User:Danryan25

Justin Sesek was born in Chicago, Illinois, on Monday, February 1, 1982 at Illinois Masonic Hospital in the north side district of Lakeview. He is of Slovenian, German, and French ancestry. During his time in Chicago he lived in the neighborhoods of Edgewater, Uptown, and West Rogers Park. He moved to Boise, Idaho, on March 13, 1994. He graduated from Boise Senior High School in 2000 and has worked for DIRECTV since 2001.

His father, Frank, was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1948, and lived there and the suburb of Lorain before moving to Chicago in 1972. His mother, Anne, was born in Florence, South Carolina in 1944. She traveled with her family for several years while her father was in the Air Force and lived several places, including Arcachon, France, until finally settling in the Chicago suburb of Elgin in the 1950's. His paternal grandfather was born in the Slovenian city of Kranj (at the time within the borders of Austria-Hungary) and emigrated to Cleveland in 1920 at the age of ten. His paternal grandmother was born in Cleveland in 1918, several years after her parents emigrated from the Slovenian town of Rogaska-Slatina. His maternal grandmother was born in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1918, the descendant of Germans who emigrated from the Rhineland in the 1700's. His paternal grandfather, Edward Flickinger, was born in Bordeaux, France in 1920 and arrived in the United States in 1924, setting in the Chicago suburb of Cicero.

His parents met on a blind date in 1979 and were married in Chicago in January 1980. He has two younger brothers, Colin (age 21), who is currently serving overseas in Iraq; and Evan (age 18), a recent high school graduate who will be enrolled at Boise State University in the fall of 2007. His extended family is spread out in Washington, Illinois, Idaho, and Ohio, with distant relatives in France (both in Paris and the Dordogne region of Aquitania).

Justin is a registered Democrat extremely knowledgeable in politics. Living with liberal parents in the Democratic stronghold of Chicago nurtured his political beliefs. He knows the way that every state has voted in every presidential election since 1984, along with its number of electoral votes, the names and parties of both its Senators, and which party is in the majority of its congressional delegation. He cast his first vote for Al Gore in 2000. He is supporting Illinois Senator Barack Obama for president in 2008. He donates money every month to the Human Rights Campaign and Environment Illinois. He supported the war in Afghanistan and opposed the war in Iraq from the onset. He is pro-choice although he opposes partial-birth abortion and believes it should be illegal unless it is to save the life of the mother. He supports capital punishment although he feels it is enforced in a way that harm minorities. He is generally liberal, the most notable exception being that he is slightly more conservative on gun control. The happiest moment of his political life was watching the defeat of Senator Rick Santorum to Bob Casey in the mid-term elections of 2006. He watches elections the way most Americans watch the Superbowl.

Among his biggest heroes are Coretta Scott King, who tirelessly fought for gay rights, saying on several occasions that during the Civil Rights Movement gays marched with her and her husband, even though they were more ostracized then African-Americans. He also has a lot of admiration for former Senator Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm when he jumped on a grenade in Vietnam to protect his fellow soldiers; Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky; his brother Colin who is serving with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq, despite his massive opposition to the war; Jennifer Aniston; former Senator Paul Wellstone; Rosa Parks, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, for his undying support of marriage equality; Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown; and Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel, who tirelessly fought as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 to recruit new candidates and can be credited with the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives.

His dream is to someday found a charitable organization to fight poverty in Chicago. The roots of this stem from an experience he had as a child. He lived in the mostly affluent north side of Chicago, a completely different world from the poverty-sticken south and west sides. When he was a child he attended a day care care in Chicago's Gold Coast, the richest neighborhood in the city. Four blocks away and across the El tracks sat Cabrini Green, a notorious public housing project that housed 20,000 people, most of whom were living in abject poverty surrounded by gang warfare and drugs, despite being only several blocks from both the Gold Coast and equally affluent Lincoln Park. Even though it was only a less than 1/8 mile away, it might as well have been in a different country. While other children played on the swing sets, he would stare at high rises of Cabrini Green, seeing the shattered windows, scars of arson on the sides of the buildings, and the complete urban decay, thinking how children should never have to reside in a place like that. When he was ten he read There Are No Children Here, a non-fiction account of two children growing up in another Chicago Public Housing Project, the Henry Horner Homes, and it quickly became his favorite book. Living on the north side of the city and seeing the poverty of Cabrini Green from his day care center (which was built into the ground floor of a luxury high rise) showed him how vastly different the two Chicagos were and how fortunate he was to have been born to two parents on the north side instead of a single mother on the south side.

His favorite movie of all time is Drop Dead Gorgeous, followed by Titanic, V for Vendetta, Mean Girls, and Day After Tomorrow. His favorite television show is Friends. His favorite song is Africa by Toto.

Justin loves to travel. He has been to 35 states and hopes to eventually visit all 50. On his list of cities he wants to see are Bangkok, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Cape Town, Boston, and New Orleans. He has been as far north as Vancouver, British Columbia; as far south as Houston, Texas; as far west as Newport, Oregon; and as far east as Kehl-am Rhein, Germany.

STATES JUSTIN HAS VISITED
ARIZONA: 1991, 2007

CALIFORNIA: 1996, 2006

COLORADO: 1982, 1994, 1999, 2005, 2006

CONNECTICUT: 1986

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: 1999

IDAHO: 1994-2007

ILLINOIS: 1982-1996, 1998-2000, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007

INDIANA: 1982-1994, 1999

IOWA: 1982, 1992, 1994

KANSAS: 1994

KENTUCKY: 1991-1993

MARYLAND: 1999

MASSACHUSETTS: 1999

MICHIGAN: 1983, 1988, 1992, 1997

MINNESOTA: 1994-1996, 1998

MISSOURI: 1993, 1994, 2000

MONTANA: 1994, 1995, 1998

NEBRASKA: 1982

NEVADA: 1996, 2000, 2003, 2005-2007

NEW JERSEY: 1986, 2005

NEW YORK: 1986, 1992, 2005

NORTH CAROLINA: 1993

NORTH DAKOTA: 1994-1996

OHIO: 1982-1994, 1999, 2003

OREGON: 1994, 1997, 1998-2000, 2007

PENNSYLVANIA: 1992

RHODE ISLAND: 1999

SOUTH DAKOTA: 1998

TENNESSEE: 1993

TEXAS: 2006

UTAH: 1994, 1998, 2000, 2005-2007

VIRGINIA: 1993, 1999

WASHINGTON: 1991, 1997, 1998 WEST VIRGINIA: 1990-1992

WISCONSIN: 1983, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1999

WYOMING: 1994, 1995, 1998

He has been to Mexico twice (1991 and 1996) as well as Canada in 1991, 1992, and 1994. In 1997, he traveled to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.