Lynne Dodson, Candidate for Washington State House's 43rd District
Lynne has served as the President of the Seattle Community Colleges Federation of
Teachers, AFT 1789 and the chair of the AFT WA Community College Council for over 6
years. She was the co-chair of Washington State Jobs With Justice for five years.
After graduating from Inchelium High School on the Colville Reservation in Eastern
Washington in 1979, Lynne earned her Bachelor's degree and a Masters of Science in
Community Psychology from California State University, Long Beach. In 1995 she
received a Ph.D. in Social Welfare from the University of Washington. Her
educational experiences taught her how to turn compassion and a quest for justice
into smart policy.
In 1993, Lynne fulfilled her dream to become a community college teacher at Seattle
Central Community College. Starting out part-time, then as a full-time and tenured
professor, teaching remains her passion. Lynne began teaching at California State
University in Long Beach as a graduate student. She moved back to the Northwest to
receive her Ph.D and served as an adjunct professor at Western Washington University
in Seattle's Human Services Program.
As the president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1789, she has
advocated for preschool through higher education legislation in Olympia for the past
six years. As a graduate student in Long Beach, Lynne developed a program for the
city designed to reduce institutional racism in Job Training Partnership Act
Programs. On returning to Seattle, she worked her way through college by teaching
part-time and conducting evaluation research of a teen parent program in Everett.
Her dissertation was a policy analysis of welfare programs.
Lynne has been active in the social justice and peace movements for many years.
Through her leadership, her local union has participated in advocating not only for
public education, but also for human and civil rights, protecting the environment,
and workers' rights -- locally and globally. From advocating for health care for all
to equal pay for equal work, to shutting down the FTFF reactor and no high level
nuclear waste in Hanford, to an end to child labor, sweatshops, and global warming
to working for immigrant worker rights to improvements in prison education, to
marriage equality for all to a living wage campaign, to actively participating in
planning two of the largest peace rallies in state history -- Lynne has consistently
been in the forefront of the progressive movement in Seattle.
Lynne signed the America In Solidarity pledge in 2006.
http://lynnetowin.org
