Jackie Fielder Stood up to Big Oil & Wall Street-- Now She's Taking On Real Estate's Top Politician In California

Jackie Fielder is a Native American (Two Kettle Lakota and Hidatsa), Mexicana, and queer educator and organizer running for state Senate against the most real estate-backed politician in California, Scott Wiener. Jackie's growing movement includes California Teachers, grassroots organizers, elected leaders across the country and, as of today, Blue America! Please consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the 2020 Blue America state legislative thermometer below.

After earning both a BA in Public Policy and a MA in Sociology from Stanford, Jackie joined the Indigenous-led No Dakota Access Pipeline movement in her ancestral territories. Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, she became an organizer for public banking to divest San Francisco’s $11 billion city budget from pipeline construction, private prisons, and weapons manufacturing. As co-founder and lead organizer of the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, she took on Wall Street lobbyists to pass statewide legislation and introduce a local ordinance to create the first municipal bank in the country.

Jackie’s opponent, Wiener, is bankrolled by the real estate interests profiting from the housing crisis, fossil fuel giants like Chevron, anti-police reform organizations, and corporations like WalMart. In 2018 he sided with the Republican Party in support of a dangerous police use-of-force policy. Later that year, he opposed a small tax on the largest corporations to fund vital housing and services for the homeless. How could that not be a quid pro quo?

California is the fifth largest economy in the world yet ranks in the bottom nationally for per pupil spending. Jackie supports protecting and expanding the public education budget, while her opponent repeatedly supported diverting funding away from public education.

Global pandemic has both sharpened focus on the inequalities of our society and demanded bold action and transformative solutions. Jackie knows we can’t afford to go back to the status quo, and that taking on the next global crisis requires learning our lessons now.

I hope you'll help Blue America elect a state Senator with the courage to take on the crises facing the state, the country, and the planet. And a progressive who will be on the Democratic bench in the country's biggest state.

I'll Be The First Indigenous Woman Elected To The California State Senate
-by Jackie Fielder

Let me introduce myself. I was born in California and raised by a single mother in an underserved neighborhood dotted with fossil fuel refineries. When I was still a student at Stanford, I watched videos of my relatives staring down the barrels of guns, being bitten by dogs, and pummeled with water cannons in subzero temperatures as they stood up to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

I founded the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition in 2017 after identifying the common denominator between oil pipelines, private prisons, and weapons manufacturing: Wall Street banks. We needed an alternative financial institution that would reinvest our tax dollars for the public good. Within two years, we passed AB 857 to allow municipalities to establish public banks, and won majority support for legislation to create one in San Francisco.

After campaigning successfully for police accountability as well as organizing Mijente’s No Tech For ICE campaign, I was tapped by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza to take over teaching her Race, Women, and Class course at San Francisco State University. Even as a university lecturer, I found myself personally crushed by the housing affordability crisis and-- like so many other educators-- struggled to find an affordable room to rent.

I’m running for State Senate because we have a mandate to be bolder. Transformative policies like statewide single-payer healthcare, a Green New Deal for California, redressing epidemic income inequality, and investing in affordable housing and education for all have never been more urgent.

We don’t have any time left for excuses or despair, and the global health and economic crisis has proven that major challenges demand bold action. Every dollar you contribute helps us tell a voter, “You don’t have to live in fear for your future or the future of your loved ones-- you deserve a legislator who will fight for you.”