Johnson for Texas

Background:

Eric Lynn Johnson was born on October 10, 1975 in Dallas, Texas. He was the third child born to Vaughn Leon Johnson Sr. and Alice Janet Jacobs Johnson. Eric has two older brothers, Vaughn Leon Johnson Jr. and Darryl Keith Johnson, and one younger sister, Erica Lynnette Johnson. His family is solidly working class: his father is retired and his mother is an administrative assistant for the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Eric’s brother Darryl and he are the only members of their immediate family to complete college.

Eric attended kindergarten at Sudie L. Williams Elementary School. At the time, his family lived in a small rental home near Dallas Love Field Airport. His paternal grandmother, Karon Battles Johnson, who died three years before Eric was born, had lived in a house just a few blocks away. Eric’s parents both grew up in West Dallas’ Edgar Ward federal housing projects. They met when they were fifteen years old and married when they were nineteen; they are still happily married today.

When Eric was six years old, his family moved back to West Dallas to be closer to Eric’s maternal grandparents, the late William Jacobs Sr. and Lillian Moore Jacobs, and several other family members who lived in West Dallas. Eric’s family moved into the West Park Apartments, located near the intersection of Canada Drive and Winnetka Avenue alongside the Trinity River levee. Back then, the area around the West Park Apartments was predominantly African American; it is now mostly Hispanic and is known as “Los Altos.”

Growing up in West Dallas, life for Eric and his family centered around their family church, the Dallas West Church of Christ on Hampton Road. Dallas West Church of Christ had been Eric’s maternal grandparents’ church since they moved to Dallas from Marshall, Texas shortly after World War II. Eric was baptized there when he was eight years old and was a faithful member of Dallas West until he graduated from high school. When Eric returned to Dallas after law school, he began attending church at the Lawrence and Marder Church of Christ in South Dallas, where he and his wife, Nakita, are members.

Eric attended first grade at C.F. Carr Elementary School in West Dallas. His first grade teacher was a woman named Lea Ann Faris. Miss Faris saw in Eric great academic potential. She decided that Eric was not being sufficiently challenged by DISD’s standard first grade curriculum, so she created a special area just for him in the back of her classroom so that he could do creative writing an hour or two a day while the other students went through their standard drills. Soon, an hour or two became all day. At some point, Miss Faris must have concluded that while Eric was probably learning a lot in isolation, he needed to be in a normal classroom environment, at least for a few hours a day. Miss Faris worked it out where Eric could take his math classes with the second graders. Before the first grade ended, Eric was going to math class with the third graders.

Unbeknownst to Eric, Miss Faris was also researching private school options for him. She discovered a program known as the Independent Schools Project (ISP) that was run by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas (BGCD). ISP was a partnership between BGCD and several of the top private schools in Dallas. BGCD would identify talented students from the low income, predominantly minority neighborhoods that it served and facilitate getting these students tested for admission to the private schools with which BGCD had partnered. If admitted, BGCD would provide the student with transportation to and from the private school to which the student had been admitted, and the private school would provide the student with enough financial aid to attend.

When Miss Faris told Eric’s parents about ISP, his mother was very interested but his father was not. Eric’s father did not like the idea of Eric going to school so far from home or of paying any tuition for a child to attend grade school. Eric’s mother convinced his father to at least let him take the admissions exam for Greenhill School, the school she and Eric liked best. Not long after taking the admissions exam, they were informed that Eric had earned a high enough score to be admitted to Greenhill and Eric joined the Greenhill School Class of 1994 in the second grade.

From 1983 to 1994, Eric rode a BGCD van from the West Dallas Boys & Girls Club (then located at the intersection of Westmoreland Road and Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas, but it has since been demolished) to Greenhill, which is located at the corner of Midway Road and Spring Valley Road in Addison, Texas. Riding that BGCD van to Greenhill for eleven years, Eric met dozens of young men and women who attended Greenhill, St. Mark’s School of Texas, The Hockaday School, and Episcopal School of Dallas through ISP with whom he is still friends.

Greenhill opened Eric’s mind. Before he started at Greenhill, Eric had met only a few white people in his life, and very few if any Asians, Latinos, or other ethnic or religious minorities. He also had never seen such wealth and privilege or such high achieving students who were so focused on doing well in school. Fights, disruptive behavior, and otherwise disorderly conduct were rare and frowned upon. Sports were an afterthought, and the sports that seemed to get the most attention were soccer and tennis. All of these things and much, much more made Greenhill a very different place than any place Eric had experienced up to that point.

Eric embraced Greenhill and everything it had to offer. He got involved with every organization to which he felt he could meaningfully contribute: He was a four year, two-way starter on the varsity football team and also participated on the track and field team, having dropped basketball and baseball after eighth grade so that he would have more time for extracurricular activities like the concert and jazz bands in which he played saxophone, the National Latin Honor Society, and the National Honor Society. Eric was on the high honor roll for nearly all of junior high and high school. He was also elected by his classmates to four terms on the Honor Council, a student run organization that adjudicated cases involving alleged violations of Greenhill’s academic honor code. Eric’s senior year at Greenhill, he was voted homecoming king, received numerous private athletic and academic scholarships, was accepted early to Harvard College, and was selected by his classmates to deliver one of the two student commencement addresses at his graduation.

