~ Letter to the Editor ~ Danielle Allen announces candidacy for Democratic State Committeewoman

I write to announce my candidacy for Democratic State Committeewoman for the Middlesex and Suffolk Senate District (Senator Sal DiDomenico’s district) and to ask for your vote. The seat serves Cambridge, Everett, and Chelsea.

An East Cambridge resident, I am an internationally recognized expert on democracy and former gubernatorial candidate. I am honored to serve on the boards of the Cambridge Health Alliance and Massachusetts Board of Higher Education. With children in the Cambridge Public Schools, I’ve been very involved in advancing high quality curriculum in our schools. Last spring I was honored to be elected chair of my ward committee, Ward 2 for Cambridge Dems.

I come from people who have loved and fought for democracy for generations. As a kid I took the value of democracy for granted. But as I came into adulthood, I saw life paths diverging for myself and my cousins, and democracy got a lot more complicated for me. I’ve lost cousins to substance use disorder, incarceration, and homicide. But democracy’s not supposed to be abstractly valuable. When we embrace the ideals of freedom and equality, it’s supposed to deliver a society that makes it possible for every generation to do a bit better than the previous one, and for whole generational cohorts to move forward together. We need to change our democracy so that democracy can deliver on its promise.

This conviction has led me into work on democracy renovation. When I ran for Governor I was taken by surprise by just how many people feel disconnected from our political institutions. I think it’s time to change that. Our party, MassDems, can lead the way. I am advocating for our party to set up a MassDems Commission on Healthy Democracy to advance the values of inclusion, engagement, and healthy competition. I seek to put “democracy” back in Democrat.

I would be honored to succeed the remarkable Lesley Phillips in this important work, and am proud to have the endorsements of Ward 6 Chair Linda Pinti, Representative Marjorie Decker, Representative Mike Connolly, Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui, Mayor Nicole LaChapelle, former MassDems Chair and State Treasurer, Steve Grossman, and others. To learn more, please visit allenforma.com.

I ask for your vote for Democratic State Committeewoman to advance this work. Whether you vote by mail, vote early, or vote on Tuesday March 5^th, please vote for Danielle Allen.

Sincerely,

Danielle Allen