Oct 22, 2024
Jackie Fielder is quick to credit
her ancestors with her life and where she is now that she's
30.
In this episode, meet Jackie, who's
running to be the next District 9 supervisor. District 9 includes
the Mission, Bernal Heights, and the Portola.
She begins by sharing the life story
of her maternal grandparents, who are from Monterey in Mexico. Her
grandfather worked in orange groves in Southern California, while
her grandmother was a home care worker. She also did stints at
See's Candies seasonally. Sadly, both grandparents passed away when
Jackie was young. But she learned more about them as she grew
up.
On her dad's side, Jackie is
Native American. Her paternal grandparents grew up on reservations
in North and South Dakota. Her dad was born in Los Angeles and
raised in Phoenix and went to Arizona State. He got a job as an
engineer in SoCal, where he met Jackie's mom.
The two met at a club in the
Eighties. Her mom's first job was at Jack in the Box, where she got
minimum wage. She dreamed of becoming an EMT, but that was before
she met Jackie's dad. She ended up working as a secretary for a
school district.
Jackie is her parents' only child.
She was born in 1984. Her dad joined the US Navy. When she was six,
the Navy deployed him to Seattle for six months, and the strain on
his marriage during that time away never really subsided. It was
hard on Jackie, too, of course. When he returned home, her parents
separated.
Her mom took her to live across the
freeway from where they'd been, in a low-income apartment
community. Jackie's life changed, dramatically, she says. She was
in the same schools, but stopped hanging out with her friends after
school or on weekends. Her mom didn't want her playing outside
much, in fact. She felt that the new area she moved her kid to was
too dangerous.
In her new living situation, Jackie
and her mom found community. Neighbors helped one another out in
myriad ways. Jackie looks back on that time as formative to who
she's become as an adult.
She also spent time with her mom's
extended family in South Central LA. Many family members were in
the LA low rider culture. Jackie was immersed in that Latino
community from a young age. This also informed her world view
today.
At this point, we pivot to talk
about music—how it came into her life and what it means to Jackie.
She grew up around disco and Motown, Spice Girls and
the Men in Black soundtrack, CCR, TLC,
Backstreet Boys. In middle school, Jackie found alt rock. She saw
Foo Fighters with her mom.
Jackie attended public schools the
entire time. She was a good student, got good grades, liked her
teachers and they liked her. In hindsight, she wishes she had
engaged with sports besides soccer, which she played from age 4 or
5. She says that in Southern California, sports were as important
as academics.
There were something like 4,000
students at her high school, 900-something in her graduating class.
But despite this, Jackie didn't simply receive her education
passively. She was on an AP track and did community service work
with other students. In high school, Jackie worked to establish
gardens in elementary schools in her area.
She paints the picture of having
been such a quote-unquote "good kid" that I ask if she ever had a
bad streak or a time when she got anything out of her system. She
says not really, but then I half-jokingly suggest that maybe her
life in electoral politics is just that.
College was expected, though she
wasn't sure where she'd end up going to school.
She didn't think Stanford was a possibility. Berkeley was her goal,
but she didn't get in. Friends and community, though, convinced her
to apply to Stanford. She did, and she got it. Thus was Jackie
Fielder's move north.
Originally, she planned to do
pre-med in her undergrad years. The motivation behind that plan was
wanting to help people. But being interested in education thanks to
her mom's work, she attended a talk on public policy and college
admissions that opened her eyes, both to the larger societal issue
and to her own experience getting admitted to Stanford.
She really started thinking about
how race and class factor into policy, both public and private.
This led to an imposter syndrome-type feeling in her place at
college. Still, despite that, she made friends at Stanford, some
she's close with today. I note that it's my belief that Jackie is
really, really smart (I've listened to and read many things she's
said and written, and seriously ...), and suggest that she's driven
to knowing things by virtue of a deep curiosity about how systems
work.
Jackie agrees about that motivating
factor, and points to 9/11 and watching a lot of Travel Channel.
Both experiences teleported her to different parts of the world,
and left her with a deep desire to learn and know about how people
organize themselves into societies.
Her father was redeployed after
9/11, and that, too, had an effect on young Jackie.
But back to her move upstate to Palo
Alto. She spent four years there before earning her bachelor's
degree. She was in a sorority for a spell, but got disillusioned by
that. She describes rubbing shoulders with the kids of
billionaires. That initial idea of doing pre-med gave way to
working toward a degree in public policy, something she dove into
head-first. She says that meant mostly studying economics. And
economics at Stanford means the Hoover Institute. And the Hoover
Institute means conservative theories.
She got through it despite
disagreeing with the theory. She told herself it was worthwhile to
understand how the proverbial other side thinks to better
understand it and be better equipped to debate folks who think that
way. She also set her sights on getting a master's degree, and
decided to major in sociology for that.
During this time, she spent a
semester in Istanbul, Turkey, an experience she relishes. She
learned a lot about Middle Eastern history in her stay. Much of
what she discovered about the struggles of the oppressed halfway
around the world rang true for Jackie with the experiences of her
father's people in the US. It took Jackie four years to
concurrently earn both a bachelor's and a master's degree. I mean,
I told you that she's smart.
We end Part 1 with Jackie's story of
deciding that San Francisco is where she needed to be. It's a story
that involves working for Lateefah Simon.
We recorded this episode
at Evil
Eye in the Mission in September 2024.
Photography by Jeff Hunt