Lew Finfer
— 5th — (1977) Jimmy Carter
I have been working as a community organizer with a neighborhood citizen action organization in the Dorchester section of Boston since 1970. The work involves helping people in the neighborhood organize to reverse neighborhood deterioration caused by poor city services, redlining by banks and insurance companies, and real estate speculation.
— 10th — (1982) Ronald Reagan
I have continued working as a community organizer with various organizations based in the Boston area. In 1977, I worked as an organizer for Dorchester Fair Share, a part of a state-wide citizens action group called Massachusetts Fair Share. From 1978 until 1980, I worked as staff director and organizer with Somerville United Neighborhoods, a multi-issue neighborhood group. I worked briefly in mid and late-1980 with parent groups set up under the Boston desegregation court order and then with a welfare rights group. Since late 1980, I have been working with a state-wide tenants rights organization, Massachusetts Tenants Organization, as an organizer and co-director. I would be interested to correspond with people doing similar work, as well as say hello to those I used to know.
— 15th — (1987) Ronald Reagan
I have continued work as a community organizer, as I have been doing since college. From 1981- 1984, I was staff director of Massachusetts Tenants Organization, a statewide tenants' rights organization. In 1985, I started a group to provide training on organizing and leadership skills to community organizers and leaders, which is called the Organizing and Leadership Training Center. Later in 1985, I also organized a statewide housing coalition called Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, for which I work as the staff person. It works to increase public and private funding for constructing affordable housing and maintaining existing housing as affordable. The personal highlight of the past five years was getting married June 29, 1986, to Judy Shea. We hope to have children too.
— 20th — (1992) George H. W. Bush
During the past five years, I was director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance (MAHA) and of the Organizing and Leadership Training Center (OLTC). MAHA organizes community groups and individuals to work for increasing funding for affordable housing from government and private sources. OL TC focuses on building multi-issue community organizations that are composed of coalitions of churches and synagogues. This approach, called congregation of church-based community organization, has been the most effective approach to impacting urban issues in the past ten years. The approach focuses on relationships and values as the way to build groups in congregations that can be effective on issues. We are just beginning this work here and maybe in the next Report, I can tell you of some successes.
We have been blessed with a wonderful, wild, spunky four-year-old daughter named Sophia. We try to keep up with her.
— 25th — (1997) Bill Clinton
THESE past twenty-five years have seen me continue my work as a community organizer, marry a woman whom I met almost twenty years ago, and have one child and adopt another. I haven't gotten very far from Harvard Square in miles, but living in Dorchester all these years at the other end of the Red Line is a very different world.
I met my wife, Judy Shea, in 1977 and we were married in 1986. She has a great sense of humor combined with common sense. She is a wonderfully supportive person to me and all our friends and those she works with. She has worked as a social worker doing therapy with families and individuals at a Dorchester community mental health program for the past fifteen years.
We have a daughter, Sophia, who will be nine this fall. She is a very spunky girl who's inherited some of her mother's sense of humor and some of my determination. After having numerous painful and isolating miscarriages, we decided to adopt a child. It took several years, but we had the incredible luck to adopt a little baby boy this year from the Republic of Georgia (formerly part of the Soviet Union) whom we named Aleksandr. He's a big smiler.
I have worked as a community organizer all of these last twenty-five years. Since the mid-1980's, I have directed a community organizing institute called the Organizing and Leadership Training Center. We have developed and provide on-going support to a network of six community organizations in cities across Massachusetts. We are now also working with a national organization called the Industrial Areas Foundation, which was founded by Saul Minsky, to develop an organization covering Boston and its metropolitan areas.
These are multi-issue organizations, working on issues like crime prevention, jobs, schools, housing. They are multi-racial and institution based, with religious congregations being the main type of member organization. While the Christian Coalition takes over the Republican Party, the populist community organizations I and others work for across the country are also involving religious congregations in the public arena. The groups we organize are generally city-wide or larger in scope so that we can bring people together across racial and neighborhood lines and with the potential to develop the power to work on larger issues like jobs and schools. I continue to read how the events of the spring of 1969 at Harvard shaped many people. Mark Helprin, the novelist and Bob Dole's occasional speech writer, told of how seeing certain student leaders go out the window to escape during the police bust at University Hall disillusioned him. Elliot Abrams, an architect of President Reagan's Central America policy, also talked about the impact of the take-over on shaping his politics. I supported the demands of the strike, but not the take-over methods. Then, the bust made me more distrustful of authority. The class, racial, and political divisions that we became more aware of in the 1960's still much divide our country. I never thought the Berlin Wall would fall or South Africa would be free in my lifetime. At the same time, lots of terrible events fill our world. I understand now that life is short. So, I'm trying to challenge myself to take some more risks in my work and relationships.
— 30th — (2002) George W. Bush I'm still growing and so are our two children! I'm still working as a community organizer. The past five years, I've concentrated on developing a new community organization called Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) which currently works on issues related to affordable housing, improving public schools, and rights for immigrants. It is made up of about ninety-five dues-paying religious congregations and community organizations. We are part of a network of seventy such organizations around the country affiliated through an organization called the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).
