As State Representative for the 37th Middlesex district, Danillo “Dan” Sena is the first Brazilian immigrant to be elected to a state legislature in America. Before his election, Dan served as Senator Jamie Eldridge’s District Director for 6 years, working to protect immigrant rights, ensure healthcare access, and make progress towards racial justice and climate justice. Now, Dan is continuing the fight on these issues and more in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Dan has already co-sponsored a number of bills to further important issues. In the House, Dan is also a member of the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus.
We must remove discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics. We live in dark times where hate crimes are happening in our district and on our school grounds. I will stand up and fight for equality for all at the State House to protect the marginalized and the vulnerable. Massachusetts has strong LGBTQ rights, but we must do more. I believe we need to invest more in the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD), so that more discrimination cases can be reviewed, more programing and curricula in our schools to reduce the rise in homophobic, racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic incidents. In addition, given the disturbing allegations of homophobia in our state prisons, I believe there needs to be more training efforts with the Department of Correction, to reduce attacks on LGBTQ prisoners.