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ELECTION 2024 - Ysabel Jurado, the housing attorney running to represent L.A.’s 14th Council District, received a ringing endorsement last week from Dolores Huerta, the longtime leader for workers’ rights, women’s equality, and the environment and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Huerta’s op-ed appeared in Spanish in La Opinión on Oct. 31, 2024.
Here is my translation of that article into English — provided here so that additional readers might enjoy and perhaps share its message.
From the Fields of Delano to District 14
The year is 1965.
In the fields near Delano, California, farmworkers are toiling under the sun for 12 hours a day, earning poverty wages with no voice on the job, without benefits, without protections. After night falls, they head to squalid, crowded shacks provided by the landowners. At dawn, they wake up hungry and groggy, resigned to do it all over again.
Something has to change, but the chokehold by the growers and landowners seems impossible to break. The odds are all against us.
Strength in numbers
Under such circumstances was forged the bond between Mexicans and Filipinos, a fighting coalition of farmworkers that overcame barriers of heritage and language to unite Chicanos, first-generation immigrants from the Philippines, Blacks, Latinos, white folks, and others that would soon change the course of history.
Through five long years, we marched, picketed, and stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of cruel opposition. In the end, our courage paid dividends. Through collective bargaining, we reached agreements that improved the lives of millions of workers and laid the foundations of the United Farm Workers.
Now the year is 2024.
In the streets of Council District 14 in Los Angeles, we face a similar crossroads.
Hardworking Angelenos struggle just to stay afloat. Rent is skyrocketing. Wages don’t keep pace. Evictions and homelessness accelerate. Without caps on the costs of living, more households are forced to decide between buying food and keeping the lights on.
We have a decision: Surrender and resign ourselves to re-electing the “devils we know” who have allowed entire neighborhoods to slip away before our eyes.
Or unite and fight. Committed to this course is Ysabel Jurado, a candidate for City Council in District 14.
She speaks truth to power. She fights for the most vulnerable among us. She leads with courage and empathy like a young Larry Itliong, the brave and respected Filipino farmworker.
Un-bought. Un-bossed. Unafraid.
As an organizer, I see the broad coalition that Ysabel has built as something very special. When I hear her speak, I can’t help but remember the solidarity between Filipinos and Chicanos that fueled our labor movement upward from the fields.
I also see a troubling, all-too-familiar pattern taking shape in the district.
In 2022, leaked audio tapes revealed the homophobia, racism, and corruption of the current Councilmember. Instead of making amends, he has sought to amplify his bigotries, play on racial discord, and spread fear and disinformation to divide people. He’s even resorted to alleging a candidate of Filipino heritage cannot represent a historically Latino district.
Make no mistake: This has nothing to do with representation or with preserving anyone’s rightful seat at the head of a table.
This has everything to do with the desperation of Kevin de Leon to cling to power at any cost, even if that means tearing apart the communities he claims to represent.
I’ve seen this tactic over and over again to weaken and decertify unions. Attempting to set one group against another is a distraction from solving the real problems affecting the community: housing affordability, poor distribution of income, broken infrastructure, and thousands of unhoused neighbors.
His goal is to stoke divisions and divert attention from his bedfellows like developers of luxury properties, big corporations, and Trump and MAGA Republicans.
Don’t be fooled
Our fight is unified, and Ysabel personifies that struggle for justice.
As a tenants rights attorney, she has assisted and advocated for renters to stop evictions. She’s fought wage theft, including that suffered by truck-drivers at the Port of Los Angeles.
She has lived and breathed the challenges experienced by many district residents: Daughter of undocumented immigrants. Single-parent mom who got by on food stamps and had to drop out of college to make ends meet.
Even today, she lives with her dad and teenage daughter in a multigenerational home that has also sheltered relatives and friends determined to find a better life here in these United States.
Ysabel’s story is our story
Just as Mexican and Filipino farmworkers joined forces in the fields of Delano, the working class voters of Council District 14 need to join forces across ethnic lines to call out the corrupt incumbent and his corporate sponsors.
From 1965 to 2024, the phrase that I coined “Sí se puede! / Yes, we can!” has rung out time and time again in different struggles and campaigns.
But today I am reminded of the powerful words of my late colleague Larry Itliong: He would say, in Tagalog, “Isang Bagsak.” This literally means, “someone down.” But it has a bigger meaning: When one person in the community falls, we all suffer. When one person rises, we all stand up to our fuller height.
Alongside the voters of Council District 14, I say, Isang Bagsak! Our unity is the mightiest artillery we possess in the fight for our collective liberation. May the spirit of interracial, multi-ethnic solidarity guide and carry Ysabel Jurado to the winner’s circle.
Ysabel Jurado is a housing attorney, single-parent mom, and progressive Democrat born and raised in Highland Park. She is running to replace the scandal-plagued incumbent L.A. Councilmember Kevin de Leon to represent L.A.’s 14th Council District, which encompasses Boyle Heights, Downtown, El Sereno, Hermon, Garvanza, Highland Park, and Eagle Rock.
(Hans Johnson is a longtime leader for LGBTQ+ human rights, environmental justice, and public education. His columns appear in national news outlets including USA Today and in top daily news outlets of more than 20 states. A resident of Eagle Rock, he is also president of East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD), the largest grassroots Democratic club in California, with more than 1,100 members.)
