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St. Louis, MO

I became drawn into politics during my junior year abroad in London, basically because everybody kept asking me what I thought of President Bush and the Iraq war, so I figured I'd better figure out where I stood. I started reading a lot about the war, and U.S. foreign policy in general, and found it did not represent my values in many ways. I was proud that our pope was speaking out so boldly against the war. In early 2004, I started catholicsfordean.com primarily to promote awareness of Catholic teaching on war and global solidarity and support my favored candidate. This led me to learn a lot more about Catholic social teaching, and I think the vision and clear moral principles it provides are just inspiring.

The comments other devoted Catholics left on that website, particularly those strongly opposed to Dean for his extreme position against all abortion restrictions, taught me in a new way the importance of listening to others and gave me an acute awareness of the tragedy of having to choose the "lesser of two evils" in an election. I would not again support a candidate like Howard Dean as wholeheartedly as I did, and I'm not sure where my next vote will go. In any case, I'm committed to finding ways to support candidates that more fully represent my Catholic values, and that's what CFD is for me.

I worked last year as a Good Shepherd Volunteer in Catholic political advocacy (gsadvocacy.org) and service (some.org). I'm currently an economics ph.d. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I'm an active member of St. Paul's University Catholic Center.