DMI Events

DENNIS M. BURKE helped organize Arizona's successful ballot initiative campaign to provide public funds to candidates who agree
to limit their spending and refuse all special interest campaign
donations. The initiative passed in 1998. Currently, the state's
governor, attorney general, other line officers and a large part of
both the Arizona House and Senate have run and won using the "Clean
Elections" program.

In 2000, he organized a successful ballot initiative to create a politically balanced citizen commission to draw the boundaries of political districts in Arizona, removing that power from incumbent legislators.

Also in 2000, he organized the national grassroots support for campaign finance reform at the federal level. His partner in that effort was 90 year-old Doris "Granny D" Haddock, who walked across the U.S. to promote the reform. They co-authored a book on the subject, published in 2001 by Random House.

In 2003, he worked with peace groups in the Northeast to organize protests in major cities against the then-imminent invasion of Iraq by the U.S. Later in 2003, he organized an effort in 13 swing states to register working women and housing project residents to vote.

In 2004 he managed the U.S. Senate campaign of his friend, Doris Haddock in New Hampshire. The campaign was designed to keep the Bush agenda in focus, as the incumbent Republican senator would otherwise have run unopposed. Of all the swing states that had swung to Bush in 2000, New Hampshire was the only state to swing to the Democrats in 2004, and the Haddock campaign was credited with part of that success.

In 2005, he was the strategy consultant for the successful defeat of an anti-gay marriage amendment in Arizona. It remains the only state to turn down an anti-gay marriage ballot amendment.

In 2006 he returned to the issue of coal and global warming, working for some months in West Virginia. At the behest of Random House, he co-wrote the memoir of the sole survivor of the Sago Mine disaster.

Presently, also at the behest or Random House, he is co-writing the memoir of a Darfur refugee.

Since 1985, he has served as the president of the Community Housing Partnership in Phoenix, which houses some three hundred otherwise homeless families each night.

He is the father of two grown chilidren. His son is a political research director for Democratic candidates; his daughter is a union organizer. His partner of ten years, Maureen, a newspaper editor, became his wife last month in Phoenix.

HON. LIZ KRUEGER was first elected to the New York State Senate in a Special Election in February 2002. She is currently the Chair of Minority Program Development, and the ranking Democratic member of the Senate Standing Committee on Housing, Construction and Community Development.

Senator Krueger is a strong advocate for tenants’ rights, affordable housing, improved access to health care, prescription drug coverage and social services, more open government and campaign finance reform, more equitable funding for public education, and animal welfare.

As Chair of the Senate Minority Task Force on Legislative and Budgetary Reform, Senator Krueger has been a leader in the fight for a more democratic and deliberative legislative process in the Senate. She has authored numerous pieces of reform legislation, including a bill that would tighten up New York's lax campaign finance laws and define how campaign contributions can be spent.

Senator Krueger has dedicated her career to issues relating to poverty, and she is a nationally recognized expert on the problems of hunger and homelessness, and the lack of affordable housing, healthcare, and job training.

For 15 years, Senator Krueger was the Associate Director of the Community Food Resource Center (CFRC) where she was responsible for directing the organization's efforts to expand access to government programs for low-income New Yorkers. She helped monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of Federal and State programs in New York City, identifying barriers to participation, and fighting for improvements in the effectiveness of these programs.

Prior to joining CFRC, Senator Krueger was the founding Director of the New York City Food Bank, building that organization into one that now serves over 1,100 emergency food programs, senior centers, day-care centers, and other community-based programs serving an estimated 5.4 million meals each year. She also served as Chair of the New York City Food Stamp Task Force, Co-Facilitator of the New York City Welfare Reform Network, and on the board of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court.

A graduate of Northwestern University, with a Bachelors degree in Social Policy and Human Development, Senator Krueger also holds a Masters degree from the University of Chicago’s Harris Graduate School of Public Policy. She lives on the Upper East Side with her husband, Dr. John E. Seley, a professor of Urban Planning and Geography at The CUNY Graduate Center and Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.

CHARLIE KING has dedicated over twenty years of his life serving New York in both the private and public sectors. In 2006 King ran unsuccessfully for New York State Attorney General and then served as Chair of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s Transition Committee on Civil Rights. Recently King assumed the role of National Director for National Action Network, one of the nation’s leading civil rights organizations. Currently King has a private political, governmental and corporate consulting business, CGK Partners.

Public education has been a passion of King and one of his career successes was to settle a class action lawsuit with the Department of Education in New York City that he initiated on behalf of children trapped in failing schools across the state. The settlement gave 5,000 kids the opportunity to transfer into better schools, ensuring their civil and constitutional right to a sound and basic education.

Appointed by President Clinton in 2000 to serve as top official for the New York and New Jersey region of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), King monitored over $3.2 billion in federal funds and managed over 500 individuals while protecting worker’s rights and wages and revitalizing business in upstate New York.

King’s legal experience spans over fifteen years. While Of Counsel at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, King focused on commercial litigation and directed the firm’s pro-bono program, which included assisting micro-entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds in developing their businesses.

King also served as a lawyer to Mayor David Dinkins’ Mollen Commission. Internationally, King was selected to serve as an election observer in South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s run for President in 1994, the first free and fair elections in South Africa’s history.

As CEO from 2003-2006 to Praxis, a $9 million not-for-profit housing organization, which faced allegations of mismanagement prior to his arrival; King stabilized and restored it to health.

King has always been active in his community. He served as President of the Westside Crime Prevention Program on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he worked to mobilize community residents to eradicate criminal drug activity from their neighborhoods and provide safe environments for their children. King currently serves on the board of the Anti-defamation League, and is the first African-American to receive a board nomination. He also is soccer coach to the “Herricanes” his 7 years old daughter’s soccer team. They finished 5-1 in their first year.

King is a graduate of Brown University and New York University Law School where he was honored as a Root-Tilden Scholar. Born and raised in New York City, King lives in Rockland County with his wife and two daughters.

JESSICA WISNESKI is the Campaigns Director of Citizen Action of New York, a statewide membership organization that fights for social, economic, racial and environmental justice. Jessica kicked off Citizen Action’s four-year campaign to pass Clean Elections in New York two years ago. In that time, she has worked with hundreds of grassroots leaders and volunteers in Citizen Action’s seven regions across the state to implement the grassroots campaign necessary to win. Jessica has lead countless activists trainings, coordinated dozens of grassroots and direct lobby visits, media events, coalition building, highly successful public forums, bill drafting and much more.

Before her work at Citizen Action, Jessica was the Field Coordinator for Hawaii Clean Elections, Hawaii’s coalition that works to pass and implement a Clean Elections system there. Jessica graduated from the State University at Albany’s Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy in 2002. She got her start working on campaign finance and redistricting reform working for the New York Public Interest Research Group. Jessica also coordinates Citizen Action’s up and coming Quality, Affordable, Health Care for ALL campaign.