Meet the 21-year-old Dem Socialist Who Unseated an 18-year Incumbent in CA
Interview by Joaquin Romero
Photo: Morgan McCarthy
We spoke with James Coleman, the newly elected city councilmember for South San Francisco district 4. Coleman, a 21-year-old democratic socialist with a background in local activism, is both the youngest and first LGBTQ+ individual to control the seat. Coleman ran on a progressive platform, prioritizing issues like affordable housing, universal pre-K, and ending police violence. Here, he explains his support of these policies, and gives his thoughts about his upcoming term.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
RIFT Magazine: You’re 21 years old and you’ll be graduating from Harvard University this coming year — how did you get into politics and what prompted you to make the jump into running for office?
James Coleman: My involvement in politics really started during the 2016 election. At that point I was still in high school, and I was involved with the Alliance for Climate Education, so a lot of my early organizing experience was geared towards climate change and environmental justice. And it was really the 2016 election, through the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, that got me more involved in electoral politics and national politics.
Moving on to Harvard University, I wanted to continue my experience organizing and I worked with the Harvard Undergraduates for Environmental Justice, with Harvard College YDSA, and also with Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard. And then following the Coronavirus, a lot of students were kicked off of campus sometime in March, and I really saw that because I was no longer on campus I wanted to continue organizing and making an impact on my community, and so I looked towards South San Francisco.
Together, myself and a few other friends I graduated with from high school decided to found a new grassroots organization called Change SSF. What really sparked this movement was the murder of George Floyd in late May. And a lot of friends and I looked internally to see what could be done in our community against police violence.
In 2012, a young African American child named Derrick Gaines was brutally murdered by a South City PD officer named Joshua Cabillo, and the eyewitness accounts of that event stated that Derrick Gaines was nowhere near his weapon when he was shot by the officer. He had a gun with no firing pin. He was 15 at the time. What happened, according to the eyewitnesses is that he was tackled and then the gun fell out of his pocket onto the ground. He got back up and ran again and he was tackled a second time around ten or fifteen feet away. So there was no way he could have reached across the street basically. But the DA report stated that he was reaching for his gun, which was why the officer shot him, and they ruled that the killing was — although tragic — justified. I don’t believe that it was justified at all, and largely there has not been any justice for Derrick Gaines. There has not been any systemic changes to the way we conduct our system of public safety and law enforcement to prevent something like this from happening again. And also Joshua Cabillo, although he was fired from the South San Francisco department he became hired by the San Francisco police department, where he has continued to brutalize and terrorize communities of color. He has also been involved in shooting another unarmed individual in the back, in the middle of a crowded street. This just fits into the broad, nationwide narrative of how we have police officers who are not being held accountable, and we’re not prioritizing the wellbeing of the public when it comes to public safety.
And so Change SSF saw that there were many issues that plague our city, as well as the nation, and we went to our city council to demand change, and we were largely met with contempt, and dismissiveness. Many of us were young people who were becoming engaged in local politics for the first time in our lives, and this made us really frustrated. Specifically what the city council did was they did not allow for live, virtual, public comment for around a period of a month and a half. This was at a time where other cities were having their city council meetings through Zoom, allowing their people to call in and give their public comment for a minute thirty seconds, as much as is possible and reasonable. But our city was just not doing that. What they said was that we could submit our public comment through email to be read aloud during the city council meetings, but that unfortunately never happened. So we had over 150 public comments that were never read aloud, that were only thrown into the public record, most of those pertaining to the need to change our system of policing. Whether it be defunding or more towards the reform route, either way these were calls for change that were just left unheard.
I myself saw that this was an opportunity to run and make change so that the working people and the people of color in South San Francisco can be represented in our city’s leadership. And I saw that I had experience in organizing, in grassroots organizations in the Bay Area as well as on campus at Harvard University, and also had some electoral experience because I did a lot of volunteering for the Bernie Sanders campaign and a couple other candidates around the country. And so I saw that this was a good opportunity to bring that experience, as well as the education and privilege that I’ve had at Harvard University, and bring it back to South San Francisco where I can improve and empower the residents of the community I once grew up in.
RIFT: What is it like to have won this election? You’re 21, barely out of college and you’re already being tasked with helping to manage your hometown. Is it a daunting task from your perspective?
JC: I’m very excited. Growing up we’ve seen many of the same issues persist for many, many years. Things like a municipal preschool waitlist of four years, the lack of urgency when it comes to addressing climate change, the lack of affordable housing and increased gentrification in communities of color and low income communities in the East side of South San Francisco, and the public health crisis of systemic racism in our police department. These are issues that have persisted for many years, and I believe a new perspective could help change those realities and help the working people of South San Francisco. I believe that having a new approach can do really well, not just in South San Francisco. Like if an initiative or policy is successful in our city, it can be adopted around California and around the country, if it performs well. So I’m really excited to get to work, to work with my colleagues, to work with other leaders around the Bay Area and around the county, and really fight for the change that is much needed and is way past due in our communities here.
RIFT: You unseated an 18-year incumbent in your city council district, which is no easy feat regardless of what office you’re running for. Can you describe the campaign and what your strategy was?
