Voters in State Assembly District 57 have a choice between two Democrats in the Nov. 5 election who are running to replace termed-out Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer.
This district, which includes a large portion of South Los Angeles, the unincorporated community of Florence-Graham, USC and much of downtown, from Crypto.com Arena and the Los Angeles Convention Center to Skid Row, needs a representative who will be an effective advocate for constituents on a variety of issues, from the housing and homelessness crisis to criminal justice reform and climate change.
Of the two candidates, Sade Elhawary, a community activist and educator, offers the clearest and most ambitious vision for uniting the district’s communities and improving the everyday lives of people struggling with California’s high cost of living, homelessness, crime and other pressing challenges.
Her experience working with young people as a high school history teacher, college counselor and foster parent will give her valuable insights as a legislator, as will her work experience developing social justice curriculum for students, leading fundraising and community organizing efforts and training and mentoring young activists.
Elhawary, whose mother immigrated from Guatemala and father from Egypt, also shows the greatest promise for uniting the Black and Latino residents in a historically Black district that is now 71% Latino and 17% Black.
Elhawary would also be a strong advocate for humane and smart efforts to tackle homelessness, such as strengthening tenant protections to prevent eviction and building more affordable housing and cutting red tape that slows construction. She supports criminal justice reform and wants to address over-policing by focusing on prevention-based programs to reduce crime and gun violence. She supports important environmental justice efforts such as phasing out oil drilling, cleaning up abandoned wells and switching to renewable energy and zero-emission vehicles.
Elhawary may not have held elective office before, but she has experience that shows she can get things done. For example, as a youth organizer she helped bring a community wellness clinic and community garden to Fremont High School.
She has been attacked for growing up outside of the district. It’s a ridiculous criticism because she was born in Los Angeles and grew up near Dodger Stadium. Her family moved to Altadena when she was in high school, but as an adult she has lived and worked for years in the district in South L.A., advocating for its social and economic improvement and building solidarity between the Black and Latino communities. We think that experience is more valuable than where she spent her childhood.
She recognizes the need to balance her progressive ideals with tough realities, such as a massive state budget deficit, by making thoughtful decisions that don’t needlessly gut essential safety net programs, an approach she says is informed by one of her mentors, Mayor Karen Bass, who has endorsed her. Elhawary has worked for the Community Coalition, the South L.A. nonprofit founded by Bass, and for the mayor’s 2022 election campaign.
Elhawary has also been endorsed by a long list of prominent lawmakers such as U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler and County Supervisors Hilda Solis and Holly Mitchell, and a wide array of labor unions and organizations such as Abundant Housing LA and Equality California.
The other candidate is Efren Martinez, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and small business owner from Florence-Firestone who has led the local Chamber of Commerce and is running a campaign focused on economic development and public safety.
He previously ran against Jones-Sawyer in 2020 with support from the correctional officers union and other law enforcement groups, and is backed by police unions, the oil, gas and tobacco industries and other big business interests.
Some of Martinez’s views are in alignment with his financial backers. He downplays the impacts of neighborhood oil drilling and his main suggestion for addressing public safety is putting more cops on the street. But he provided a number of troublingly vague answers about what he’d do once in office. He told the editorial board, for example, that he wants to increase education funding, but would not say how he’d do it, because it would be “irresponsible” for him to provide a plan until he is elected. And his campaign has at times stoked division in a community with a history of fraught Black-Latino relations.
That’s not what this district, which contends with some of L.A.’s most pressing challenges, needs.
It needs a representative who isn’t afraid to share her policy plans and one whose platform seeks to unite, rather than divide. That’s Elhawary, and voters should cast their ballots for her.