A Paean to Public Service

Marc Granowitter MPP 1991

In the same way that Americans learned last fall that one vote can make a difference, Marc Granowitter MPP 1991 has learned first-hand that one person can make a difference as well.

At the age of 34, Granowitter has already spent most of his working years in the public service arena, an example he wished more of his Kennedy School classmates would follow.

“For me it comes down to basic issues of social justice and working for impoverished folks,” said Granowitter, a legislative staffer for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D–CA). “My biggest concern is that KSG alums do not work to address structural factors and issues that create and reinforce problems for socially and economically disadvantaged people. Those issues to me are front and center as to what people should work on and how people should spend their time.”

Much of this desire to give back stems from Granowitter’s upbringing in Brooklyn Heights, a predominantly middle-class section of New York City. The son of an artist and a teacher, Granowitter said both his parents “were concerned about other people and that definitely had an impact.

“My supportive parents gave me the roots and wings I need, as well as the desire to ask ‘why?’ and to continue questioning authority,” he said, while also crediting his high school chums as key influences. “It was just the everyday people I was around who were caring and concerned. One of my best friends is a doctor in inner-city Baltimore who makes substantially less than he could elsewhere. Another friend works with autistic kids in Boston. Those are the kinds of roles my closest high school friends maintain.”

Following his stint at the Kennedy School, Granowitter’s own career path has been filled with challenging steps, including time at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, first as a legislative associate and later as director of field services, managing a grassroots network of 45 state coalitions. He counts, among his greatest personal accomplishments, directing a 22-state national field campaign to fund a HUD low-income housing preservation program that won $1 billion, thus extending the program three years and generating 30 GOP allies. In 1998, he became a lobbyist for People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy group founded in 1980 by television writer and director Norman Lear as a liberal response to Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. There he implemented PFAW’s policy agenda, legislative strategy, and field plan on civil rights, affirmative action, education, and choice issues.

In early 1999, Granowitter left his job lobbying the Hill to work on it for Congresswoman Pelosi.

“The elections had just taken place,” recalled Granowitter, “and it was firmly a Republican Congress. It seemed like a good time to shake things up…I’ve learned a tremendous amount, and it’s been rewarding to work on a range of issues: housing, urban development, health care, working to preserve affordable housing for impoverished residents around the country, and raising health and safety workplace standards.”

Recently Granowitter was gratified by his work on OSHA’s new ergonomics program standard, which will protect workers who suffer from repetitive motion illness. “We want to insure that the Department of Labor can uphold these standards,” he said, citing that the more than 600,000 people who suffer from these injuries each year will now receive time off and compensation from their employers. On the housing front, Granowitter finds himself working with former professor Bill Apgar, who left Harvard for HUD, and doesn’t rule out a future relationship again with his graduate alma mater, perhaps at the Hauser Center. “I would like to have one foot firmly in advocacy and one foot in the academy to promote organizing and advocacy strategies that are effective at promoting concrete, progressive social change,” he said. “I don’t seek out being in front of the scenes, but I would like to go back to school either in a learning mode or a teaching mode and complement that with ongoing advocacy work.”

Mary Tamer is a freelance editor and writer who lives in Boston.