Meet Willie

Willie Burnley Jr is a writer, renter, and community organizer currently serving as Somerville City Councilor At-Large. After several years organizing on the frontlines of social justice movements, in 2017, Willie was displaced from Somerville when his landlord suddenly raised his rent by hundreds of dollars. In 2021, he was elected on a transformative platform to put community control back in the hands of residents, to create holistic and equitable public safety, and to end the terror of housing instability and displacement.

In his short time on the council, Willie has passed more laws than any of his colleagues and in doing so has expanded rights for tenants and workers, increased protections for LGBTQ+ folks, and passed first-in-the nation non-discrimination ordinances. At the same time, he has remained a consistent and vocal voice for transforming public safety by uplifting the calls to end overdose deaths in our community through Supervised Consumption Sites, abolishing medical debt using City funds, and creating unarmed alternative emergency response programs to deal with non-violent issues to replace harm with healing.

Willie learned the values of solidarity growing up in sunny San Diego where he was blessed to experience the beauty and struggle of an incredibly diverse, working class community, in which he lived with his father who was a unionized pipefitter and former Marine. He moved to Boston to attend Emerson College and became the first person in his family to graduate with a four-year degree. Since then, Willie has (among other impressive feats) organized against evictions with CAAS, fought for permanently affordable housing with the Somerville Community Land Trust, worked on the re-election campaigns of both Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, been a union steward, founded Defund SPD alongside his neighbors, stood with unions locally, and fought for justice internationally.

Willie Burnley Jr is running for re-election to put the needs of community over the interests of corporate rule because he believes the only way that we can create a stronger, safer, and more sustainable Somerville is together.