Paul was born in Boston in 1947 and has lived all his life in the greater Boston area. For almost all of his adult life he has been an activist, writer, and speaker in various peace, union, prison reform, human rights, and social justice movements, particularly the United Farm Workers’ union drives, the Vietnam anti-war and solidarity movements, the movement to end apartheid in South Africa, the 1980’s Central American and Cambodian solidarity movements, the Haitian solidarity movement, and the Afghanistan and Iraqi anti-war movements. He is past editor of the Indochina Newsletter and is a member of the program staff of the Northeast Region of the American Friends’ Service Committee. In 2012 he was a coordinator of a Massachusetts statewide campaign to place the “Budget for All” public policy question on the ballot in 90 cities and towns across the state. The question called for a federal budget that reduced Pentagon spending and ended high income and corporate tax breaks in order to fund vital public programs like housing, food, social security, Medicare, etc. and to invest in jobs in renewable energy, manufacturing, and transportation. He continues as a coordinator of that project in addition to organizing opposition to U.S. war policies in the Middle East. He has been teaching social science courses at a number of colleges for 38 years. In the late 90’s, Paul helped organize a broad coalition for all day hearings to oppose the original sex offender registry and lifetime civil commitment legislation in Massachusetts, and in 2007 he was a founder of the original Reform Sex Offender Laws (RSOL). Paul was for many years chair of the NARSOL Board of Directors and has been actively involved over the past 2 years in organizing the Sex Offender Policy Reform Initiative (SOPRI) in the greater Boston area.
