Bio

Mel Packer is a physician assistant (PA-C) working in the emergency department of a Pittsburgh area hospital. He lives in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Except for the few years he worked in Baltimore, Pittsburgh has been his home since about 1965. He is married, has two adult children who are graduates of city public schools and was the chair of his children’s PTSO in elementary school. He is firmly rooted in his community and remains committed to building strong neighborhoods as a way to develop local democratic control.

Mel has a 40-year history of social, political, labor, and community activism. He did local and long distant truck driving while a member of Pittsburgh Teamster Locals 249 and 800, and was instrumental in the national leadership that founded Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU.) In the mid eighties, as heavy industry collapsed in Pittsburgh, Mel went to Community College of Allegheny County to retrain as a nuclear medicine technologist. In 1995, he finished a program at Essex Community College in Baltimore where he obtained his training as a physician assistant.

More recently, Mel was on the Board of the Thomas Merton Center, the 38 year old Pittsburgh area peace and justice center. He served as Board President in 2008.

Mel brings a wealth of experience through years of political and social activism spanning the civil rights and Vietnam war eras to the current activities of the Thomas Merton Center anti-war committee and the recent protests around the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. In addition, he has been a frequent speaker at the rallies and events organized to protest the closing of Braddock Hospital by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Mel has and continues to be a principled and strong critic of our government's current economic, military, social, and environmental policies, not only nationally, but locally and regionally. He offers sound alternatives through his position papers posted on this website.