Meet Evan

Evan grew up as a closeted LGBTQ+ kid in a conservative part of Florida, a place where even as a child, they knew they would never be fully safe or accepted. 

Evan’s family goes back centuries in Massachusetts, and growing up listening to stories from their cousins, Evan knew that Massachusetts could be a place of safety and opportunity. When they moved to Cambridge at 18, like so many other people who have chosen to make this state their home, they found community and dignity, and a place where they could be themself and envision a future. This state changed their life. 

Growing up, Evan saw their parents dedicate their lives to helping other people. Evan’s father worked as a doctor and their mother as a public school teacher. Throughout their childhood, Evan’s family took in over a hundred foster children. Watching how the system overlooked their humanity and failed to support them, Evan learned about the need for structural change in society and government, and what it means to treat someone with dignity. 

Evan has spent a decade organizing for change in this community including: 

  • Serving on the Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commission as part of an inter-generational group protecting the future for LGBTQ+ people of all ages and backgrounds

  • Taught sex ed and consent in public schools so that all young people have honest, accurate information no matter their gender, race, or sexuality

  • Taught in transitional housing programs supporting formerly incarcerated people ensuring they can rebuild meaningful lives 

  • Organized annual protests against solitary confinement in Massachusetts jails and prisons and fought for legislation to curtail it because the dignity of all people is not negotiable

  • Trained workers on salary negotiation to minimize the effect of the gender wage gap on the existing untenable affordability crisis

In 2015, Evan helped organize the Harvard Grad Students Union, HGSU-UAW Local 5118 and was elected to serve on the inaugural Bargaining Committee. When they experienced the corruption within the national union of the UAW, they worked with their fellow organizers to build a coalition to fight for stronger internal democracy, protections from sexual harassment, greater transparency, and a union that answered to its members. As the president of the union with the most members in the 25th Middlesex district, Evan fought for workers making minimum wage at one of the wealthiest institutions in the country. They also served as the New England co-chair for Shawn Fain’s runoff campaign for UAW president.

Evan’s experience as a union organizer shows that hope is not naive, but a powerful choice we can make together. Hope is deciding the world can be different and better, and that we can accomplish big things by fighting together. And I’ve learned from organizing and winning that things that seem impossible often aren’t. 

Cambridge is a place of discovery, prosperity, and opportunity, but also inequality. Many people live in the shadow of the Ivory Tower and politicians often listen to the most powerful people rather than communities pushed to the margins. Evan’s track record over the last decade is having effectively pushed Harvard to do the right thing: for workers, for students, and for our community. Evan led a community organizing campaign around the fact that Harvard doesn’t pay property taxes. Evan led petitioning at community events, knocked on doors, and created conversation spaces including a town hall on improving the Town-Gown relationship. After the organizing campaign later that year, Harvard agreed to increase the Payments In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) to the City of Cambridge by 27%.

A registered Democrat, elected leader of the Cambridge Democratic City Committee, and candidate running in the Democratic primary on September 1st, Evan proudly identifies as a democratic socialist because they believe government should work for everyone, not just lobbyists, billionaires, and insider politicians. Evan is proud to be part of the same movement as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani: a movement rooted in care, fairness, shared prosperity, and the belief that all people deserve a government willing to challenge entrenched power.

Evan is running for State Representative because Massachusetts can be a state where every family can live with dignity and security, where everyone can afford a place to live, and where every worker has justice on the job. A state that shows the rest of the country what it looks like to take care of your neighbors. Massachusetts is one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country in the world. Evan is building the movement that will create the political will to make this vision a reality.