

NYS Senate Public Hearing on Student Loans.

The New York City Committee on Higher Education Inez D. Barron, Chair Members: Laurie A. Cumbo, Robert F. Holden, Ben Kallos and Ydanis A. Rodriguez Thursday, February 14, 2019 10:00 AM 250 Broadway - Committee Rm, 16th Fl.

"Since 2011, tuition has gone up over 35 percent," said Hercules Reid, vice chairman of legislative affairs for the CUNY University Student Senate, at a rally outside Cuomo's Manhattan office Thursday morning. "How much more can students bear? You're running for another term claiming to be a friend of students, but our university is broken. We are here demanding that you fix CUNY now."

A long-awaited report was released on Thursday by the Task Force on Affordability, Admissions, and Graduation Rates at the City University of New York -- convened through City Council legislation -- that included recommendations for broad changes to the operations and funding of CUNY.

“At that point, I didn’t know what to do, because it was a federal situation and I’m just a city government president on a local level,” Reid told Clarion. When faced with the challenge, Reid decided to make some calls. First, he spoke with CUNY Board of Trustees member Una Clarke, who suggested writing a letter to Chancellor James Milliken. Reid wrote the letter that day and sent it.

The CUNY Rising Alliance, a partnership of student organizations, unions and community groups, held a City Hall rally on December 7, the same day it released a white paper detailing what the group called a diminishing level of investment in CUNY by the city and state.