Who I am

I know my story sets me apart. What I have accomplished and gone through in my life gives me a unique understanding of the challenges facing everyday Bostonians. Everyone’s story is different, but we all know what it is like to struggle with unexpected hurdles, battle through adversity, and with a little luck and a lot of determination conquer our fears and doubts.

I come from a hardy Dorchester stock with a strong tradition of activism. My grandfather Richard Murphy organized the various neighborhood groups under one umbrella, the Dorchester United Neighborhood Association, to turn a former landfill into a park and community buildings - today, the Richard J. Murphy school and adjacent sports fields and playgrounds. A testament to getting results when we work together. My mom and Auntie Kay started the first Teen Center in the City of Boston right there in the gym. And Papa Murphy led the founding Redberry Credit Union, which made very small, very-low interest loans (“micro-loans”) to working people in the City.

After high school, I enrolled at UMass Boston in the College of Management. When I was 19, I had my first son, Brian. I picked up more waitressing shifts and dropped my course load to juggle my new responsibilities. As a teenage mother I was scared and knew that I needed to stay in school to make a good life for my small family. By the time I graduated in 1999, eleven years after starting, my daughter Maisie was one, I was pregnant with Michael, my youngest, and had buried my son Colin. My twenties were a struggle to say the least but I persevered and did what was necessary to become a Boston Public School teacher.

A lot of folks would have thrown in the towel on higher education at that point, but I was determined to push forward. I never gave up and I earned my degree in Business, History and Elementary Education. Later, I earned my M.A.ED. from Fitchburg State University. I just finished paying off my student loans a few years ago, at the age of 50, so I know a thing or two about how the system needs to change.

As a teacher in the Boston Public Schools for over twenty years, I became even more familiar with the barriers families have to deal with on a daily basis: educational challenges, economic setbacks, substance use disorder and recovery. At the age of 45 I started running marathons (and, trust me, when I first started out, NO ONE would have thought I could run a marathon, not even me) to raise awareness and sorely needed funding for substance use disorder and mental health recovery services in Boston. To date, after running three Boston Marathons, I have raised more than $60,000 for the Gavin Foundation.

When I tell my story to people I meet across all of Boston’s neighborhoods, I get not just a universally positive reaction, but the sense that people can RELATE to it. Everyone’s path is different, but each time I talk to people at their homes, at a coffee shop, on the soccer field, or at community meetings I attend several times a week, I meet a lot more people whose story sounds like mine.

All this matters because, as your At-Large City Councilor I understand your issues, I am already familiar with your struggles, and I am confident I can help. I know how to make city government work for you and your families, in every neighborhood across this city.

Please vote for me so I can continue to work for you!

Erin