Rain Pryor Vane is a woman who wears many hats, including but not limited to, entertainer, director, speaker, activist, playwright, but her favorite roles come as a mother and wife. She is seeking to add another role to her impressive resume as a candidate seeking a seat in the 3rd District seat on the Baltimore City Council. Rain and her husband and daughter live in Baltimore in the childhood family home of her husband’s family.
Rain is the daughter of Richard Pryor and Shelley R. Bonus. Her late father, the famed comedian and actor was born and raised in Peoria, Illinois. Her mother Shelley is an astronomical historian, as well as a writer, performer, and speaker. She recently moved to be closer to Rain and her family.
Her parents instilled a strong work ethic in her, wanting her to know the value of earning her own money for her work. Her parents encouraged her to work part-time jobs starting at age 13. She states that her father gave her and her siblings etiquette classes as well, so they would be confident and comfortable in any setting.
She started her acting career at age 18 on the hit ABC show called Head of the Class in the 1980s, playing a character named Theola June “TJ” Jones for three years. Rain said her dad told her she had to get all of her auditions herself, wanting her to be even more self-reliant and make her own way to success in showbiz. She was nominated for the African American Literary Award in 2007 for her biography titled “Jokes My Father Never Taught Me, Life Love & Loss with Richard Pryor. She founded Baltimore Theater Works, which brought theater to underserved schools in Baltimore. She has been nominated for multiple awards for writing and directing, and is working on a new television series currently.
Rain’s daughter experienced bullying last school year in Baltimore, Maryland. The bullying developed over the year and began to turn into physical bullying of her daughter. She worked within the school system through all of the usual protocols, teachers, principals, and the school board, yet kept finding the situation becoming worse, and the bullying was not being dealt with at all. Rain and her daughter decided to go public with their story interviewing with the local news, which led to some changes finally being made at the end of the school year. Rain could see how many changes truly needed to be made, and this helped form her belief that she could use her voice to improve her community.
Rain believes in the concept that it truly takes a village to help her community, and felt using her voice to work for the benefit of others in her city would benefit her community. After discussing with her husband and daughter, she decided to run for city council against first-term Councilman Ryan Dorsey, and she filed to run as a Democrat in Baltimore in a primary election on April 28th, 2020. Rain has been a resident of Baltimore for 14 years and has some wonderful goals as part of her platform.
Public safety and connecting the public to the police in positive ways is one of her goals.
“My way of dealing with things is to face it in real time and be willing to have a conversation about whatever the issue is. I like to be open and real and have real dialogue and communication to make plans to move forward. People want us (citizens) to be quiet, and we can’t be quiet anymore. We have to use our voice and live our lives by helping others around us and being proud of who we are,” says Rain.
She wants to work to help grow the small businesses in her district to flourish by giving incentives. There are ghost stores, where once-thriving storefronts have been sitting empty for years. She wants to improve reliability with the public transportation, so people living paycheck to paycheck can get and keep their jobs. Rain also wants to prioritize the elders in her community by creating a Community Center that would provide care and activities for the elderly, hot meals and enrichment programs for all ages as well.
Rain is incredibly down to earth and has had many of the common struggles of many American families, including living paycheck to paycheck at different points in her past, making her very relatable. She is a very warm person and her authentic, heartfelt desire to help families living in her district was very clear. She is running a strong grassroots campaign.
“We have the ability to create the life we desire, if we know how to access and improve the resources to get us there,” states Rain.
Find more information about Peorian Richard Pryors daughter Rain Pryor Vane campaign on her websites, www.pryor4citycouncil.com
The Traveler Weekly 