Eric entered Harvard College in the fall of 1994. He immediately became very active in community service; he got a job his freshman year as Director of the Cambridge Youth Enrichment Program (CYEP), a summer program for disadvantaged youth in the City of Cambridge, and spent the summer between his freshman and sophomore years in Cambridge running CYEP. He was initiated into Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. his sophomore year and headed up the community service efforts of both that organization and the Harvard Black Students Association, earning the John Lord O’Brian and Stride Rite scholarships from Harvard College for his commitment to community service. The summer between his junior and senior year of college, Eric studied public policy at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

After graduating from Harvard College with an A.B. cum laude in History in 1998, Eric returned to Dallas and after a brief stint with investment banking firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, accepted a position as Legislative Assistant to State Representative Yvonne Davis (D-Dallas) in Austin, Texas. While working for Representative Davis, Eric applied to and was accepted at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (WWS). After the Texas Legislature adjourned in May of 1999, Eric moved to New York City for three months to work as a graduate intern for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund doing research to support several of their desegregation lawsuits in the Deep South and also to combat the proposed elimination of remedial education on City University of New York (CUNY) system campuses.

In the fall of 1999, Eric entered WWS where he focused on education policy and international affairs. While a first year student at WWS, Eric applied to and was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and received one of four Public Interest scholarships which carried with it a two-thirds tuition scholarship. Eric entered Penn Law in the fall of 2000. While at Penn Law, Eric worked as a graduate assistant in a freshman dormitory was also an Associate Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law. During the summer between his first and second year of law school, Eric worked as an intern in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in the Narcotics Division where he assisted in the successful prosecution of a major New York City drug dealer and earned written recognition from the Narcotics Division Chief. That same summer, Eric clerked in the Dallas office of New York based Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. The summer between his second and third year of law school, he clerked at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, Vinson & Elkins LLP, and McCall, Parkhurst & Horton LLP, all in Dallas. He received offers of permanent employment from all three firms and chose to join McCall, Parkhurst & Horton LLP as a public finance attorney.

After graduating from both Penn Law and WWS in 2003 with a Juris Doctor and a Master of Public Affairs respectively, Eric returned to Dallas and was admitted to the State Bar of Texas. After two years with McCall, Parkhurst & Horton LLP, he joined Haynes and Boone, LLP as an associate in the finance group. Eric left Haynes and Boone, LLP in 2007 to form The Law Office of Eric L. Johnson in order to dedicate even more time to community service. Since starting his own firm, Eric has dedicated approximately 50% of his time to community service.

Eric has served on the Board of Directors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas (the first Boys & Girls Club of Greater Dallas alumnus to ever do so) where he formed an alumni organization for local Boys & Girls Club alumni to support current Boys & Girls Club members and to provide Boys & Girls Club alumni with greater networking opportunities. He has also served on the Dallas County Historical Commission, where he started an initiative to increase the number of historical markers relating to ethnic minority groups in Dallas County and has been a volunteer with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of North Texas in their DISD in-school mentor program at North Dallas High School.

Eric currently serves on the boards of Educational Opportunities, Inc., an organization that provides scholarships to academically talented but economically disadvantaged DISD students, the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, which is responsible for operating “The Bridge” (the City of Dallas’ new homeless assistance center) and eradicating chronic homelessness in Dallas, the West Dallas Chamber of Commerce, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, which is owned and operated by the City of Dallas and provides all types of essential social services to low-income individuals. He is also an active volunteer with DISD, where serves as a mentor at Lincoln High School in South Dallas, a tutor and mentor at both C.F. Carr and Amelia Earhart Elementary Schools in West Dallas, and is a frequent speaker at TAKS “pep rallies”, career days, and general assemblies at DISD schools such as John B. Hood Middle School in Pleasant Grove and O.W. Holmes Middle School in Oak Cliff.

Eric has also been very active in Democratic politics at both the local, state, and federal levels. Eric has served as a Democratic precinct chair and has also been a financial supporter of the Dallas County Democratic Party, Dallas County Young Democrats, Texas Democratic Party, and Democratic National Committee for years. He and his wife, Nakita, launched Si Se Puede PAC in March 2008 in order to support progressive local and state candidates throughout Texas. Eric was also fortunate enough to be named an at-large delegate for President Barack Obama to the 2008 Texas Democratic State Convention in Austin, Texas in addition to being an Obama Precinct Captain during the 2008 Democratic primary election contest.

