Andrea Miller for Congress (VA-04)

Background:

Effective and visionary public office holders are, by definition, born leaders and teachers. This description fits Congressional candidate Andrea Miller perfectly.

Knowing at age five that she wanted to teach, Andrea's teaching career led quite naturally to her undertaking significant leadership positions in a wide variety of organizations. Most recently, she was a part of Congressman Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign, first as Statewide Coordinator for Virginia and subsequently as Regional Coordinator, until Mr. Kucinich dropped out of the campaign.

Andrea is currently an active member of the Chesterfield County Democratic Committee, the Virginia Anti-War Network and Progressive Democrats of America. Andrea was MoveOn's Regional Coordinator for the Central, Southwest and Tidewater areas of Virginia until taking on the Kucinich campaign. Andrea's leadership in these progressive communities demonstrates her particular knack for galvanizing others to rally around her and the issues of social justice and equality to which she is so dedicated.

Born in 1954 and raised in Chicago, Andrea was quite musical as a teenager and was her church's organist and choirmaster but chose to major in Early Childhood Education at Northwestern University. While there, Andrea joined her first progressive organization and was soon a community activist and organizer for the United Farm Workers of America (led by Cesar Chavez). Andrea also has experience as a legal assistant (at Northwestern University School of Law), a natural outgrowth of her social activism.

Andrea's first stop after college graduation was St. James Elementary School, where as a teaching assistant, she worked with exceptional students, both gifted and learning-challenged. When she moved to California in the early 1970's, Andrea worked in the insurance, banking and technology sales fields, subsequently allowing her to combine her teaching skills and her early fascination with computer technology to create The Learning Club. Based in San Francisco, The Learning Club provided custom database programming, specialty computer training, and management, organizational and development training. Clients included Bank of America, Bechtel, GSA, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Kelly Temporary Services, Sears Business Systems and several US government departments such as the Army, the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Postal Service.

Awarded a training contract with the Social Security Administration in 1989, Andrea returned to the East Coast. In addition to her work with the SSA, Andrea simultaneously began teaching a course in computer applications at Howard Community College, at the Center for Workforce Development and at the Johns Hopkins School for Continuing Studies, in their Lifelong Learning Division. Andrea also holds a directorship at the San Jose (CA) American Business College International Vocational School.

Currently, Andrea teaches WebEOC for emergency management agencies in Virginia, in Washington, DC and in Maryland. As an instructional designer, she has written more than a hundred courses in subjects ranging from Basic Computer Concepts to Advanced Unix. In 2003, Andrea launched WebLearningIT and re-engineered her courseware into a multimedia format for delivery via the Web.

Andrea is the proud mother of three children: Alexis, a software engineer; Christopher, a corporate trainer and composer; and Amanthis, a high school student majoring in languages. As a parent, as a teacher and as a progressive social activist, Andrea is firmly committed to social justice as the door to peace, prosperity and national security.

Goals:

I am running because the 4th District needs help. The current representation has not been helpful to the citizens of the 4th District. The citizens living in the 4th District are honest, hard-working people. They don't deserve to be treated as mere votes. They deserve better...they deserve jobs and stability...they deserve to be heard.

Issues:

Bring more jobs to the 4th Congressional District in Virginia.

End the Iraq war/occupation. Keep the tax dollars in the district and make them available for healthcare, education and clean, renewable energy.

Health care needs to be reformed in a way that it is provided to all citizens and not just those who can afford expensive health insurance.

Grassroots Support:

Grassroots will play a large role in my campaign. Starting with collecting signatures and raising funds. Then, we will go door to door in all the communities to discuss issues and hear what the people are saying.

DFA Values:

My campaign is about supporting an infrastructure that is based on renewable energy. It is also about implementing a health care system that includes everyone.
Along with these issues, I also believe in balancing budgets and not exceeding limits and producing more debt.