Civil warrior, continued

text and photos by Ben Geman

The wealth primary, Bonifaz says, prevents non-wealthy voters and candidates from having an "equal and meaningful" role in elections, in much the same way that African-Americans and women were once shut out of the process. Therefore, he says, campaign finance is not just a free-speech issue -- it's also one of civil rights. "The right to vote," says Bonifaz, "is not just the right to pull that lever on Election Day."

IN STARK contrast to his unassuming appearance, Bonifaz, who received a MacArthur "genius grant" last year, has a high level of energy. Very high. Someone who went to Harvard Law School with him describes him as an "effervescent Energizer bunny." It's not hard to see why.

At the ballot box The Boston-based National Voting Rights Institute says that the fight to get big money out of politics is the latest in a long line of struggles to ensure equal access to the ballot box. Listed below are some key legal decisions and laws that codified the long and continuing popular struggle for fair elections. 1870: The 15th Amendment to the Constitution bans federal and state governments from restricting voting on the basis of race. Some states, though, use Jim Crow laws to continue barring African-Americans from voting. 1920: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution gives women the right to vote. 1927: The Supreme Court rules in Nixon v. Herndon that a Texas law excluding blacks from primary voting is unconstitutional. It's the first of several rulings aimed at ending "white primaries." 1953: In the case of Terry v. Adams, the Supreme Court bars a cousin of the already outlawed "white primary" practice of excluding blacks from elections. The whites-only Jaybird Democratic Association in Texas -- a private club -- is banned from holding an exclusionary "pre-primary" nominating process to select Democratic candidates to run in state elections. 1964: With its decision in Reynolds v. Sims, in which Alabama voters charged that the state's legislative districts were unfairly drawn, the Supreme Court says that state legislative districts must adhere to the "one man, one vote" principle. It's one of several rulings in the early and mid 1960s that address fair representation. "Legislators represent people," writes Justice Earl Warren, "not trees or acres." 1965: The Voting Rights Act is signed into law, aimed at ending Jim Crow laws that prevented blacks from voting. The act, among other things, bans practices such as barring voters because of their literacy or educational levels. 1966: The Supreme Court, in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, agrees with Virginia resident Annie Harper that "poll taxes" imposed on voters are discriminatory. The 24th Amendment to the constitution, ratified in 1964, had already banned them in federal elections. "Voter qualifications," the Court says, "have no relation to wealth." 1972: In Bullock v. Carter, the Supreme Court strikes down the practice of high candidate filing fees in Texas, which had made it impossible for less wealthy candidates to run. -- Ben Geman

Several months ago, Bonifaz stood outside Fenway Park during a press conference with Ralph Nader to protest public financing of a new ballpark. As Nader spoke, Bonifaz cheered him on like a fan encouraging a player at bat: "Okaay, Ralph! All right, Ralph!" he yelled from the back of the small crowd.

That energy -- times five -- 
surfaced again last month. Standing outside the State House office of Tom Finneran at a demonstration against the House Speaker's efforts to gut the state's successful 1998 clean-elections referendum, Bonifaz was even more pumped up, chanting, "Stand by the voters! Stand by the voters!" alongside other demonstrators.

A demonstrator who knew Bonifaz asked him to make an impromptu speech, and he gladly complied. "This is about democracy, and that's why we are here -- as voters, as citizens, we care about this political process," Bonifaz said, his small, wiry frame illuminated by the glare of a television-camera light in the dim State House hallway.

As he gained momentum, his slightly nasal tone rose to a shout. "It does not just belong to the monied interests! It does not belong to the monied few! In a democracy, public elections must be publicly financed! We are not going to sell the public streets to the highest bidder! We are not going to sell out our public schools to the highest bidder!

"This is not a dictatorship! This is not a plutocracy! This is a democracy, and in a democracy, the people rule!"

In an interview at his modest Downtown Crossing office, which is decorated with pictures of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Mahatma Gandhi, Bonifaz speaks about campaign finance in softer, more measured tones. But his critique is no less sweeping. "If society wants to set up a different structure and says we are going to have a class of elites, then let's formalize it and have them make all the decisions -- let's come out and be honest about that," he says. "But that is not what democracy is supposed to be all about. There are not supposed to be people who, with all their money and power, are supposed to have more influence. That's not democracy. That's plutocracy."

His convictions about democracy can be traced back to his childhood in Pennsylvania, where his parents instilled strong values about civil rights and social justice. His mother, Deirdre, founded an artisans' cooperative for poor craftswomen. Some of the board members, such as Nettie Young of Alabama, were veterans of the civil-rights movement who would come and stay with the family.

"It brought these folks into our home, so I met people from Appalachia, the Deep South," he says. "My mother would sit me down and say, `Ask some questions.' "

"They told me stories of the civil-rights movement and how they had engaged in incredible efforts to overcome Jim Crow," he recalls. "Nettie Young has this one very vivid image she gave me, when she was walking up the steps of a courthouse to try and vote, and there were policemen and dogs on the steps. They were more scared than she was. That . . . made her understand that she was not alone in her fear and that she could be strong in the face of that, because she saw that there were others who even more scared on the other side. That's an image that I've kept all along."

Bonifaz's father, Cristobal -- an Ecuadorian immigrant who's now an activist attorney in Western Massachusetts -- helped start a group that worked with migrant farm workers to better their conditions. From the time John was a child, he would go with his father to the workers' camps. Cristobal recalls that once, when John was about five years old, the boy tried to stare down a rough-looking crew leader who was intimidating the advocates.

Activism stuck with Bonifaz. In high school, for example, he went to Washington, DC, to demonstrate for a nuclear-weapons freeze; at Harvard Law School, which he attended after graduating from Brown University, he participated in a sit-in to fight for a more diverse staff. He's remained close to his father and is currently working with him in another social-justice arena that's far removed from campaign finance. Cristobal is a lead attorney in a closely watched class-action suit against Texaco brought on behalf of 30,000 indigenous Ecuadorian rain-forest dwellers whose homeland was badly contaminated by the firm's drilling practices. Think A Civil Action, but on a much bigger scale.

Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next

Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.