The longtime Chicana labor activist backs Breed. Will it help her in the Mission?
by JOE RIVANO BARROS SEPTEMBER 27, 2024 (MissionLocal.org)
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Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: London Breed. Read earlier dispatches here.
Dolores Huerta, the storied labor leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, has waded into San Francisco’s mayoral race.
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On Friday, Huerta endorsed Mayor London Breed for re-election, pointing specifically to Breed’s work during the pandemic when Latino residents were hit with Covid-19 at record rates.
“She demonstrated her leadership during the pandemic by not only delivering one of the nation’s strongest public health responses but also providing critical resources to support those most impacted by COVID-19 such as low-income Latino essential workers,” Huerta, 94, wrote in a statement, referencing the phrase she created: “¡Sí se puede con London Breed!”
Longtime Mission District leaders acknowledged that Huerta is a prized endorsement for the mayor: Her pick will be an automatic for many Latino voters, said Tracy Gallardo, a founder of the Latino Task Force, which was critical in advocating for testing, vaccinations, and other aid in the Mission in the midst of the pandemic.
“I’ve worked on other campaigns where the minute [Huerta] dropped an endorsement, every Latino caller, that is what we used.” The response, Gallardo said, was immediate: “‘Oh Dolores Huerta? Si, cómo que claro que si. Who do you want me to vote for? Okay.’ You say Dolores Huerta, you slap that on a flier and you put that out, you got the vote.”
Still, though Huerta pointed to Breed’s pandemic response, Latinos did not fare well in San Francisco during the height of Covid. San Francisco acted quickly in the early days and had a lower overall rate of infection, but Latinos in the city did worse than Latinos in other, heavier-hit parts of the country, as Mission Local found in 2020.
Breed did not respond immediately to the work of UCSF and the Latino Task Force — experts were perplexed by the city’s lack of attention to testing Latino residents in the initial months. But by late 2020 she had come around to the strategy of neighborhood hubs, which were key in testing and vaccination, and allocated $28.5 million to various Covid efforts by Latino organizations.
The mayor has touted her pandemic-era leadership time and again on the campaign trail, and Gallardo said that Breed had saved lives during Covid by working with the Latino Task Force.
“She gave us the emergency resources that we needed, and she continues to support that work,” said Gallardo, who said she is backing Breed. “The 12,000 people the Latino Task Force served, they would not have been served without the resources they gave us. Did it save lives? Absolutely.”
In the run up to Election Day, Latino voters have played a less prominent role than other demographics, particularly Asian voters, and candidates are seldom seen in the Mission District.
The mayoral candidates have all worked hard to reach out to voters in heavily-Asian neighborhoods like Chinatown, the Sunset, and Portola to wrap up an electorate that makes up 37 percent of the city. They have taken out ads in Sing Tao Daily and World Journal, and attended Chinese banquet after Chinese banquet. Breed’s endorsement page has an entire section on “Chinese community leaders.”
The mayor has toured the Mission, Gallardo said she has met with her and other Mission District leaders, and she will join her mayoral rivals at a Latino-focused forum at Gray Area in the Mission on Saturday. But still, none of the candidates’ campaigns have focused heavily on Latinos, who make up 15.6 percent of the city’s residents, according to census data.
Huerta will bolster Breed’s efforts. In a statement, the mayor called Huerta a “living legend” and “icon of the Latino community,” pointing particularly to her family’s union history.
“My grandfather was a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, my mother was a member of Laborers Local 261, and my aunt and uncle were Teamsters. And I’m a proud former member of the San Francisco Municipal Executives Association,” she said.
But Huerta’s endorsement did not mean the moon and the stars to all.
“While Dolores Huerta is an icon to the Latino and labor community, Mayor Breed has been anything but to the Latino and labor communities,” said Michael Rouppet, the co-president of the San Francisco Latinx Democratic Club. Rouppet said that Breed has not sat down with the group, which subsequently endorsed her rival Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, and that she has not been receptive to the group’s concerns.
“London Breed was the only candidate who flatly refused to meet with the only Latino Democratic club here in San Francisco,” he said. “I don’t see that she has been engaging with our club or our issues,” he added, pointing to policing, the chaotic street vending situation along Mission Street, and displacement.
Add to that deportations: Under the direction of Breed’s appointee, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco has cooperated with federal law enforcement to deport accused drug dealers. A narrative has emerged in the city, partly fueled by a July 2023 San Francisco Chronicle piece, that Hondurans are the backbone of fentanyl dealing.
Just Monday, public defenders rallied on the steps of the Hall of Justice to point out that a Honduran man charged with drug dealing had been acquitted by a jury, which found that he had been a victim of human trafficking and forced into dealing — the first time the office had won such a ruling.
Despite the jury’s decision, Jenkins has so far refused to provide the man with papers needed for a U-visa, a type of visa meant for victims or witnesses of crime, meaning his stay in the country is under threat.
That, said Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, the executive director of the Central American migrant-focused nonprofit CARECEN, reflected a “subjective approach” to the justice system from the DA, and was symptomatic of a larger narrative. The city’s use of deportations, she said, is not only counterproductive in terms of public safety — by making it less likely migrants cooperate with law enforcement — but perpetuates negative, sweeping stereotypes about Central Americans.
And none of the mayoral candidates have done enough to reach out to the migrant community to counteract that narrative, Dugan-Cuadra said.
“We think it’s a missed opportunity that candidates are not speaking to people who migrate,” she said, acknowledging that new immigrants do not vote but saying they deserve to hear from candidates for office nonetheless. “They’re economic, cultural, drivers of our community.”
Still, for Breed, the Huerta pickup is unequivocally good news. The election is a little over a month away, the polls are tight, and every single vote will matter come Nov. 5.
“I’m honored to have Dolores standing by me in my re-election,” Breed said in her statement, “as I work to uphold the same rights and values she has spent her whole life defending.”
MORE FIELD NOTES FROM THE MAYOR’S RACE
See how they run: Mayor Breed skips likely last mayoral forum, gets blasted in abstentia
See how they run: Breed, Lurie trade barbs in Latinx-focused Mission mayoral forum
See how they run: S.F. mayoral candidates promise more Asian appointees in Chinatown forum
JOE RIVANO BARROSSENIOR EDITOR
joe.rivanobarros@missionlocal.com
Joe was born in Sweden, where half of his family received asylum after fleeing Pinochet, spent his early childhood in Chile, and moved to Oakland when he was eight. He attended Stanford University for political science and worked at Mission Local as a reporter after graduating. He then spent time at YIMBY Action and as a partner for the strategic communications firm The Worker Agency. He rejoined Mission Local as an editor in 2023.More by Joe Rivano Barros
