Voters in State Meeting District 57 have a alternative between two Democrats within the Nov. 5 election who’re operating to exchange termed-out Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer.
This district, which incorporates a big portion of South Los Angeles, the unincorporated neighborhood of Florence-Graham, USC and far of downtown, from Crypto.com Enviornment and the Los Angeles Conference Middle to Skid Row, wants a consultant who shall be an efficient advocate for constituents on quite a lot of points, from the housing and homelessness disaster to felony justice reform and local weather change.
Of the 2 candidates, Sade Elhawary, a neighborhood activist and educator, affords the clearest and most bold imaginative and prescient for uniting the district’s communities and bettering the on a regular basis lives of individuals fighting California’s excessive price of dwelling, homelessness, crime and different urgent challenges.
Her expertise working with younger folks as a highschool historical past instructor, faculty counselor and foster dad or mum will give her worthwhile insights as a legislator, as will her work expertise growing social justice curriculum for college students, main fundraising and neighborhood organizing efforts and coaching and mentoring younger activists.
Elhawary, whose mom immigrated from Guatemala and father from Egypt, additionally exhibits the best promise for uniting the Black and Latino residents in a traditionally Black district that’s now 71% Latino and 17% Black.
Elhawary would even be a powerful advocate for humane and sensible efforts to sort out homelessness, reminiscent of strengthening tenant protections to stop eviction and constructing extra reasonably priced housing and reducing purple tape that slows development. She helps felony justice reform and needs to handle over-policing by specializing in prevention-based packages to scale back crime and gun violence. She helps necessary environmental justice efforts reminiscent of phasing out oil drilling, cleansing up deserted wells and switching to renewable vitality and zero-emission automobiles.
Elhawary could not have held elective workplace earlier than, however she has expertise that exhibits she will be able to get issues carried out. For instance, as a youth organizer she helped convey a neighborhood wellness clinic and neighborhood backyard to Fremont Excessive College.
She has been attacked for rising up exterior of the district. It’s a ridiculous criticism as a result of she was born in Los Angeles and grew up close to Dodger Stadium. Her household moved to Altadena when she was in highschool, however as an grownup she has lived and labored for years within the district in South L.A., advocating for its social and financial enchancment and constructing solidarity between the Black and Latino communities. We predict that have is extra worthwhile than the place she spent her childhood.
She acknowledges the necessity to stability her progressive beliefs with powerful realities, reminiscent of a large state funds deficit, by making considerate selections that don’t needlessly intestine important security internet packages, an method she says is knowledgeable by considered one of her mentors, Mayor Karen Bass, who has endorsed her. Elhawary has labored for the Neighborhood Coalition, the South L.A. nonprofit based by Bass, and for the mayor’s 2022 election marketing campaign.
Elhawary has additionally been endorsed by an extended checklist of outstanding lawmakers reminiscent of U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler and County Supervisors Hilda Solis and Holly Mitchell, and a wide selection of labor unions and organizations reminiscent of Plentiful Housing LA and Equality California.
The opposite candidate is Efren Martinez, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and small enterprise proprietor from Florence-Firestone who has led the native Chamber of Commerce and is operating a marketing campaign centered on financial growth and public security.
He beforehand ran towards Jones-Sawyer in 2020 with assist from the correctional officers union and different legislation enforcement teams, and is backed by police unions, the oil, fuel and tobacco industries and different huge enterprise pursuits.
A few of Martinez’s views are in alignment along with his monetary backers. He downplays the impacts of neighborhood oil drilling and his important suggestion for addressing public security is placing extra cops on the road. However he offered various troublingly imprecise solutions about what he’d do as soon as in workplace. He instructed the editorial board, for instance, that he needs to extend training funding, however wouldn’t say how he’d do it, as a result of it might be “irresponsible” for him to offer a plan till he’s elected. And his marketing campaign has at occasions stoked division in a neighborhood with a historical past of fraught Black-Latino relations.
That’s not what this district, which contends with a few of L.A.’s most urgent challenges, wants.
It wants a consultant who isn’t afraid to share her coverage plans and one whose platform seeks to unite, moderately than divide. That’s Elhawary, and voters ought to solid their ballots for her.
