As your BART Director, I am committed to representing our communities in District 7, fighting for your needs and values. My priorities include pushing the BART to support progressive public safety reform, financial sustainability, environmental justice, and a community hub policy for all of our stations. BART is not just a transit system, it is a vehicle for economic mobility for our working-class families that depend on it to get around. It is freedom from car dependency. To realize BART's full potential we will need to think creatively of approaching our policies with more than trains in mind.

A son of 2 Mexican immigrants, I was born in Oakland, raised in Fruitvale, and incarcerated from the ages 17-25, costing me the formative years of my life. Those years helped me recognize that my experiences were not unique; but were direct results of decades of discrimination, community divestment, and political disenfranchisement. During my incarceration, I came to appreciate civic engagement. I saw changes in legislation that provided second opportunities for people like me and began to recognize that I could deconstruct systems of marginalization. Even more, I understood that I could personally inform these very systems. This realization came when I didn't have the right to vote. However, I knew even if I could not vote, I could bring in people like me by encouraging and educating those in my community to engage in the critical exercise of power by voting.

My decision to take my civic engagement to the next level is rooted in my experience of being released from prison. I worked part-time as a supervisor at UPS first at the Richmond hub and then in Oakland. I went through two cars that seemed to break down every month. With my small paychecks, I paid for transportation costs and helped my family. By the end of the month, there wasn't much left over. Having lived with up to five family members in a one-bedroom apartment that my family could only afford because of rent control, I know how difficult it is for too many people. 

Through my journey in public policy around infrastructure, transportation, and housing, I've learned how liberating a good transit system can be for working-class people because when they don't have to spend most of their money on a car they can invest those savings into their families. I’m running because I am passionate about transit and I’m jumping into this race because our transit agencies are at risk of going under.  I’ve seen how transportation options, or lack of them can impact a person’s quality of life. 

I want to fight for a safer, affordable, and equitable transit system.