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As the Democratic establishment continues to alienate its base by insisting on centrism and decrepit candidates, progressives are attracting giant crowds even in red states, drawing standing ovations, and mobilizing millions of voters through old-fashioned, street-level campaigning. They’re taking lessons from organized labor, talking policy, and speaking to voters like adults, not scolding them like disobedient children.
One of the latest progressive candidates to join the fight is California community advocate Angela Gonzales-Torres, whom the campaign group Justice Democrats endorsed this morning. Gonzales-Torres, 30, is running in the state’s 34th District, an area within the city of Los Angeles that includes some of the neighborhoods President Trump’s immigration officials have hit the hardest with raids, according to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, including Glassell Park and downtown’s Little Tokyo.
Her pitch: She knows how to fight Trump’s immigrant terror campaign because she’s lived through it before. Her mixed-status family was ripped apart 15 years ago, when the federal government deported her father, an auto mechanic, back to Mexico, where he has been forced to remain to this day. The experience left her mother alone to raise four daughters as she struggled to keep a roof over their head with her waitressing job. They lived in a series of shelters, as well as their car; among her most vivid memories of that time was doing her homework, leaning over the hood of the car the family was living in at the time, parked in a Denny’s parking lot, she told the Prospect.
The experience has shaped her politics, which her policy platform reflects. While others in the Democratic Party refuse to stand up for vulnerable populations and meekly say they too want border security, Gonzales-Torres has specific policy points she wants to achieve in Congress that would protect immigrants. |