We had an exciting founding meeting of our organization attended by almost four thousand people and since then have gotten some significant things done on our issues. Most of our work focuses on developing community leaders and enough large scale involvement of people participating in what we call "accountability meetings" or "public actions" so that we have enough power to be taken seriously by politicians and corporations. Although we have had some impact on city and state issues, there's lots of big decisions made at other levels that we have not built enough power to have an impact on. Life is short so this weighs on me.
Our daughter, Sophia, is doing well in high school at Boston Latin School, which is a citywide public school in Boston. She's made friends with kids from around the city. That means I get to drive her and her friends to events like the Holy Name High School Dance on the other side of the city. She has just finished her first season on the track team. Our son, Aleksandr, is in kindergarten and he says his favorite subject is recess. He also likes playing baseball, bowling, and soccer. My wife, Judy, is a social worker and lately has been teaching several classes for children in a community arts program called Dot Art. Dot is the local nickname for the Dorchester neighborhood we live in.
— 35th — (2007) George W. Bush
I continue my work as a community organizer with community improvement organizations located in cities across Massachusetts. I direct a federation of six affiliated community improvement organizations. We do our statewide organizing work under the name Massachusetts Communities Action Network and our work to support these local affiliated community organizations under the name Organizing and Leadership Training Center. Our Web site, for the curious, is at www.mcanoltc. org.
This past year, we worked in coalitions that organized successfully to pass a law to raise the minimum wage in Massachusetts from $6.75 to $8.00 an hour over two years, for a law to protect witnesses to crimes from intimidation by gangs and $11 million in state funding for crime prevention programs, and for $20 million in state funding for job training programs. When my daughter was little, she told people that I worked as a "community agonizer." I do my share of that. I am angry, like many of you, about the huge disparities in wealth in our country and how class affects real opportunities, the war in Iraq, and the genocide we are watching go forward in Darfur.
At this age, I think more about legacy. What have I done with my kids and what have I missed by working too much, what have I done that's contributed toward community betterment, and what could I still do?
We're excited for our daughter, Sophia, who just started as a freshman at Johns Hopkins. We had a tearful parting all around when we brought her to Baltimore over Labor Day weekend. Dinner tables are so different with one long-term member absent now.
She's actually interested in English and history, though everyone asks whether she's going there for premed or some science because of Hopkins's reputation in those areas. Our son, Aleksandr, is eleven and interested in all kinds of sports. He plays in leagues for soccer, baseball, floor hockey, basketball, and flag football in an average year. He said his favorite time of day is three o'clock because that's when school ends and it's boring. Sound familiar to anyone?
My wife, Judy Shea, is teaching part-time in a community arts program and might return to her previous long-term job as a social worker.
— 40th — (2012) Barack Obama
I continue to work as a community organizer. I began this work in Dorchester while an undergraduate. I still live in Dorchester and work from an office there, but now work in cities across Massachusetts and on some statewide and national issues.
Our group is affiliated with a national network of community improvement organizations called the PICO National Network. At the state level we work on issues like youth jobs funding and a highlight was a rally, march, and lobby we organized of one thousand teens from across the state on February 23. We also work on issues of job creation and training, crime prevention, foreclosure prevention, health care access and affordability, school improvement, and immigrant concerns. I'm proud to have worked with our national group on several legislative and policy issues that were enacted at the national level on foreclosure prevention. The cities outside of Boston are harder hit and have rust belt aspects to them as places that lost most of their manufacturing jobs and have not developed a new economy yet where there are opportunities for most residents.
I believe we've entered a new era since the financial crisis of 2008.We're all not sure we're it's going, but it is a period of great hardship with the recession, great political divisions, and still great power held by larger corporations and wealthier people; that power question has been true for some time, as we all know.
I think more about legacy now in my work with younger organizers and am trying to write up stories and pieces of history on certain issues.
I realize in talking to those in generations younger than mine that feeling our government doesn't always tell the truth is what they assume, whereas we learned that as we examined the Vietnam War. I got to participate in some pieces of the Civil Rights Movement but realize it's history to most now. There's the inevitable aging that puts experience into passages of our lives and a sense of the poignancy of events past, while I'm still a part of events now.
One of my children seems on the way forward, and the other struggles a lot, so I have miles of parenting still to go, too.
— 45th — (2017) Donald Trump
Well, at sixty-six, I could be retired, but I don't have a plan to do that yet. I've continued my work as a community organizer, which I started when I was an undergraduate. I direct a community organization that works in ten cities in Massachusetts, called the Massachusetts Communities Action Network.
