Paul Giorgio: John Binienda - Strictly Old School

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Paul Giorgio, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Representative John Binienda was laid to rest yesterday in a tribute to a man who served Worcester in the House of Representatives in Boston for 28 years. They were all there to pay tribute. His fellow members of the House led by Speaker DeLeo. They came from all corners of the Commonwealth to honor the Dean of the Central Massachusetts Delegation. There was even an honor guard of police as his coffin was carried from the church.

But the people that John Binienda would have been happiest to see were those people from Main South and Leicester who he served for almost three decades.

John was a throwback in some ways. He really believed that the job of State Representative was to help people-his people-the working stiffs of Main South who occasionally needed help from government.

Unfortunately, there are far too few John Binienda’s left. Not because people don’t want to help people. It is because we have made it harder to help those who need help with government. Today, if you make a phone call or write a letter for someone you might end up in jail.

The Role of Government

The role of government is to help people and John Binienda understood this. He wasn’t the most eloquent member of the House or even the smartest, but he was street smart and knew how to talk to people. He never talked down to his constituents-he looked up to them because he knew that they were the ones who gave him his job.

John was a teacher in Leicester before he was a State Representative and he never stopped teaching. He came from humble roots and never forgot that and never forgot the people of his district and of Worcester.

John wasn’t a big picture guy; it was the little things he concentrated on. Helping a constituent with a social security problem or getting someone into public housing.

John was a foe of the Bottle Bill because it hurt one of the largest employers in Worcester-Polar. A great many of the people who lived in John’s district worked there and he didn’t want to see them lose their jobs.

John was a strong advocate for the sales tax holiday and a moving force in its passage not because he was an expert on tax policy, but because he knew that it would help the former O’Coin’s Furniture on Mill Street and help the small people who needed to save a few dollars.

We never agreed on an issue

As I write this, I can’t think of one issue that John and I agreed on. He was an unabashed social conservative and I consider myself a progressive. But I also can’t remember one argument that we had that lasted. John had the unique ability to disagree without being disagreeable. That is what is lost in politics today. Too many of us disagree and are disagreeable.

Maybe we all need to relearn these lessons, disagree without being disagreeable. Remember who elected you. While some may think that the role of government is to pass massive pieces of legislation like healthcare reform others believe that the role of government is to help the voiceless and the powerless.

The big guys can hire lobbyists to do their bidding, but the poor and disenfranchised have to rely on the John Biniendas of the country to help them.

I can think of no more fitting an epitaph for John Binienda than: He was a lobbyist for the working stiffs of Worcester.

He will be missed.

Paul Giorgio is a longtime Democratic Party Activist who has worked on numerous campaigns. He was a Lead Advance Person for President Clinton & Vice President Gore. He was Deputy Director of Special Events for President Clinton’s first Inauguration. He has been elected a delegate to numerous Democratic National Conventions and recently served as one of President Obama’s representatives on the Platform Committee. In 2013 he was chosen as a Presidential Elector. He is the President of Pagio, Inc., publishers of Pulse Magazine, Vitality Magazine and Worcester Medicine.