BELATED MA convention delegate update - John Bonifaz photo & message

[debbierlus]

I did it. I was a state delegate for the first time. I wasn't able to go to the fun part (Friday night when Kennedy spoke, Kerry was there, and there was free food & drinks galore). I couldn't spring for the hotel. But, I did go on Saturday.

It was a long day. But, it was fun. I got lots of free canidate buttons & t-shirts. Lots of magnets for the fridge. Signed lots of petitions. Met some of the state reps.

Michael Dukasis spoke. Kitty Dukasis hung out in my delegate section. (She is SO tiny).

There are three contested races. Three contenders for Governor. Three for Lt. Governor. Two for Secretary of state. They all gave speeches. Each had a video shown on double screens in the convention center, and they talked for about five-ten minutes.

Everyone who is running ended up on the ballot. I thought that was a good thing, except for one of the woman who is running for Lt. governor. She was a horrible speaker, and she did a embarrassing spoof video. Not qualified at all. I fear she will take votes away from the other woman (Andrea Silbert) who is INCREDIBLE.

Highlight moment: John Bonifaz's father was in my section. He was a delegate as well. John came up to our section, and I had to meet him. (He is running for Secretary of State). He is so wonderful. So passionate about voting rights, such a very nice person. I told him I wanted a picture to post on DU, and he told me to THANK the on-line community and stressed how much our support is needed. (If you don't know John Bonifaz, he is a leading attorney in the fight against election fraud. His name was mentioned in the Rolling Stone article on the stolen 2004 election this week, and he has testified before Congress with John Conyers. He is a spit-fire. He is one of the leaders in the fight to expose the corruption in the current system). Photo or link to photo (I often can't get it to show up directly in post!) at the end of this post!

Overall, I had a good time. It was worth it to see how the process works up close and personal. I plan on running again in the next election.

If I had one observation that I would share, it would be we need MUCH more youth and minority involvement. Mainly white. Mainly over 50. Bless them all. But, NOT a good cross-section of our population. (I live in MA).

Anyway, here is my photo of myself & John Bonifaz: You may have to go to the link, I never can get my photos to post direct.

[debbierlus]

1. TONS of information on John Bonifaz and how to support his campaign

Running for secretary of state...

Here is his bio

About John
John Bonifaz is a dedicated leader who has spent years working with citizens across the country to protect the right to vote and to broaden citizen participation in the democratic process.

In 1994, John founded the National Voting Rights Institute, based in Boston, and, after directing the organization for a decade, he now serves as its general counsel. NVRI today is a prominent legal and public education center committed to preserving the right of all citizens to vote and to participate in the electoral process on an equal and meaningful basis. Since founding NVRI, John has been at the forefront of many of the key voting rights struggles facing the nation today. Some highlights of his work at NVRI include:

Leading the fight in the courts for presidential candidates Michael Badnarik and David Cobb in their demand for a full recount in Ohio of all of the votes cast for President in the 2004 general election.
Defending the Massachusetts Clean Elections Law, which was passed overwhelmingly by the voters of the Commonwealth in 1998. John led the effort to challenge the Massachusetts legislature's refusal to fund the law and NVRI won a landmark ruling from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, forcing the state to provide the necessary funds to all qualified candidates running in the 2002 state elections.
Working to overhaul the nation's campaign finance system by defending mandatory campaign spending limits, public financing of elections, and other important campaign reforms. John and NVRI are pressing for a US Supreme Court review of a 1976 ruling which equated money with speech and sanctioned today's system of unlimited campaign spending, and John has led a challenge to today's exclusionary system on voting rights grounds, linking the movement for change in the way we finance our elections to earlier civil rights struggles.
In 1999, in recognition of his pathbreaking work with the National Voting Rights Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded John with a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

In addition to his leadership of NVRI, John has also been at the forefront of opposing the Bush administration's war in Iraq. In February and March 2003, John served as the plaintiffs' lead counsel in John Doe I v. President Bush, a constitutional challenge to President George W. Bush's authority to wage war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent action. John represented a coalition of US soldiers, parents of US soldiers, and Members of Congress (led by Representatives John Conyers, Jr. and Dennis Kucinich) arguing that the president's planned first-strike invasion of Iraq violated the War Powers Clause of the US Constitution.

John is the author of: Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush (NationBooks-NY, foreword by Rep. John Conyers, Jr., January 2004), on the illegality of the Iraq war. The book presents an accounting of the John Doe I v. President Bush case and its meaning for the United States Constitution. He has also written numerous articles on the war and on the fight for democracy here at home which have appeared in publications such as The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TomPaine.com, The Columbia Law Review, and The Yale Law & Policy Review.

John is also a co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, a national coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and public interest organizations seeking a formal congressional investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war. The coalition, launched in May 2005, focuses on the new and compelling evidence revealed by the release of the Downing Street Minutes, showing that the President may have engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for sending the nation to war.

John continues to maintain a private practice with his father, Cristóbal Bonifaz, which specializes in international human rights and environmental law cases. John and his father serve as co-counsel for thousands of indigenous people living in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon in an ongoing case against the Texaco oil company for the company's environmental destruction of their homeland. John was instrumental in launching a landmark case against the Unocal oil and gas company on behalf of Burmese villagers for human rights abuses connected with the company's construction of a major gas pipeline in Burma.

John has been active in social movements for change from a very young age. As a college student at Brown University, John worked to register thousands of voters, participated in the nuclear disarmament movement, and fought for the university's divestment from companies doing business in then-apartheid South Africa. After graduating from Brown, John served as the scheduler for United States Senator Edward M. Kennedy in his 1988 re-election campaign. While attending Harvard Law School, John served as a leader of La Alianza, the Latino law students association, and helped to lead the fight for faculty diversity at the school. In 1990, John was one of 11 Harvard Law students who, along with a coalition of student groups, sued the school for discrimination in the hiring of its faculty. Following his graduation from Harvard Law School in 1992, John moved to Washington, D.C., to serve as the staff attorney for the Center for Responsive Politics. He moved back to Massachusetts in 1994 to start the National Voting Rights Institute and to join his father's law practice.

John and his wife, Lissa Pierce Bonifaz, live in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Lissa holds a doctorate in bilingual education and works as a professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, where she teaches in the Language and Literacy Division of Lesley's School of Education.

John's parents, Deirdre and Cristóbal, live in Conway, Massachusetts, and his sister Margarita lives in Northampton. Deirdre grew up in nearby Whately, Massachusetts, and, during John's childhood, she founded and directed a national non-profit cooperative supporting low-income artisans across the country. Cristóbal emigrated to this country from Ecuador when he was sixteen and became a chemical engineer. He later became a lawyer while John was in high school. Margarita has worked tirelessly for the past fifteen years as a teacher in the Amherst public school system.





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Endorsements
"Massachusetts deserves a strong, proven leader like John Bonifaz. Our country needs to elect more principled progressive candidates like John Bonifaz."

Congressman John Conyers, Jr.
View John's Endorsements »




John was recently featured in an article on truthout.org entitled Running on the Right to Vote, by William Rivers Pitt.




John has recently testified before two congressional panels, one focused on voting irregularities in the 2004 presidential election in Ohio and the other focused on the Downing Street Memos. To watch C-Span video of his December 2004 testimony on the Ohio vote, click here, and to watch C-Span video of his June 2005 testimony on the Downing Street Memos, click here.