Andrea Pauliuc, Organizer with MarchOnHarrisburg, Receives Haverford’s Third Annual MLK Award

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pauliuc led a screen printing workshop in Zubrow Commons.
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Pauliuc was nominated by Lauren Johnson ’26 for demonstrating what “young people can do when they refuse to stand by an unjust system.”
On Friday, Jan. 24, Andrea Pauliuc received Haverford’s third annual MLK Youth Leadership, Creative Maladjustment and Social Change Award. The award recognizes inspiring leaders age 30 and younger who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing peace, justice, inclusion, or sustainability in a manner that reflects Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s enduring call for resistance to injustice.
Pauliuc is the internal organizer for MarchOnHarrisburg, a nonpartisan grassroots organization that fights corruption in Pennsylvania through legislative reform. Lauren Johnson ’26, a Philadelphia Justice and Equity fellow who has served as Haverford’s first intern with Pauliuc’s organization, nominated her.
“Andrea’s accomplishments and contributions to Pennsylvania make her a shining example of what young people can do when they refuse to stand by an unjust system and decide to act in Dr. King’s legacy of nonviolent, intersectional organizing for justice,” Johnson noted in her nomination materials.
For nearly a decade, MarchOnHarrisburg has been dedicated to eliminating “big money” in Pennsylvania’s government, which, Pauliuc notes, is among the “most corrupt in an already very corrupt country when it comes to money and politics.” To support that claim, she points to well-publicized incidents like the Pittsburgh Symphony’s $15,000 expenditure to bring two Pennsylvania lawmakers and their spouses on its nine-city European tour in 2022 and the seemingly endless stream of gifts and tickets that wind up on the desks of state senators and representatives each year.
“In Pennsylvania, it's completely legal for lobbyists and people with a lot of money to bribe our lawmakers through things like trips to Europe,” she says. “There are so many gifts — sports tickets, concert tickets, wining and dining — that are really indicative of the culture of corruption in Harrisburg.”
MarchOnHarrisburg, which has its roots in the progressive Democracy Spring movement, has rallied around a slew of legislative efforts and nonviolent action aimed at galvanizing residents across the commonwealth, including a three-day march from Lancaster to Harrisburg last September that gained the attention of the Australian Broadcasting Company.
However, its most tangible legislative efforts are its advocacy around two significant bills: one banning gifts (House Bill 484) and another eliminating campaign spending by corporations with substantial foreign ownership (House Bill 2433). Through Pauliuc and MarchOnHarrisburg’s efforts, the latter was passed by the Pennsylvania House last year before stalling in the Senate.
“It's not having the votes that's the issue; it's about getting the votes to actually happen since that power is vested within six legislative leaders,” Pauliuc says. “These are the people who have the least interest in passing bills that would limit their power. It was a really big win for us to have that kind of movement and pressure to push it through the full house.”
Pauliuc says she was called to action in 2008, when, as the rest of the country was reeling during the Great Recession, her family life and financial circumstances shifted significantly. She went from a two-parent household to living with her mother, who immigrated from Romania, and, Pauliuc says, was thrust into a new and confusing system. “I watched her drown in paperwork. It was death by a thousand paper cuts as we were denied services that we really needed,” Pauliuc recalls. “That laid the foundation for wanting to organize for justice and organize so people have all of the things that they need and deserve.”
After receiving her award on Friday, Pauliuc moderated a panel discussion in Lutnick Library with March OnHarrisburg’s co-founder, Rabbi Michael Pollack; Desi Burnette, a statewide organizer for Movement Immigrant Leaders of PA; Nick Marcil, organizer and activist at PA Debt Collective; and Arly Henninger-Voss, Legislative Associate for UUJusticePA. She also visited campus on Martin Luther King Day to lead a screen printing workshop during which members of the Haverford community printed messages like “Ban Bribes Now” and “Solidarity Forever” on T-shirts and tote bags.
“It’s very humbling to receive something like this,” Pauliuc says of the award. “But, more deeply, it makes me feel hopeful that getting money out of politics and the importance of that movement is being recognized. It's at the center of all the other issues we're fighting.”