Victor Flores For BART District 7

Victor was born in Oakland and raised in Fruitvale. Growing up his parents would work two or three jobs at a time to pay the bills. He never did any extracurriculars or after-school programs but found belonging in the streets where he began to get in trouble. This led to his arrest at the age of 17 where he was charged as an adult and received an 8-year prison sentence. 

While in prison, Victor continued to get in trouble. As a teenager, looking at eight years he felt his whole life was gone. Finding himself hopeless, he wasn’t sure he would ever be free again let alone have a normal life if he ever made it out.  With the support of his family and mentors, Victor took the initiative to become a Men’s Advisory Council representative, a liaison between the prisoners and corrections officers. In that position, he learned to advocate for the incarcerated community and what it meant to serve a diverse population while being provided with few resources. During his sentence, he completed his GED and started community college courses.

In 2017 Victor was paroled to Oakland and began to work at UPS where he was immediately hired as a supervisor due to the lack of applicants. Shortly after he began to volunteer for Catholic Charities of the East Bay as a legal intern for their Immigration Legal Service Team. Three months later he enrolled at the Peralta Community College District to continue his pursuit of an A.A. degree and transfer to a university.

While at Catholic Charities of the East Bay, he began taking and writing declarations from youths who came to the US as unaccompanied minors. These children were fleeing from violence in their home countries. Victor was able to connect with these youths who had also experienced trauma from violence during their developing years, as he did, growing up in East Oakland.

Victor moved on from volunteering at Catholic Charities of the East Bay to begin working at City Councilmember Abel Guillen’s office as a constituent liaison while continuing his education. While there he began to learn how the different levels of government operated and impacted the communities he worked in. He also led the Councilmember’s project to improve the San Antonio Park and Immigration Know Your Rights Workshop at Garfield Elementary School in partnership with Catholic Charities. It was here staffing the Public Works Committee that he learned about the intersection of urban planning, environmentalism, zoning, and inequity that could be changed through policy decisions.

In 2019, Victor was hired by freshman Council Member Loren Taylor to work in the District 6 office where he has continued to work as a constituent liaison assigned to four flatland neighborhoods and the Public Works Committee. Within this East Oakland district, he worked with some of the most underinvested areas with passionate and resilient neighbors who love their community and fight every day to make it better than the day before.

During the 2020 election cycle, Victor worked on multiple electoral campaigns including two county-wide measures to fund children’s health and childcare services as well as homeless services. During the pandemic, Victor supported the Oakland Latino Chamber of Commerce conducting outreach to small businesses in the Latino community. 

Victor currently works as an East Bay Resilience Manager at Greenbelt Alliance where he advocates for climate resilience policies, preserving open space, and more housing near transit and jobs. Through his work, he collaborates with various Bay Area communities to ensure communities adapt to sea level rise and wildfire while reducing Green House Gas Emissions.

In addition to his work in public service, he has served on various boards such as the Alameda County Community Corrections Partnership Community Advisory Board, Neighborhood Opportunity & Accountability Board, Latino Task Force, Oakland Latino Chamber of Commerce, Latino Young Democrats of the East Bay, East Bay Young Democrats, and Calfornia Young Democrats Latine Caucus.

In 2022, Victor completed his B.A. in Chicanx Latinx Studies.