Oct 29, 2024
In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1.
Jackie considers it an honor to have worked for Lateefah Simon, who's running for Congress in the East Bay for the seat currently held by Barbara Lee. Jackie was tasked with writing memos, and she took that job and ran with it, digging deeply into the weeds of policy. What she found in the existing systems of that time piqued her curiosity around what it might mean if she herself were to enter the fray. Her life up to that point formed her world views, as these things tend to do. But the policies, she says, ticked her off.
She had been studying to take
the LSAT, with the idea that she would go to law school ... all
while volunteering for the campaign to get Lateefah Simon elected
to the BART Board. But that November, in 2016, the 45th president
was elected, and everything changed ... for a lot of us, but
especially for Jackie.
It all threw Jackie for a
loop. Standing
Rock and protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP)
were also happening, which further disillusioned her. She traveled
east to join the resistance. She met folks and had deep
conversations with her Native American brothers and sisters. She
spent time in Minnesota doing more work with indigenous
folks. It all created a sense of hope despite the doom
seemingly all around. She also noticed the protests in Seattle
demanding Wall Street disinvestment.
In February 2017, Jackie was
back home, full of "let's do it" energy, ready to tackle issues in
The Bay. She had moved to The City and started digging further into
the weeds of policy in San Francisco. In 2018, she decided that she
wanted to make a difference here at home. She helped found
the San
Francisco Public Bank Coalition. She was tapped to lead the
campaign against the Police Officers Association's use of force
measure. For that, she worked with Democratic Socialists of America
San Francisco and the ACLU of Northern California. She also worked
on the No
on H campaign, which succeeded.
Alicia Garza, cofounder of
Black Lives Matter, asked Jackie to teach her class at SF State,
and Jackie seized that opportunity. At State, she taught Race,
Women, and Class, where she talked with students about DAP and
indigenous rights, among other topics. While teaching, she also
worked restaurant jobs, mostly on the Peninsula.
When 2019 came around, Jackie
wasn't sure what to do. Looking back, she was experiencing
undiagnosed ADHD. She had a nagging feeling that year, though, that
she should run for office. Someone pointed out to her that State
Sen. Scott Wiener was running for election unopposed. She thought
of the successful ballot measure campaigns she'd been part of. She
had spent time living in her van. She'd bounced around between
apartments. She decided to go for it.
The Jackie Fielder for State
Senate campaign was off to a good start. Then lockdown happened in
March 2020. Everything about the campaign turned virutal—Zoom
speeches and meetings, phone banking on another level, social media
like never before. She centered issues like affordable housing,
climate change, renters' rights, homelessness, education. She got
the backing of teachers, iron workers, electricians, tenants'
rights groups, affordable housing groups, and various progressive
cultural affinity groups in SF.
Jackie didn't win that race,
though.
She took a step back and got
into therapy, where she learned about self-care and
self-compassion. She got to a point where she could take better
care of herself so that she could then take care of
others.
Jackie also started a PAC in
the time between the 2020 election and now. The Daybreak PAC's main
purpose is to support candidates and ballot measures that
reject corporate money. Also, Stop
the Money Pipeline hired her to be its communications
manager in 2021. Through that work, she was able to reconnect with
many folks she met years earlier in her Dakota stays. By early
2023, Jackie was co-director of the organization. This summer, in
2024, she took an official leave to come home and campaign for
supervisor.
Then the conversation shifts to
District 9. Of all the places Jackie has lived in San Francisco,
she's spent the most time in the district. She's queer and loves
the embrace of her community in D9. She also notes that the
American Indian Cultural District and Latino Cultural District, two
groups that are a big part of her identity, are located in
D9.
After our mutual love fest of
the Mission, we shift to issues that Jackie hopes to address as the
next D9 supervisor—public safety, how best to engage law
enforcement, drug use, houselessness, housing, jobs, and
more.
Please visit Jackie's
website for more info, especially if you live in D9 (if
you're not sure, look up your supervisorial district here).
We recorded this episode
at Evil Eye in the Mission in September
2024.
Photography by Jeff
Hunt