An Unconventional Path: JERRY DICKINSON ON SOCIAL JUSTICE, RACE, AND HIS CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN By Emily Anna Keith
When I first meet Jerry Dickinson, he is dressed in a sharp navy blue suit and waving to me from across a courtyard at the University of Pittsburgh campus in Oakland. “Albert said you’d be here,” he remarks, referring to his Congressional campaign manager as we walk passed 4groups of students to a shady table in the corner.
Dickinson is a professor of Constitutional Law at Pitt, and as of May 2019, a candidate for the Democratic nomination to represent Pennsylvania’s eighteenth congressional district, which encompasses an area stretching from McKees Rocks to Plum, from Bridgeville down to Forward Township and up to the Allegheny River, stopping just before Blawnox and Etna. His route to politics has been unconventional, he tells me as we settle into our seats. And it’s true: Dickinson’s has not been the expected path, in which a candidate typically begins by working for either a political party or one of its members, slowly moving up the chain, establishing connections until their opportunity to run for office emerges. Rather, Jerry Dickinson did not always envision himself campaigning for a governmental seat. In fact, there might have been a time when such an idea seemed a world away; particularly, he emphasizes, during his childhood. Dickinson’s youngest days were spent in the foster care system. Though he was adopted into a family, his
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