I was born in South Buffalo, grew up in Hamburg and came of age working in the oil field and drilling rigs in the bayous and swamps of Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico.

I left Buffalo and college behind and went to New Orleans, Louisiana. I felt unsettled and drawn to see the world and formal schooling wasn’t cutting it for me. I was all about practical experience. I needed to stand or fall by my own terms. As the second oldest in a family of nine children, I knew the only way I’d get to see the world was to work my way through it. The work in the oil field was physically demanding and the days were long and hot.

We worked twelve or more hours a day, seven days a week. At times I would be gone from home for over a month at a time, living and working on the rigs. They became my home and the fellow crew members became my family. We all knew we had to depend on each other for our lives and most of us became very close. We actually knew more about each other than our own families could ever know. We cried together, sweated together, froze our asses off together and worked together over long periods. We saw our friends injured; some seriously. Some of us even lost our friends forever out there, in the blink of an eye. Things could happen so fast it could make your head spin.

On a typical drilling floor of an oil rig, there are hundreds of tons of steel, moving, spinning, rising, falling, all of which are subjected to high levels of torque and stress, in an area no bigger than a 20 x 30 room. “Cold iron has no conscience” was the way we explained away the constant danger. But I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. It helped shape the person I am today.

I worked in the oil field for more than seven years before I eventually returned to Buffalo. I took several pre-apprenticeship programs in tool and dye and began working in that field. I eventually completed an apprenticeship through the UAW as a tool maker/cutter grinder while employed at Curtis Screw, Inc. During my employment there, I served as a UAW Union Steward before I resigned to attend law school in 2000.

While working as a toolmaker, I returned to college to complete my undergraduate degree. I was hungry for knowledge and formal learning. During the undergrad course work in Sociology I was exposed to various legal topics and areas of concern. One of my favorite areas of inquiry delved into the formation of English Common Law. I found it amazing that the law had actually been formulated and advanced as a mechanism to suppress the migration of working class families from the land to the growing urban centers. Common Law was later used to suppress the craft guilds from amassing power over the wealthy aristocracy. History has shown us that time and again our laws, which have their foundation in English Common Law, have been used to suppress the rights of working class people.

Given my practical experience, I thought that a law degree would help me ensure that all my fellow workers would get a fair hearing in the courts in issues of work place safety and health, anti-unionist policies, unfair free trade policies, voting rights, education and any other area that affects the well being of American working families or working families around the world who are bound to us by international standards of justice.

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