Tag: Dennis Shulman

In response to Garrett’s shameful vote to not override President Bush’s SCHIP veto, NJ-5’s Democratic challenger Dennis Shulman has called on the ideologue to get his priorities straight.

As Shulman points out, “We need to get our fiscal house in order, but our children don’t need to be the ones left behind by Garrett’s last minute scramble to clean up his fiscal mess.”

Even more troubling, but no less surprising, is the fact the Garret seems to not have bothered to even read the SCHIP legislation he so self-righteously condemned. Fortunately, Matthew Fretz did bother to read it and, point-by-point, systematically exposes the unbridgeable gap between Garrett’s words and that pesky little thing called reality.

In other news, Shulman’s campaign continues to gain momentum. Check out this recent article on the blind rabbi in the Jewish Standad. 

Here is Dennis Shulman’s story about living as a blind man in a sighted world.

It’s a moving and honest account of his struggle to not only live with but transcend his disability.

And it’s about how and why his disability is leading him to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009.

To learn more about Dennis, check out Shulman for Congress.

Before I answer this question, I would like to first thank all the commentators for their interest in my disability and their questions about the obstacles I have faced.

I lost my vision gradually throughout my childhood so that, while I could still read large print when I was ten or eleven, I could not when I was thirteen. Using a cane became necessary in my junior year of high school.

By the time I went to college (Brandeis) and grad school (Harvard) I was totally blind.
I started at Brandeis in 1968. These were the pre-personal computer dark ages. For all people, the personal computer has radically changed their lives; for blind folks, this change is downright revolutionary.

In college and grad school, virtually all my reading was done by sighted readers. Little of the material was in Braille or recorded. When working on my review of the literature for my doctoral dissertation, I broke my own personal record-35 hours a week of sighted readers for the entire summer to read absolutely everything I could find on my dissertation topic. And then there was typing. I did my writing on an electric typewriter. (Does anyone out there remember the electric typewriter?) Well the problem with typewriters for a blind person is that, if you get a phone call or otherwise get distracted, how do you figure out where you left off? And then there was the worst day of my academic life when I typed an entire chapter for a grant I was leading involving alternatives to institutionalization for developmentally disabled adults when I did not realize the typewriter ribbon had slipped. When my colleague told me that the twenty-five pages I had just given him were totally blank, I finally really understood what a bad day was.

And then God created the personal computer.

Part of the reason I am running for congress in NJ-5 involves my blindness. As you can imagine or know, it is not easy to be blind or otherwise disabled in a sighted or able-bodied world. But there is a great benefit to being blind. I learned what it really means to struggle. I learned how to respect all people who are struggling-with the limits of their bodies or the limits of their income or the limits of their parents’ income or the limits that society places on them because of their gender or choice of love partner or immigration status or race.

In my own case-a poor kid, totally blind, in Worcester, Mass-there was no way in the world that I could have gone to Brandeis and Harvard without a great deal of family and community and government support. No way! And this also figures into my politics. The money the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind invested in my education has been paid back many times over by the taxes I have paid over the past 31 years of my being a clinical psychologist and rabbi. So don’t talk to me about how cutting programs that truly help people who are struggling cuts taxes. To truly cut taxes and help people who are struggling with their circumstances or the accident of their birth we are going to have to be sensible about the investments in people that we make. And here I am–a proud and grateful beneficiary of a far-sighted government program that actually invested in people.

I am acutely aware that my election to congress is, of course, not just about me. In January 2009, when I am sworn in as a congressman from my district, I will proudly join a very small but (hopefully) growing list of individuals with disabilities–from Max Cleland of Georgia to Thomas Gore of Oklahoma–who have served their country in the U.S. Congress. I promise to take this responsibility to represent, not only my district, but also all people with disabilities with great humility and seriousness.

I’ve heard it said that the ideal political candidate is the individual who neither wants nor needs to hold public office. Instead, the ideal candidate is the individual who serves simply because he or she feels a civic and moral responsibility to do so.

This individual is Dennis Shulman, a Democrat running for New Jersey’s fifth congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives.

So, who exactly is this ideal candidate? As a longtime student in Dennis’s classes and congregant at his services, I believe I’m in a unique position to answer this question.

Let me begin with some background. First, Dennis is a Harvard-educated, internationally recognized clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. Second, Dennis is a revered and respected ordained rabbi in his New Jersey community. And, to put these facts in proper perspective, Dennis has been blind since childhood.

But this background information, as remarkable as it may be, fails to capture who this man really is. It does not convey Dennis’s fundamental decency, honesty, and integrity. It does not communicate the depth of his wisdom, compassion, and commitment. And it does not speak to the profoundly positive impact Dennis has had on my life, and upon the lives of countless others. Ultimately, mere biographical data is not enough-one must know Dennis to grasp what my words cannot express. 

While I’m only 30-years-old, I’ve lived and experienced enough to know with absolute certainty that human beings like Dennis Shulman are rare in this cynical and broken world of ours.

So, you might be wondering, why on earth would such a good man want to run for congress?

The answer is simple: His conscience dictates it. As a proud American who, in his words, feels “heartbroken and troubled by our recent direction as a nation,” Dennis feels obligated to take action. While writing checks, signing petitions, and attending political rallies is both important and necessary, Dennis feels compelled to do more. Certain in his belief that we as a nation can and must do better, Dennis is choosing to run for the United States House of Representatives. 

As someone who feels utterly disheartened by the corruption, cronyism, cynicism, and lies that are currently debasing and destroying our democracy, I have been waiting and searching, often in desperation, to find a politician that I can believe in and support without reservation. For me, Dennis Shulman is this candidate.

So, if you too are yearning for a candidate that you don’t have to support with one hand on the lever and one hand holding your nose, I tell you that Dennis Shulman is your man.

But don’t take my word for it.

Check Dennis out for yourself and read what others are saying about his unorthodox and inspiring exploratory campaign at Shulman for Congress