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Guest Name
Kalyn Free
Kalyn Free
Guest Occupation
Running for DNC Vice Chair
Guest Biography

Kalyn Free is the Democratic story. She’s a Choctaw woman who grew
up on a farm, feeding cows and hauling hay on the Choctaw Nation
Reservation in Oklahoma. As a young girl, she rode a bus almost an
hour to school in a town of 600. She worked the graveyard shift at a
convenience store to put herself through college, showing up to class
smelling like the donuts she had spent the night making, who lived in
a trailer with no running water after graduating law school and studying
for the bar exam.


Her experiences taught her about the challenges working Americans
face – and the importance of showing up for every community, no matter
how small.


She became the youngest attorney ever hired at the Department of Justice,
spending nearly 11 years prosecuting corporations for polluting our air, land,
and water. She took that job owing more than $100,000 in student debt.
In 1998, she became the first Native American and first woman elected
DA in rural Southeastern Oklahoma, and after being an attorney in
public service for 13 years, finally paid off her student loans.
Kalyn served as lead counsel for six years for the Ponca Tribe, without
a salary, for one of the poorest tribes in America, against a foreign corporation for
polluting the air and land of the Ponca People. This case was the largest class action
ever certified in an environmental case in Indian Country. Kalyn worked with PACE/
USW members and credits the Union’s efforts with bringing justice to the Ponca
people and successfully settling the case in excess of eight figures.
Hers is a Democratic story. 

Hers is an American story. And this is why Kalyn has dedicated her life to fighting for the working class people of this country. And why she is running for DNC Vice Chair.