Jonathan Allen, a Boston University alumnus, ran a six-month campaign for the ninth district seat on the Boston City Council. However, in Tuesday’s preliminary election, Allen did not secure enough votes to proceed onto the next round of voting.
A 2019 graduate from the BU School of Law, Allen focused his campaign on community outreach, specifically honing in on community engagement and bridging knowledge gaps about politics, Allen said in an interview with The Daily Free Press prior to Tuesday’s election.
“I’m interested in finding ways to expand the amount of people in our community that find themselves or consider themselves as being [a part of the voting process] and therefore heard,” Allen said, “and who are willing to be engaged and participate in voting.”
As a candidate, Allen was one of two people of color out of the seven running for the position and would have been the only gay member of the city council.
Allen was also concerned with creating more affordable housing in the Allston-Brighton area, while encouraging small business development and widespread access to education, according to his campaign website.
In addition to his law experience, Allen has a ministerial background and spent his Texas childhood preaching in storefront churches, according to an interview in Bostonia. He received a master’s degree in political theology from Southern Methodist University.
Allen said he uses this pastoral experience to engage with the world around him.
“I have a ministerial background as a preacher,” Allen said. “So I’ve spent a lot of time in our communities and helping people get through some of the most challenging times of their lives.”
Throughout his time as a Boston University student, Allen expanded his reach into the community around him, starting organizations such as the Leadership Brainery with his current fiance Derrick Young Jr., all geared to empower people who wouldn’t normally get educational and political opportunities.
While explaining his motivations behind creating the Leadership Brainery, Allen explained that he and Young strove to answer the question: “Why aren’t there more people of color in these graduate professional programs?”
“And so out of this, we decided to develop the Leadership Brainery’s nonprofit model,” Allen said, “which is pipelined and more diverse.”
LAW Associate Dean Geraldine Muir wrote in an email that Allen was a very caring student.
“Allen became the kind of student who would simply ask how others were doing,” Muir wrote. “Offering to pray for classmates or their family during difficult times.”
Cecily Banks, director of the Corporate Counsel Externship Program in LAW, wrote in an email that Allen is very driven to take full advantage of his education.
“Jonathan Allen came into law school with a strong sense of purpose for his legal education and a strong sense of the leadership role he could play in serving others with a law degree,” Banks wrote. “Whether our conversations were focused on systemic societal and educational issues or, in class, on the strategic business aspects of drafting an acquisition agreement, Jonathan approached his education with an energy, creativity, diligence and insight unique to his life experiences and life passions.”
Allen hoped to use an election to the City Council to mark a turning point in the diversity of the Council.
“What makes me different out of all of the candidates in my race [is] other than me being an innovative thinker, I’m the youngest candidate in the race,” Allen said. “… out of the seven of us that are running in district nine, I am one of two people of color that is in the race.”
Furthermore, Allen hoped that his spot on the City Council would accurately reflect Massachusetts’ values, pointing out that the lack of open LGBT representation.
“In a city where we pride ourselves with being liberal,” Allen said, “being the first to legalize gay marriages and provide equality for people despite their sexual orientation, is a grave omission of representation that is necessary in the state.”
Allen wanted to not only bring representation to the City Council, but legal training as well. Using skills learned at LAW, Allen said he believed he would “bring a great deal of perspectives and training and skill set that’s necessary for truly connecting more people to the resources that are available to them.”
Allen said he took advantage of many BU resources, like the BUild Lab Student Innovation Center, which helped him create his first nonprofit in 2013. He said he hopes that current BU students will take advantage of the opportunities that they have.
“We need more people who are chasing their dreams and not taking no for an answer,” Allen said, “and who are being resourceful, using and leveraging the networks and the resources that they have access to.”
Jill Patel, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she likes when BU alumni make a difference after leaving the university.
“I think it’s really cool that someone from our school could be out there doing such big things,” Patel said, “and making big change in our local community.”
Allen said his candidacy was one part of the movement of young people that is underway and will solve the big problems of today.
“I believe that now more than ever, young people must say that ‘it is my time,’” Allen said. “We must embrace and be confident in our capacity to make change.”
