This information is provided by the candidate
I am a single parent of my daughter Sara who is a preschool teacher at a Jewish school in Fresno. She is married to Richard, a labor lawyer and they are about to make me a grandma. After my daughter grew up and moved out on her own eleven years ago, I moved to Humboldt County living in Orick my first year. While there I served on the Orick School Board. I moved to Eureka a year later.
I began working as a counselor and case manager for Transitional Residential Treatment Facilities, Inc., a local non-profit that contracts with the County to provide services to individuals with psychiatric disabilites. I also worked as a counselor at Crestwood Manor, a local skilled nursing facility that serves individuals with psychiatric disabilities.
I joined the Green Party six years ago after being a Democrat since I resgistered to vote on my twenty-first birthday. I saw that the Democrats had lost their vision of championing the poor, the disenfranchised and the working people. They were, it seemed, turning into Republican wannabes. I had always been active in politics and needed to find a political party that was more in line with my values. I found that party in the Greens. It emphasises personal and social responsibility, social justice, environmental wisdom, grassroots democracy and community based economics. It is through my work with the Greens that I feel I am able to make a positive impact on my community.
I recently accepted a position with the Private Industry Council in its Welfare-to-Work program. I am working with women on welfare who are seeking opportunities to become self-sufficient so they can take responsibility in providing for themselves and their children. Their strength, their fortitude, their determination to succeed as they struggle to surivive on so little is an inspiration to me every day.
I decided to run for City Council after I moved into a neighborhood I had lived in several years ago. I was appalled at how it had deteriorated in the short time I had been away. The drugs and violence are all around me, every day. I thought about moving out of town, but I happen to love Eureka and like that I can ride my bicycle to work in less than ten minutes. I know that "if change is to be, it begins with me." I am taking the opportunity to run for city council to try to make a difference in the community. I believe with my understanding of society and people through my education and background, I can bring a vision to Eureka that is new and fresh, and I believe will be effective.
Through negotiating union contracts, I learned to get to the heart of an issue, I learned the art of compromise, and how to galvanize people to bring a vision to fruition.
Through my work on local Boards, I have learned how to read budgets, a tedious but necessary task as a Council Member. I have learned to work together to solve problems and begin new endeavors.
Through my education, I interned at a shelter for battered women, the rape counseling service, and worked with pre-adolescents with emotional problems.
Through various community activites, I have come to know many people in Eureka. I have friends of all socio-economic levels; I see how the poor struggle to survive and the business owners struggle to stay in business; how the working people struggle to make a living on meager wages; I am sensitive to the needs of the mentally ill and the homeless.
Eureka is my home, and I believe everyone who lives here is a citizen, no matter that they live in a home they own, or an apartment they rent, a doorway they sleep in. These are the people I will represent and whose needs I will endeavor to balance with one another. A daunting task indeed.
I believe that port and railroad development insure the future properity and liveability of Eureka and we must insure that they become a reality.
I believe that many of the local problems are the result of policies on the State and Federal level. We must actively support legislation that serves the needs of people and the local governments that serve them; and be diligent in our watch over our elected representatives on that level to insure that nothing like the loss of our local property taxes to the State happens again.
I know I have the intelligence, the energy, the pragmatism and the committment to be a valuable member of the Eureka City Council.
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