Who is Ayanna Pressley? – Biography

Ayanna Pressley is an American politician who is the member of the United States House of Representative’s and is also from Massachusetts 7th congressional district. John F. Kennedy also represented this district. She defeated Mike Capuano in the primary election and then she ran opposed in the  November 2018 primary election.

Pressley has also served as an at-large member of Boston City Council. Pressley was born in a family which resided From Chicago Illinois. Her mother Sandra Pressley worked in multiple kinds of jobs to get ends meet to support her family. She also worked as the community organizer for the Chicago Urban League which advocated for the rights of tenants.

Her father, on the other hand, had struggled with addiction throughout her daughter’s childhood. However, he became a professor at a local college but unfortunately, their marriage ended. Pressley attended the Francis W. Parker School. She became the cheerleader and did modeling and various activities in this prestigious private school.

She was voted the most likely to be mayor of Chicago while she was in her senior year of high school. She was also the Commencement speaker for her class. She was later transferred by her mother to Brooklyn where she began to work as an executive assistant. When she was elected to the Boston City Council her mother used to attend the public meetings on her behalf wearing a hat that said, Mama Pressley.

Before all these, she used to attend the College of General Studies at Boston University but it was short-lived when she decided to undertake a full-time job at the Boston Marriott Copley Place. She went there to support her mother because she lost her job. After that, she further took courses at Boston University Metropolitan College which is also known as MET. Pressley has not yet earned a college degree.

Ayanna Pressley Age

She was born as Ayanna Soyini Pressley on February 3, 1974, in Chicago, Illinois in the US. As of 2019, She is 45 years old.

Ayanna Pressley Height

She stands at a height of  1.67 m tall.

Ayanna Pressley Marriage | Husband | Family

Pressley is married to her husband Conan Harris who has a stepdaughter. She also confesses she survived the trauma of having gone through Sexual abuse as a child. She also was sexually abused before when she was still a student at Boston University. She adds that she and her stepdaughter are living a happy life together despite not being related.

Ayanna Pressley Career

After finally graduating from Boston University, Pressley decided to work as a district representative Joseph P. Kennedy II. The work involved assisting constituents with Social Security claims and working with senior citizens and people who have disabilities. She was then promoted to Kennedy’s Scheduler and also to working as Constituency director.

She later became the political director and senior aide for Senator Kerry in 2009. Her job as the political director for Senator John Kerry’s involved being responsible for managing his relationships with elected officials at the city. In November 2009 she became elected to the Boston City Council.

She was sworn in on January 4, 2010, where she was termed as the first woman of color to serve in the 100-year history of the Boston City Council. Pressley then formed the Committee on Healthy Women, Families and Communities in her first year as the City Councilor. Pressley then faced competitive re-election in the November 2011 elections but she finished first with 37000 votes.

She then announced in January 2018 her challenge to Michael Capuano who was the Incumbent US Representative in the 2018 Democratic primary nomination for the Massachusett’s 7th Congressional district. Her competitor Capuano received endorsements from civil rights veteran and US Representative John Lewis of Georgia.

US Representative Maxine Waters of California also endorsed him. Pressley was endorsed by The Boston Globe and the locals of the hotel workers and also the electrical worker unions. She campaigned as a Staunch progressive and proved that her voting record was almost identical to Capuano’s. It was official that she had defeated Capuano in September 2018 Democratic Primary elections.

She won by a margin of 59% to 41%. This came as a shock to her because she saw at the last poll Capuano had a significant lead 48% to 35%. She proceeded to become the first African-American woman to be elected to represent Massachusetts in Congress after the Republicans failed to raise a candidate to compete with her. She and Johana Hynes who was elected in Connecticut’s 5th congressional district are the first women of color to be elected to Congress From New England.

Ayanna Pressley Pictures

Ayanna Pressley Pictures

Ayanna Pressley  Speech

Ayanna Pressley Massachusetts Primary

During the Democratic primary election on September 4, 2018, she defeated Capuano in a margin of 59% to 41%. This victory came as a surprise to her since her opponent had the forefront lead during the last poll. It was alleged that 24 % of District 7 voters in the 2018 primary had not voted and they are the ones who caused her tremendous victory.

Ayanna Pressley For Congress | Office

Since she had won the Democratic party nominations for Congress, she was to run in the elections for Congress with a candidate from the Republican party. However, the Republicans failed to present a candidate thus making her the newly elected Representative for Massachusetts in Congress.

Ayanna Pressley Speech

After her victory, she gave a victorious speech on November 7, 2018. She was termed as the first Afro-American woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress. The following video illustrates all that she said in her victory speech.

 Ayanna Pressley Campaign

Pressley campaigned as a Staunch Progressive in which she promoted social reforms through governme3nt actions to improve the lot of the majority.

Ayanna Pressley Endorsements

Pressley was endorsed by The Boston Globe and the locals of the hotel workers and also the electrical worker unions. She was also endorsed by many local people in Massachusetts.

Ayanna Pressley District

She is the member of the US House of Representatives from Massachusett’s 7th congressional district. She sits in the congressional house as the representative of the 7th congressional district in Massachusetts.

Ayanna Pressley Capuano| Mike Capuano

Michael Capuano was the Incumbent United States Representative whom she challenged in the 2018 Democratic primary nomination. Pressley defeated him with a margin of 59% to 41%

Ayanna Pressley Results

She defeated Capuano with 59% votes while he had  41% of the votes.

Ayanna Pressley Boston City Council | City Council

In November 2009 she became elected to the Boston City Council. She was sworn in on January 4, 2010, where she was termed as the first woman of color to serve in the 100-year history of the Boston City Council. Pressley then formed the Committee on Healthy Women, Families and Communities in her first year as the City Councilor.

