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I am an educator. I’ve been teaching since 1999. That’s 20 years. I grew up in an immigrant home. My parents are both Mexican immigrants. I attended Cal State Long Beach. I have my undergraduate degree in criminal justice and my first master’s degree from Cal State Long Beach. I started my work actually, in the feminist movement right out of college. I took a job with the Long Beach Women’s Shelter, which is an organization that helps provide services for women and victims, women and children who have been victimized by domestic violence.

That work took me to Sacramento and also Washington, D.C., where we saw the passage of two very important laws that had a huge impact on me. The first is Megan’s Law, which is the law that requires sex offenders to register in their local police departments as registered sex offenders. And the second law was at the federal level, which is the Violence Against Women Act. The Violence Against Women Act provided tons of protections for women. In particular, women who had been victims of domestic violence. That left a huge impression on me at a very young age. And I realized that public policy was something I was interested in doing more of.

I left the Women’s Movement to work as a teacher in the City of Lynwood and taught history and also taught high school. During that time, we had a corruption scandal in the City of Lynwood, which called me to my service as a council member … During that time, we challenged a political machine that outspent us three to one. We ran a grassroots campaign. I got elected. During my time there, we instituted a number of reforms to open up government to the community and make our city more accountable.

We also built and designed five new parks. Built a senior citizen center, received about $9 million in federal funding for new street improvement projects. I currently teach in the community college system. I also serve on a special district called the Central Basin Municipal Water District where I represent almost half of the 33rd Senate District.

I am proud of the work that we have done there, improving our environment, including creating a Climate Action Plan to help reduce emissions in our district. I’m running for State Senate to work on some of the most important issues affecting our entire region, education, our K-14 system, healthcare and also our environment. Housing is also a huge issue in our entire region.

During my time as a council member, we worked to create more affordable housing units for moderate and low income families in the city. And that is yet another issue that I’m interested in working on in Sacramento.

Source: Introduction Statement, Women Rising: A Panel of Women in the Race to Lead SD 33,  Feb. 25.

Did not respond to our questionnaire and did not address the subject during public forums.

I was born and raised in the City of Compton, and every day I experienced some level of gun violence but also my family has had to deal with some level of abuse at the hands of law enforcement. I believe law enforcement officers should be held accountable for their actions [as], just as in any profession, you have bad apples. I strongly believe we need to hold folks accountable and I would definitely support legislation that would do that.

Source: On SB 1421, Beer & Politics: 33rd State Senate District Candidates Forum,  Feb. 27.

Proposition 13 needs to be looked at. I think that we need to revisit how we can reformulate that proposition to make it so that the funds that [are] being paid into are equitable for all of the folks that [are] paying into that. 

Source: The Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Candidates Forum for SD 33, March 13, 2019.

I believe housing is a human right. I have worked on this issue as a city councilmember and I will continue to work on this issue at the state level. 

Source: Beer & Politics: 33rd State Senate District Candidates Forum, Feb. 27.

Did not respond to our questionnaire and did not address the subject during public forums.

So while there have been some challenges with redevelopment agencies, I believe we can recreate them in a manner that creates more accountability for individuals that are involved in that process.

Source: On Affordable Housing and Repealing the Costa-Hawkins Act, Women Rising: A Panel of Women in the Race to Lead SD 33, Feb. 25. 

Did not respond to our questionnaire and did not address the subject during public forums.

Did not respond to our questionnaire and did not address the subject during public forums.

Did not respond to our questionnaire and did not address the subject during public forums.

[1] Militarily demobilized. Since WWII—which was both the death knell of European colonial empires as well as the starting shot of the American neocolonial era—Europe has had notoriously scant standing armies, and has been able to consistently slash government military spending domestically and as a percentage of their contributions to international diplomatic bodies such as the UN. This is because nowadays European nations very rarely find themselves in situations where they need to independently send their militaries abroad in order to secure trade routes, foreign resources, or privileges within markets overseas; the U.S. has been fulfilling that hard-power obligation for them for over half a century. The social results of Western Europe’s decreased militarization are striking, especially when contrasted with the U.S.: there is not a single country in Western Europe without universal healthcare, labor rights and welfare systems are strong, value is placed on corporate and financial regulation, environmental policy is lightyears ahead, and, not least of all, there is a robust governmental approach to curbing digital surveillance and reining in tech monopolies. Japan enjoys a similar arrangement with the U.S. in which it, too, is militarily demobilized yet is given full access to, and prominence in, the global economy. In the last decade there has been a reversing trend of remilitarization in some of these nations. That trend was hastened during the last four years as a result of Trump’s ultranationalist politics, but is likely to continue even after his departure in large part due to the growing bipolar geopolitical climate of competition between superpowers.

The “owner” bit of home-“owner” appears in scare quotes throughout the text for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Nothing signals trouble quite like consensus.

More on them later.

And, anyways, what exactly remains “obvious” in an era “post-truth”?

I take as my starting position that even the “obvious” must be won.

It’s like Lenin said, you know…

Whether directly, or through a chain of investments, or through the wider speculative market in real estate.

I use “banks” in this piece as a stand-in for several sources of income that derive partly through the mortgaging of property and/or investment in institutions that have the power to mortgage property.

That is just its “ideology.”

The Ricardian “law of rent” explains that any location with an advantage over another location, can accrue an economic value, called “rent,” to the owner.

This happens without the owner needing to pitch in to create the advantage.

If the owner does pitch in, then the value accrued from that advantage cannot be called “rent.”

“Rent,” in economic terms, is only, precisely, the value accrued from that portion of the advantage for which the owner is not responsible. That is what we mean when we say, “Rent is theft.”

This does not mean places with lower property taxes ipso facto have higher property prices—and that is because the property tax is only one of the contributing factors. You could have zero taxes on land in Antarctica, for instance, and it would still sell for $0. This is why the introduction to the analogy controls for such variables.

This is the logical conclusion of believing two premises:

(1) All humans have an equal right to the Earth.
(2) Vaginal birth is a lottery system

Prop 13 is rent control for home-“owners.” You can learn more about its history and impact here.

“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Act 4, Scene 5

This is why the lobbyists who spend the most money to support the mortgage interest deduction are bankers, mortgagers, and realtors.

Term

Definition