JC: Running against an 18-year incumbent, I mean he’s been on the city council for 18 years, but he’s been involved in city politics for 38 years, so everyone knows him. He’s been around for a while. It was really difficult to try and cut into his establishment support when it came to Democratic party officials in our county. The people who have been around for a while know him, and they’re very reluctant to endorse against him. I did what I could, I met with people and some of them said, “I like you, but I’ve known Rich for decades”. And then others went out and endorsed me. My highest profile endorsement was actually by Senator Scott Wiener. He’s a fairly progressive state senator. It really was making those connections as quick as possible, because I haven’t been here that long.
We ran on issues that would improve the material conditions of the people here, things like universal Pre-K, ensuring that every child can afford and access high quality early childhood education without the fear of extremely long waitlists or not being able to afford it. We ran on affordable housing, ensuring that people are kept in their homes and that they aren’t experiencing long periods of housing instability, or that they aren’t being forced out of the communities they grew up in and worked in for much of their lives. We ran on the need to address police brutality, and how many communities of color feel unsafe when calling our police. The way we approached this campaign was really to elevate these issues and put these at the forefront of people’s minds when they think “What can we do in South City? What is possible? How can our community be better”. So we really made an effort to reach out to voters and have conversations with them.
What we focussed on was trying to gain that hard support, not based on name recognition, but based on progressive support for policies, for progressive policies. So we did literature drops throughout the entire district, we had conversations with people in their front yards, and we made probably over ten thousand phone calls to people in the district, telling them about us, but also listening to what they would like to see done in our city. And I think that’s what really made a difference, building that connection with people, and having conversations with them.
RIFT: You ran as a democratic socialist. However, when you say ‘democratic socialist’ people often either are apprehensive to that label or they immediately associate it with a national figure like Bernie Sanders or AOC. What does it mean to be a democratic socialist on the level of local government, and how do you apply that philosophy in practice?
JC: I think being a democratic socialist means putting the material needs of the people first, above big business and above special interests. Really bringing the issues that would benefit people the most, like education and healthcare and housing, to the very top of our priorities list. And like you said, ‘socialism’ is a very scary word to some people, but I think through the work of individuals like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Omar and others, it is becoming a term that is more normalized in our society.
Our country is more partisan than it is ideological, meaning that people are like “Oh, I like the Democrats but Republicans bad” or “I like the Republicans but Democrats bad”. But what you’ll see is when you go issue by issue ideologically, there will be more agreement on both sides. And so I remember having conversations with conservative voters, where I argued for the need for police accountability, the need for funding mental health resources and ensuring that people who are experiencing mental health crises are given mental health professionals not an untrained police officer. And he agreed! So I think beyond ideological lines, and beyond partisan lines, if you go out and talk to people about the issues and how they will benefit the people, you will find a lot of shared values.
RIFT: I would imagine that the top priority of anybody taking office right now on any level of government is the Coronavirus pandemic. How has the response to the pandemic been in your community and how do you think it could be improved?
JC: I believe that our city has to do its part in ensuring that renters and small homeowners are protected from eviction, and that not only are they protected from eviction, but that they’re protected from debt from the rent that they might not have been able to pay in the past few months. So there really is a need for rent and mortgage cancellation, ensuring that people are kept in their homes so they are safe and have a dignified place to live.
Beyond that is ensuring that our communities of color and low income communities are not suffering disproportionately. Ensuring that vaccines are given to them and that it's not only free but that everyone knows where to get it, and that they can get it in their own community. Having that type of active outreach from our city and from other community organizations to the people who live here. Beyond helping the families in our city, also helping the small, local businesses, because right now a lot of them are suffering and they haven’t been given enough support. A lot of them are going to be facing closure, and I believe that the city can provide a lot of assistance to these small businesses to ensure that they survive through this pandemic and beyond.
RIFT: Tell me about housing. From everything I understand about Bay Area/South Bay politics, the rising cost of living is a big issue. What is the extent of the problem in South San Francisco, and what do you plan to advocate for during your term to alleviate that burden?
JC: Housing is probably the most complicated and controversial issue in South San Francisco, as well as the entirety of California. We’re currently suffering under an extreme housing shortage. There are so many more jobs in our city than there is housing. So you have so many people competing for the same housing units in our city, many of whom work in the large biotech sector in our city, and in that sense it’s pricing out many of the residents who have lived here for much of their lives. Rents are skyrocketing, and they can’t afford to live here so they have to move, sometimes out of state, because there’s nowhere affordable to live.
I believe in the decommodification of housing. I believe in public housing, that we need to build units that are well below market rate to support our low income communities and communities of color. And that is something that is hard to do right now, because the California state legislature does not offer its cities affordable housing grants like it used to. Cities, because of Article 34 — which requires cities pass a ballot measure whenever they wish to use public funds for affordable housing — are often reluctant to give public money towards affordable housing. And so what is usually the default option now is partnering with private developers and saying “You build 85% market rate and you build the last 15% affordable”, and the market rate basically subsidizes the affordable, and the private developers aren’t really making much profit. The thing is, 15% is nowhere near enough, and the other 85% is gentrifying the communities in our city. And so there really is a need to address housing from all angles.