We had a breakthrough a few years ago when we played a major role in starting a community, labor, and religious coalition called Raise UP Massachusetts. That coalition was able to collect 360,000 signatures of voters to qualify for the ballot referenda for raising the minimum wage and a law to give all people five sick days a year. This led to a three-dollar increase in our state's minimum wage and passage of an Earned Sick Time law. We're almost finished qualifying an increased tax on millionaires for the state ballot next year that would raise $2.2 billion in new state revenue for education and transportation if it passes. We're also working on criminal justice reform legislation to lessen mass incarceration, and we're standing with immigrants threatened with detention and deportation.
I'm mindful of a recent Doonesbury cartoon where Mike asks, "Do you think we could have a conversation that doesn't always circle back to Trump?" One person tries saying, "Nice weather," and then the other can't resist responding, "Yeah, too nice! Thanks to climate change." So I imagine some of the reflections in this book "will circle back to Trump." Trump's being president is a nightmare. Things seemed very bad in 1968, with the assassinations of MLK and RFK, Russia invading Czechoslovakia, the Vietnam War, which seemed endless, and Nixon being elected — but this seems even worse. Our country is so divided, and Trump is such a mean, terrible person. But it's clearly the time to step up in opposition. And to still listen to the grievances his supporters have and find any common ground that's possible. I'm encouraged, at least somewhat, that many are stepping up to oppose his initiatives in many ways. I love my wife, Judy, and I'm very glad that my children, Sophia and Aleksandr, live not far away, so we see them a lot. I think more about legacy and being intentional about passing things on to my colleagues. I appreciate friends and family. I value my memories, and then there are those times when, darn it, I can't immediately remember a name. I'm lucky to have had the life I've had.
— 50th — (2022) Joseph Biden
So I'm still working as a community organizer now into my 51st year of this. I have also become a new grandparent this year. And it feels like we entered a new century with our politically divided country and our endless and deadly pandemic. So I’ll say a little about all that!?!
My wife Judy and I became grandparents August 1 when my son Aleksandr and his girl friend Brittany had a baby boy named Liam David Finfer. It's been so wonderful to hold him and we can't wait to start reading hundreds of stories to him. 'Little Guy' as my son calls him. Their wedding that was to take place this year was postponed because of COVID and now a baby; the traditional wedding/baby order of things doesn't always happen! My son Aleksandr is an EMT in New Bedford, MA. We are proud of him for the work he does, but also worry that but he continually sees a hard side of life with overdoses, accidents, and trauma.
My daughter Sophia works in the field of public health and works in the administrative part of our state's affordable health care plans. She was able to buy a house in Providence after no longer being able to afford one in Boston/Greater Boston. When I started community organizing work in Dorchester in 1970 during my junior year, a three decker 3 family house sold for $15,000 and now they sell for over $1 million. Geez. My wife Judy Shea, after a career as social worker/therapist, now works as a Art teacher with children in a community arts program in our neighborhood of Dorchester called DotArt.
After 35 years as the founding director of Massachusetts Communities Action Network, I stepped down as Director on January 1 and will stay on these two years as a Senior Project Advisor. That means I continue much the same work as I've done on issues and but much less on fundraising, administration, and staff supervision. Who likes fundraising?
Our organization now has 7 affiliated community organizations in cities around Massachusetts that we started over many years. We work on statewide issues that our affiliates want to work on and often do that in coalitions with additional community groups and unions. And some work recently at the federal level on funding for foreclosure prevention and jobs issues in the Reconciliation bill. We also belong to the national and international Faith In Action organizing network. That has led also to work to support Haiti and groups in Eastern Europe.
We are proud of the role we’ve played in recent years in helping pass two Minimum Wage increases in Massachusetts up to $15 an hour, a Paid Family Medical Leave law, a Paid Sick Days law, a criminal justice reform law that repealed a number of long mandatory minimum sentences on drug charges that drove mass incarceration, and a law significantly increasing public education funding. And with allies we've qualified a tax on millionaires referendum for he 2022 ballot that would raise $2 billon for education and transportation.
I know most of us feel that February 2020 marks dividing point in our lives between pre pandemic and continuing pandemic, then murder of George Floyd, and then the 2020 Presidential Election. Just to pick one, I'm angry at Trump's actions that led to so many dying of COVID and that we have so many vaccines and the Third World countries have almost none. But on the positive side, there is the overwhelming appreciation of so many unsung heroes and heroines amongst our first responders and essential workers.
I joined many protest marches following George Floyd's murder. Across every issue I work on, there has been an increased racial analysis of impact, disparities, and developing solutions that might change this. Much work is needed to right so many centuries of wrongs. I worry that progressive whites and people of color together can't bring about enough change or win enough elections without at least some white working class support.
Like so many, I worry about our countries divisions, about the intentional mistruths conveyed by some people and institutions, and all their consequences. But, I still want to believe that most people want mostly a decent life and respect and if we listen well to all of them and try to act together this might still be possible. But lots of events push me towards being less hopeful too.
I think I will continue community organizing work after my time at my present organization ends at the end of 2022. I have an outline of poignant stories from my 50+ years of community organizing that I'd like to write up into at least a self published book some time before I can no longer remember them!?!