Eric was selected to participate in the Dallas Regional Chamber’s Leadership Dallas program in 2006, where he learned about the many complex issues facing Dallas and the North Texas region. He was named one of the “Five Outstanding Young Dallasites” by the Dallas Junior Chamber of Commerce in 2007 and was just named one of Dallas’ “40 Under 40” by the Dallas Furniture Bank earlier this year.

On September 8, 2007, Eric married the love of his life, Nakita Garraway of Plano, Texas, in a small ceremony at his godparents’ home in Dallas. Nakita works for Neiman Marcus at their headquarters in Downtown Dallas as an Assistant Buyer. They have lived in the Cedars neighborhood of Dallas since August 2007.

Since returning to Dallas in 2003, Eric has been involved in the following activities and organizations:

CURRENT MEMBERSHIPS AND AFFILIATIONS:

State Bar of Texas
United States District Court, Northern District of Texas
Dallas Bar Association
Dallas Association of Young Lawyers
J. L. Turner Legal Association
Texas Young Lawyers Association
Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, Board of Directors and 2009 MLK Birthday Celebration Steering Committee Chairperson (Appointed by Councilmember Angela Hunt)
Educational Opportunities, Inc., Board of Directors (Former Board Secretary)
Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, Board of Directors (Public Policy Committee and Nominating Committee)
Dallas County Democratic Party, Sustaining Member and Volunteer
Dallas County Young Democrats, Sustaining Member
Texas Democratic Party, Majority Builder
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc., Dallas Alumni Chapter
Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce
West Dallas Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors
Westmoreland Heights Community Center, Volunteer
Dallas Independent School District Youth Mentoring Initiative, Mentor (Lincoln High School)
TheDallasAssembly
Progressive Voters League – New Era
Si Se Puede Political Action Committee, Co-Founder and President
NAACP, Dallas Chapter
Harvard Club of Dallas (former Vice President of Programs)
Greenhill School Alumni Association
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas Alumni Association (Founder and Former Chairman)
Christian Transformation Forum – West Dallas, Volunteer (Economic Development and Legal Committees)

PAST MEMBERSHIPS AND AFFILIATIONS:

Leadership Dallas, Class of 2006
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Dallas, Board of Directors (Programs and Legal Committees)
Dallas County Historical Commission, Member and Founder/Chairperson of the Historical Marker Diversity Committee, 2005-2007 (Appointed by Commissioner John Wiley Price)
Democratic Precinct Chair, Precinct 3210
Host Committee, Barack Obama Dallas Luncheon (April 30, 2007, Adam’s Mark Hotel)
Host Committee, Barack Obama Dallas Reception (July 30, 2007, Gilley’s)
At-Large Delegate for President Barack Obama, 2008 Texas Democratic Party State Convention and Obama Precinct Captain

Goals:

I am running because I believe that I can bring about the change that the residents of District 100 have been yearning for since I was a child growing up in the district. Ever since I was a kid, District 100 has been one of the poorest districts in the State of Texas, with the lowest levels of per capita income, educational attainment, and all quality of life measures. I am fed up, as are my fellow District 100 residents, and intend to use my background in public policy and law to advocate forcefully in the Texas Legislature for the types of changes our district demands in the areas of public education, economic development, and public safety.

Issues:

1. Education Reform (e.g. reversing the disturbing trend of increasing high school dropout rates and decreasing college graduation rates in District 100).

2. Economic Development (e.g. bringing good paying jobs, including green jobs, to District 100, and making sure District 100 residents have the necessary education, skills, and training to fill them, as well as bringing more retail/commercial development and mixed income housing options to District 100).

3. Public Safety (e.g. reducing the number of violent and drug related crimes in District 100 by improving our public education system and thinking outside the box with respect to our criminal justice system so that ex-offenders are positioned for a successful re-entry into society, as opposed to being doomed to a cycle of poverty and/or recidivism).

Grassroots Support:

I attended the DFA campaign training hosted by Matt Blizek in Dallas, TX on March 15-16, 2008 and can say with 100% candor and certainty that I will be running a purely grassroots campaign in accordance with DFA principles. I have been in constant contact with Mr. Blizek since that training and he can attest to the fact that I am a true progressive who will run a TOP NOTCH grassroots campaign.

DFA Values:

I started a progressive PAC to help elect more progressives throughout the state of Texas back in March 2008 (go to www.sisepuedepac.com). I am a true progressive who believes that while government is not the answer to all of our problems as Americans, it can and should play a vital role in giving Americans the tools they need to maximize their potential, such as quality public schools, health care, safe neighborhoods, and a clean environment.

My own campaign is an example of my fiscal responsibility. I have raised an unprecedented amount of money from the grassroots and business communities in Dallas for majority-minority house district campaign ($65,000 in less than three weeks), but have spent far less than any of the incumbents from surrounding majority-minority districts even though they are running unopposed! I have been asked about my frugality, and I have already responded that "The way I handle my campaign's money is how I will handle the taxpayers' money." I stand by that statement.