HIGH RECOMMENDATION: Joaquin Vazquez - California CD53 - U.S. Congress

Joaquin Vazquez - California CD53 - U.S. Congress

Growing up in a large low-income household was tough, and my father worked hard to provide for us. Money was tight and we moved often as rents increased, from Golden Hill to Sherman Heights and finally to City Heights. When I was 10, my father was arrested and deported. While he was being held, and his immigration case was being figured out, my mother struggled to find a job and we lost our apartment. We spent several months living with relatives and friends, from one garage or living room to another. When I was 10, some of my brothers and I even ended up at a children’s temporary emergency shelter as my mother could not provide care. When we were returned, we moved to central Mexico where my brothers and I worked selling bread with a basket over our heads for two months before reuniting with my father in Tijuana. I learned at a young age the true meaning of work and that, in order to make it, I needed to prove myself to get another day of work and help at home.

I returned to San Diego at age 15 to work, rent a room, and attend Crawford High. This is where I first got interested in politics after seeing how the funding and resources my school lacked were determined by a zip code. I went from wanting to be a civil engineer to build bridges, to wanting to fix our broken public education system and build different kinds of bridges. At 18 I enrolled at San Diego City College to study political science and became a social justice activist and community organizer to advocate for progressive issues. At age 20, I moved to a studio and assumed full custody and responsibility of my two youngest siblings for them to go to high school, while I held two jobs and studied full time.

Despite all odds, I got ahead, and once my brothers finished high school, I transferred and got my political science bachelor’s degree from UC Davis. I moved to Washington, DC to intern in President Obama’s administration and helped small and medium sized business reach foreign markets and include them in the policy development process while focusing on issues to improve labor and environmental standards. I worked and immersed myself in the public policy circles and saw first-hand how the federal legislative process works. Shortly after Trump's term began, I decided it was time to return to school and get back to community organizing and activate constituencies. I moved to Chicago for graduate studies in public policy and administration at Northwestern University to better understand how policy is developed and implemented. This location allowed me to serve Obama’s former campaign team at Organizing for Action (OFA) to help train new organizers in underrepresented communities of Chicago to provide guidance, mentoring and necessary tools to advocate for progressive causes directly impacting their lives.

Since I moved back home, I led OFA’s community engagement fellowship, fighting for economic opportunity, labor rights, women’s rights, healthcare, affordable housing, as well as reforming our immigration, education, criminal justice, money bail, campaign finance, and gun laws. I established and led the San Diego OFA fellowship, and recruited and led volunteer organizing teams to support progressive congressional candidates to flip the House in the midterm elections, registered voters and GOTV activities.

As a native working-class San Diegan, first generation Mexican American, and son of undocumented immigrant parents, I am running for Congress to represent California's 53rd Congressional District in 2020. I am the first in my family to graduate high school, first and only to go to college, and even graduate school.

I am speaking truth to power, and standing up for our communities so that our District finally has the real progressive representation it deserves and desperately needs in Washington, DC.

I am turning the ship around, picking up everyone that has been left behind, while fighting for real progress/socioeconomic justice and putting people first!

OUR DISTRICT NOW:

Economically, our District's families are swimming against the waves, and nothing has changed in the last two decades. While the cost of living is rising, real wages remain stagnant. We are facing a housing crisis and, with higher rents, middle and low-income communities are getting crammed up, with multiple families having to make the tough decisions of paying for food or rent, resulting in families sharing already small apartments and houses with other relatives or friends. Our K-12 public education system funding is determined by zip codes, with the more affluent ones enjoying higher benefits. College costs are skyrocketing, and graduates are buried in student loan debt. Immigrants continue to be unfairly deported, and families continue to be separated as happened to mine. On top of that, children are now being targeted, sent to detention centers, thrown into cages and getting abused. The current political climate, perpetuated by Donald Trump since his presidential candidacy announcement, has divided our communities, pitting us against each other through a politics of fear and hate instead of addressing the most pertinent problems affecting our country.

Our communities have always gotten the short end of the stick, and I’ve experienced it first-hand all my life. It doesn’t help that we have a Congressional representative who is knee-deep in corporate money, addressing their concerns first instead of the people’s.

MY COMMITMENT TO YOU:

I commit to stand up for the disadvantaged and underrepresented communities that are home to our families, friends and loved ones. I commit to use the strong work ethic that I developed at a young age to fight inequality, the powerful interest groups in Washington, and take no money from corporations or corporate PACs. Your support and donations are essential to this grassroots movement for our communities to have a chance at building a better life. We all deserve to thrive. We cannot stand by and let our future generations face the same challenges of today. With our movement, we are kicking special interests to the curb and putting people first!

As someone from the community who has lived through the struggles and challenges and been affected by every tragedy caused by ineffective and unfair policies, and who has endured and achieved so much even when told that it was not possible, I am best prepared to fight for all of us so that we can ALL make it.

A Progressive Candidates Campaign