A candidate for Congress in Michigan's sixth congressional district:
Originally from Philadelphia, I worked six years in inner city Brooklyn, New York on the Civil Rights Movement and efforts to end poverty. I worked for "Operation Breadbasket" (one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s groups), and "A Better Chance" house in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
After that, myself and a couple like-minded people took over an abandoned bar in Philadelphia and turned it into a youth center, and center for social justice. Cesar Chavez used the center to house the grape and lettuce boycott, and I was able to help him there.
I completed two Masters degrees (from Fordham and Mary Immaculate Seminary) and a Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College, and began teaching at Western Michigan University in 1977. Since coming to Western, I worked on the South African Anti-Apartheid Movement, where WMU was the fourth university in the nation to divest from South Africa and help end apartheid. I have served on the American Friends Service Committee's Africa Project for over 25 years.
I'm currently in my sixth term as a Kalamazoo City Commissioner (1998-present), where I focus on issues affecting working people and the poor. We've founded a number of community groups during that time who do great work in the city.
I have a lovely wife named Kathy, a Social Worker, and son, Nathaniel.
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