BIOGRAPHY
excerpt from Official Campaign Site

Dennis Kucinich was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 8, 1946. He is the eldest of 7 children of Frank and Virginia Kucinich. He and his family lived in twenty-one places, including a couple of cars, by the time Kucinich was 17 years old. "I live each day with a grateful heart and a desire to be of service to humanity," he says. He first came to national prominence in 1977 when he was elected mayor of Cleveland at age 31; the youngest person ever elected to lead a major American city.

US Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat of Ohio, is a dynamic, visionary leader of the Progressive Caucus of the congressional Democrats who combines a powerful activism with a spiritual sense of the essential interconnectedness of all living things. His holistic worldview carries with it a passionate commitment to public service, peace, human rights, workers rights, and the environment. His advocacy of a Department of Peace seeks not only to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our society, but to make war archaic. His is a powerful, ethical voice for nuclear disarmament, preservation of the ABM treaty, banning weapons in outer space, and a halt to the development of a 'Star Wars' - type missile defense technology.

He has been recognized for his advocacy of human rights in Burma, Nigeria and East Timor. Together with the late Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass), he has led a concerted effort to close the School of the Americas, which has been an incubator of human rights violations in Central America. On the eve of the World Trade Organization's Seattle conference, Rep. Kucinich organized 114 Democrats to help convince President Clinton to seek human rights, workers rights and environmental quality principles as preconditions in all US trade agreements. Kucinich marched with workers through the streets of Seattle protesting the WTO's policies and with students through the streets of Washington, DC, challenging the structural readjustment policies of the IMF.

GANDHI PEACE AWARD RECIPIENT

Dennis Kucinich is the 2003 recipient of the Gandhi Peace Award. Past recipients include Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Day, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg and Dr. Helen Caldicott.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAITH AND POLITICAL LIFE

Q. What role, Mr. Kucinich, has your faith played in your political life?
A. I don't separate political from personal. It's all one common experience and faith is everything, I mean, faith is what enables me to get up in the morning. It's what propels me through the day. It's said that if you have the faith of the size of a mustard seed that you can move mountains. I have seen that in my own life. Read more at The Interfaith Alliance