Photo shoot at Kearney house.

Qualifications

I am the best qualified candidate in the race for the 172nd District seat. Here is a list of my achievements:

  1. City Council
  2. Action Alliance of Senior Citizens of Greater Philadelphia
  3. Fair Housing
  4. Butte Community Union
  5. Montana Environmental Information Center
  6. Environmental Cooperative Association of Philadelphia
  7. Previous Campaign Experience

City Council

I worked for three Philadelphia City Council members: David Cohen, Angel Ortiz, and Alvin Stewart. I worked as David Cohen's Legislative Aid, I worked as Angel Ortiz' researcher, and I worked as Al Stewart's constituent services representative. These three Councilman represented low-income, working class, and lower middle class Philadelphians in almost everything they did. They spoke for and addressed the needs of families with little to spare at the end of each week, and who relied upon the City for schools, parks, recreation centers, libraries, firehouses, health centers, utilities, policing, public transportation, and civil rights. I learned an enormous amount from them about how government meets the needs of its citizens. Each of them loved Philadelphia and spent most of their lives serving it.

Action Alliance of Senior Citizens of Greater Philadelphia

I worked for six years with Action Alliance of Senior Citizens of Greater Philadelphia (AASC). I started there as an organizer and later returned to Action Alliance as their Director. Today, I am considered by some to be a senior citizen. Most of the issues on which Action Alliance of Senior Citizens worked were health care issues. Additional issues usually had to do with cost-of-living: utility bills, property taxes, health care co-payments and deductibles, and transportation. Here, like my Council work discussed above, I learned about the necessity for government to address needs no private sector players nor institutions addressed, nor could afford to resolve. Medicare, medicaid, tax rebates, renters rebates, housing assistance, food stamps, PA Lottery Fund programs, and Social Security make life dignified for thousands of senior citizens in our 172nd District. The overwhelming majority of senior citizens rely on government programs to live.

Action Alliance of Senior Citizens of Greater Philadelphia fought City Hall, Harrisburg, and Washington D.C. to improve, enhance, and expand these programs. AASC met with great success over the years; nevertheless, new programs are needed and current ones must always be protected against budget cuts.

Fair Housing

I worked for two years doing fair housing work in Philadelphia and Montgomery County. I worked for the Fair Housing Action Center at the Tenants' Action Group of Philadelphia, then at the Montgomery County Fair Housing Council, and finally, at the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. We educated people about their housing civil rights. We testing some complaints of housing discrimination. And, at HUD I investigated complaints of housing discrimination. This was two years spent trying to breathe life into the City Fair Practices Ordinance, the Pennsylvania's Human Relations Act, and the US Fair Housing Act. Civil rights enforcement is difficult and time consuming work. It is also very necessary and the inadequate frameworks and resources for this work must be fixed by the Legislature.

Butte Community Union

I worked for two and a half years at the Butte Community Union in Butte, Montana. This non-profit activist group was made-up of, and run by, low-income citizens in Butte. With the closing of the second largest open pit copper mine in the US, and the shuttering of the smelter in nearby Anaconda, Butte faced severe economic dislocation. Many people were unemployed, and under employed. We fought the school board when they tried to end the school hot lunch/breakfast program, and we won.

We came close to putting an initiative on the ballot to raise the state minimum wage and index it to roughly 50% of the national average hourly wage.

We brought suit to defend the state constitution's clause guaranteeing income to unemployed people who were in unfortunate situations financially. THe Montana Supreme Court ruled unanimously in our favor.

We constantly helped individuals (with the great help of the local legal aid office) to receive the benefits they needed, and for which they were eligible.

At both the Butte Community Union and the Action Alliance of Senior Citizens of Greater Philadelphia we received so significant an amount of funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Unitarian Universalists that we thought at times we were working for the church.

Montana Environmental Information Center

At the Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC) I set up and carried out their first ever summer door-to-door canvass for memberships and dues. It was successful and we ran it in Helena, Bozeman, and Kalispell.

Environmental Cooperative Association of Pennsylvania

I worked at ECAP selling dirty and clean electricity after the state of Pennsylvania deregulated the cost of the generation of electricity. At this cooperative the customers were the owners. We never achieved the critical mass of customers needed to command our own price. Deregulation was partially an answer to the failure of the government to properly regulate prices during the monopoly era. Again, this is a crucial responsibility of the state government, and one rarely well fulfilled.

I ran for state representative three times. I listened to tens of thousands of voters explain what they need from state government, what they think about our state government, and how they see their community. Over and over people talked about access to, and affordability of health care, the high cost of living, and to be able to live free from crime. Voters liked their neighborhoods and wanted them to remain safe, and become safer. I have had the pleasure of living in Bustleton, Mayfair, and now Tacony. I know the district well. I worked along side the citizens who got the Fox Chase Cancer Center to build their two new recent buildings on their land and not in the Burholme Park. This was is a successful expansion for the Cancer Center and a victory for open space. I recently stood with Bustleton neighbors to block the request for a zoning certificate to allow for a nightclub in Whitman Plaza where only a bar-restaurant was allowed. These neighbors led by Maureen Green were successful.

Whether you live in Academy Gardens, Winchester Park, Holmesburg, Tacony, Mayfair, Lexington Park, Bustleton, Rhawnhurst or Fox Chase, I have listened. From now until May 18th I will come around again, knock on your door and listen some more. I will earn your vote.