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Biography
- Don’s full name is Donald Lachlan Macleay 3rd. He was born in La Jolla, California on April 22nd, 1958 while his father was serving in the USMC at Camp Pendleton. Originally from Virginia, his father graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and served in the USMC in Asia. His mother attended the college of William and Mary and graduated from UCLA. Both parents had careers in business.
- Don left home before completing high school, and since, has had to work hard to get an education.
 He graduated from a machinist program in a Montreal trade school and followed that up with welding programs and CNC training. He got a GED in California and went on to graduate from Laney and then San Francisco State (Phi Beta Kappa)
Don believes in continuing adult education and still takes courses at Laney when possible. Most recently he took a course in Accounting.
- Don was a machinist for 19 years, most of that time as a member of the machinist union (IAM). He was a IAM shop steward at Caral Mfg. of Albany CA. In his youth he worked to organize fellow plastic manufacturing workers at Rehau Plastics into the CNTU (the CSN of Quebec, Canada). Don believes strongly that all who work have a right
 to organize and be represented by the union of their choice.
Don has spent over 24 years doing industrial work, 19 of them as a general machinist / millwright. He has worked in the USA, Canada, Nicaragua, Mexico, Italy, Germany and China. He has been a trade school teacher in Nicaragua and has taught English as a Second Language in China.
- He has two sons, aged 19 and 6, both born in Oakland.. The elder son attends UC Davis. The younger son attends Oakland public school. Both sons live with him half time and his concern for them and their future motivates his efforts in this mayoral race.
- Currently, Don owns and manages a small computer networking business in Oakland; East Bay Computer Services, Inc. He came to this occupation after a crippling industrial accident in a local machine shop left him unable to do the heavy lifting required of a machinist.
Don has lived in the Bay Area for twenty years,
fifteen of those years were in Oakland.
Character
- As a local citizen, Don is an activist who attends meetings, volunteers at his kid’s schools and puts up flyers in the park. He calls the police when necessary and takes time to make sure the area around his home is safe. He has been involved in progressive politics since he was a teen in his school and his union. Later he moved to Nicaragua and worked there for several years. Since living in Oakland for the past 20 years he has been a member and supporter of local progressive groups. He donates regularly to the KALW, KPFA and supports the San Francisco Mime Troupe along with more political groups like GreenPeace, the ACLU and Amnesty International.
- As a responsible local small business owner, Don has been managing a business in Oakland since 2000. Currently he has invested in an Oakland building for his business and home. He participates in the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. He has helped with the Oakland Small Business Symposium on most of the years it was produced. He does what he can to help with public safety in his work. He has twice hired workers who have been on parole. He has also provided internships to local kids.
- As an environmentalist, Don worked for small scale hydro and other environmentally sound development projects in Central America during the 1980’s. In the USA he has been a long time member of the Earth Island Institute, spending 5 years as a project director of one of the smaller Brower Fund projects. His background includes a deep understanding of watershed, aquifer, wastewater and reforestation issues. He also understands the technical side of recycling from his past as an industrial worker. He keeps informed on current environmental issues. When going to school in the 90’s he took the opportunity to expand his on-the-job environmental experience with solid book work on biology and geology studies to expand his environmental knowledge. Don is also an old school naturalist. Both his sons have grown up with walks in the redwoods and visits to tide pools as part of growing up. Spending time in natural surroundings is one of his regular activities.
- As a world citizen, Don has had the good fortune to live in several countries between 1975 and 1989. As a result he speaks Spanish and French quite well, along with passable German and Italian.
 Between study, personal relationships and a year in China he speaks and reads official Chinese (Mandarin in simplified characters) but only at a halting level he is embarrassed to use in public.
- In the course of living overseas he has become familiar with many of the government practices we talk about in the USA but do not use ourselves. He lived with single payer health insurance in Canada. He saw elections using Proportional Representation in Mexico, Nicaragua, Germany and Italy. He grew up with high quality regional mass transit in Montreal, saw it in Europe and Mexico and believes strongly in mass transit investment and designing walkable neighborhoods. Don brings to the table first hand experience of what other nations near us are doing and this international experience informs his proposals.
Photos from top down
Don at age 6 with parents and younger brother
Don’s trade school class photo
Shop Stewart credential issued to Don in Albany CA
Repairing a power pole in the 1980”s Don in red pants
The standard Tian An Men tourist photo with son while living in China in 1995
With son in Leon, Nicaragua in 1999 at revolutionary monument
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