Candidate for
Member, City Council; City of Los Angeles; District 13

Socialist feminist, lesbian activist and labor movement veteran Wendy McPherson's bid for Los Angeles City Council District 13 brings a sorely needed presence and perspective to this year's city election.

A resident of Echo Park, McPherson, 40, is a youth specialist public librarian at the Echo Park Branch of L.A. Public Library and a leader in the Freedom Socialist Party and L.A. Radical Women. An outspoken member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2626, and a delegate to the L.A County Federation of Labor, she is a longtime organizer on behalf of working people, disabled, women, queers, people of color, immigrants and the disenfranchised.

In Los Angeles, McPherson has spoken out publicly against the vicious hate crime murders of gay college student Matthew Shepard and African American James Byrd, Jr. She organized her library co-workers to join the striking Los Angeles janitors' picket lines last spring, testified at a Los Angeles City Council hearing in defense of striking MTA bus drivers, and has spoken out at anti-sweatshop rallies throughout Southern California. She's a member of Pride At Work, the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), the Labor Party, and the California Library Association.

As a public employee, she strongly criticized the Los Angeles politicians who bankrolled the Democratic National Convention at taxpayers' expense, in particular for the $11 million awarded the police department to mount militaristic attacks on peaceful protestors exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly. As one of those who demonstrated daily at the Staples Center, McPherson joined others in demanding a new trial for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, an end to sweatshops locally and internationally, and a halt to harassment of immigrants regardless of legal status.

While working at the public library in Seattle, Washington, and a member of the Seattle Employees Association of Gays and Lesbians (SEAGL), she successfully helped organize the defeat of an anti-gay assault on the city's domestic partnership policy.

Experienced in the free speech wars, McPherson fought an on-the-job free speech battle to wear a "Vote Socialist" button to support fellow socialist's bid for Seattle City Council. McPherson received support from her union, co-workers and the community who all joined her in her right, and the right of others, to free speech on the job--and won!

Proud to be a fifth-generation Californian, McPherson grew up on a ranch in the Napa Valley, received her bachelors degree in women's studies at UC Davis, and a masters in library and information science at the University of Washington.