Ayanna Pressley Campaign Manager

There is no information about her campaign manager.

Ayanna Pressley Dsa

This is one of the organizations that endorsed her campaigns.

Ayanna Pressley Contact

Her contact is currently unavailable.

Ayanna Pressley Jobs

She is a politician by profession.

Ayanna Pressley Address

There is no current information about her address.

Ayanna Pressley Events

She doesn’t have any upcoming events.

Ayanna Pressley Ice

She is one of four House freshmen urging congressional negotiators not to increase spending in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of any congressional deal to bolster security and keep the government open.

Ayanna Pressley Equity Agenda

She released her housing section termed as Equity Agenda in a series of proposals aimed at reducing the persistent inequities that exist in the 7th District.

Ayanna Pressley Headquarters

The information about Her headquarters is not available at the moment.

Ayanna Pressley Democrat

She is the member of the Democratic party where she won the primary elections for the nomination of being the Representative of Congress for Massachusetts.

Ayanna Pressley Quotes

• Let me be abundantly clear: I am black, and I am a woman, and I embrace both of those facts.
• Making progress on longstanding challenges requires a different lens and a new approach.
• We must acknowledge that issues like systemic racism, economic inequality, and the achievement gap are the result of manmade policies.
• Our immigration system is fundamentally broken, and ICE’s role in supporting the existing system – including separating families seeking refuge in the United States and conducting indiscriminate deportation raids in our communities – is creating an atmosphere of toxic fear and mistrust in immigrant communities.
• I’m an only child, so I don’t come from a big family. But it has been my observation from friends who do come from big families that usually, when you have a family fight, on the back end you come out better and stronger for it.

Ayanna Pressley Net Worth

Her estimated net worth is $600,000 USD.

Ayanna Pressley Twitter

Tweets by AyannaPressley

Ayanna Pressley Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs6gtvaHko7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Ayanna Pressley News

For Ayanna Pressley, ‘Destroyer Of Glass Ceilings,’ D.C. Is Just Another ‘Gentle Battle’

On Wednesday afternoon, Ayanna Pressley sat at her usual place in the Boston City Council chambers. To her left, a black-and-white photo of her late mother faced her on the desk. Her family sat in the chamber, to her right.

And as she sat there, one by one, her fellow — and soon-to-be-former — city council colleagues, through tears, wished her good luck and farewell as she heads to Washington, D.C., to assume her newly elected position as the representative from the state’s 7th district.

Pressley had once made history as the city council’s first elected woman of color, in 2009, and she made history again in September when she defeated longtime Democratic incumbent Michael Capuano for the congressional seat. She will now be the first woman of color that Massachusetts has ever sent to Congress.

A member of her “squad,” Congressman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx, was also in the audience. Ocasio-Cortez had, a few months before Pressley, also ousted a longtime Democratic white man from his congressional seat.

City Councilor Lydia Edwards called Pressley a “great destroyer of glass ceilings” and said she’s “living and breathing and setting legacy,” crediting Pressley for leading the way for more women of color to join the city council like herself.

“Because of you, we are better, we are stronger, we are imagining people in positions that we had never thought they would be in before,” Edwards said to Pressley. “We watch you with admiration. We learn from you.”

Edwards recalled bumping into Pressley years ago when they were both neighborhood advocates.

“Never ever in my mind would I have thought I would have been one of your colleagues,” Edwards said.

“I did,” Pressley said with a smile and tears. “I knew.”

When it came time to address the chamber, she went to the lectern. She first thanked the interns, the custodians and the security guards.

“I can say with pride that every person I’ve served with, each resident I have come into contact with, has changed me and our city for the better,” she said.

Pressley recalled Avi Green, formerly with MassVOTE, encouraging her to run for the at-large city council seat. In fact, she said, Green predicted Pressley would be the first woman of color on the council.

“I laughed and summarily dismissed his prediction — or rather instruction, but eventually floated this crazy idea around to some close folks,” she said. “I percolated on the idea, I prayed, I attempted to meditate and still I arrived at an emphatic no.”

Instead, Pressley said she just continued to work for then-Sen. John Kerry and help women and young girls.

She gave out her cellphone number to girls in need and would get calls about girls kicked out of their homes. Girls in need of feminine hygiene. Girls just in need of advice. It was then, she said, she realized that black and brown girls were being ignored.

“What I was doing was simply not sustainable and not meeting the immediate needs or addressing the root causes of these girls’ problems and challenges,” she said. “I wanted to do something. I had to. I wanted to fight for girls, not be their voice, but to lift up their voices.”

City Councilor Michelle Wu praised Pressley for bringing the voices of those not heard to the foreground — immigrants, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and women.

“They’ve seen you in their community, in their homes, in their barbershops, when no one else has been there,” Wu said. “Because of you, they see themselves as part of government. They believe just that little bit more that they can make a difference … and that, more than anything else, is what this country needs right now.”

Pressley intends to go to Washington to champion Medicare for all and more gun control. She said she’s hoping for a position on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce or the House Judiciary Committee.

Pressley, calling herself a spiritual woman, said that every day, she revisits a particular affirmation from “The President’s Devotionals,” a collection of works that inspired President Obama, that speaks of “a gentle battle.”

“Every day, we awaken to a gentle battle and we must decide if we will go in the direction of worry; of weariness; and indifference or if we will go in the direction of joy; of peace; of equality,” she said paraphrasing. “As soldiers, in which direction will we march?”

Adopted from  WBUR.COM

Ayanna Pressley Interview