While in law school in Portland I interned at the Maine Civil Liberties Union and Maine Public Interest Research Group. When I finished law school I was an associate in a Portland area firm for a year and a half, then opened my own practice which I have run ever since. My work is almost entirely for the poor and those trying to change society in positive ways. My areas of concentration are criminal defense, child protection, civil rights and appeals. It is a matter of tremendous pride to me that Veterans for Peace voted to make me an honorary member, as thanks for volunteer legal work I did for them over a long period.

For six years I have been one of the two volunteer Legal Directors of the Portland Chapter of the NAACP. I accept referrals from the Maine Volunteer Lawyers Project. I was the campaign attorney in Maine for Dennis Kucinich for President in 2004, and in that role filed the suit that resulted in Maine agreeing that Party caucuses are elections for the purposes of political speech - it seems rather obvious, but the Maine Attorney General's office initially disagreed, and no other campaign had ever thought to defend the point. I am a member of the National Lawyers' Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union.

I also work for peace and justice in non-legal ways. I have been a part of a Friday afternoon peace vigil for almost ten years, standing on the corner of Congress and High in rain, sleet and hail, below zero and above 100 degrees, and regularly show up for other rallies on a wide range of issues. I was one of the organizers of a program in Portland in 2009 on single-payer health care. I have been a member of Maine Peoples' Alliance, Equality Maine and Peace Action Maine (I was on the Peace Action Board for a year), and regularly work on campaigns of those organizations. I worked on the campaigns of Dennis Kucinich for President in 2008 and Michael Brennan for US Representative in 2008. I am currently on the Board of the Community Building Collaborative, the group that runs the Meg Perry Community Center in Portland. I volunteer at the South Portland Public Library.

For fun I sell books, records and other strange stuff at shows, flea markets and on the internet. I perform regularly in theater productions around Maine. 2010 was my 18th trip to the annual William Faulkner Conference at the University of Mississippi, my eighth as a speaker on the program. I'm scheduled to teach a course on Faulkner in the spring 2011 at "Senior College," the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USM. I know more about sports than is healthy (Go Buckeyes!), and more about punk rock than anyone else you know.

I have lived in Portland since 1981, on Clinton Street with my sweetie Deb and her kids for five and a half years. Come by and admire our lovely garden, help us paint the house, and talk with me about what matters to you.