The Representative we need- An Interview with Cecilia Lunaparra
By Jackie Sauer
District 7 Candidate, Cecilia Lunaparra, in front of Doe Library
Since it’s conception, the city of Berkeley has been built around its flagship UC Campus and the students who reside in it. In the midst of the Civil War, under the Morrill Act, Abraham Lincoln signed into law a bill which provided funding for the first California public collegiate institution that would go on to be founded in the hills of what was then Oakland. Just like that, the University of California Berkeley as we know it today began to take form.
Over the next almost 200 years, a new culture around this budding campus began to prosper. Berkeley, especially its South Side area, flourished as a hub for progressivism, whether it be at the famed People's Park, or somewhere in the midst of the gleaming shops and booths along Telegraph Avenue, this part of our beloved city has always been a hub for student activism. Protests and rallies in the South Side across the decades have been central to the fight against injustice and corruption in the university and city itself, and the student leaders and activists who live and occupy the streets have been on the front lines in the battle to make Berkeley more walkable, transit-friendly, affordable, and safe.
But protesting and rallying isn’t enough, unfortunately, but do not fear- there's a way students at Berkeley can help contribute to change- on April 16th, residents of District 7 (which encompasses the aforementioned South Side of Berkeley) will have an opportunity to vote in the upcoming city council election, for who will represent this portion of the Berkeley for the next two years. The race has two primary candidates who are running for this seat- one is a current Berkeley student and leader named Cecillia Lunaparra, and the other is a recent transplant who moved into this district specifically to run for this race named James Chang. There is no one else who better embodies the Berkeley spirit, specifically this unique and ever-growing brand of young, emboldened, progressive activism than Cecilia.
Cecilia is a current Urban studies major at UC Berkeley and plans to graduate this May, and despite being a relatively recent newcomer to the Berkeley scene, she has had quite an impact on campus and in the city itself. She has served as the President of both the Cal Berkeley Democrats and Telegraph for the People and has worked as both the Vice Chair of the Environment and Climate Commission and the Zoning Adjustments Board Commissioner for the City of Berkeley, amongst many other accomplished roles. It is sufficient to say that she has the track record to prove that she cares about the people who call District 7 and the broader city home.
With that being said, I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Cecilia and ask her about the finer points of her campaign, and in doing so established a record of why she wants to run and how she will use her newly found power if she wins. Here are the questions I asked her and the direct response to my inquiries:
Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, and what organizations you have worked with, lead, and been a part of?
“Yeah, absolutely. My name is Cecilia Lunaparra. I'm a queer Mexican American woman. I am a UC Berkeley senior. I'm studying urban studies and history. And I started college during the pandemic. I started in 2020 online, and then, spent the first year without going to campus, and then started sophomore year going in person. I joined a bunch of different political organizations my freshman year, kind of trying to find something to put energy into and find a community.
And I found a couple, thankfully. I started organizing with the Cal Berkeley Democrats. I really enjoyed the combination of people having fun and learning from each other and creating this fun community, while also just getting stuff done, especially at the local level, and turning people out to city council meetings and commission meetings and trying really hard to make our voice heard.
I was really attracted to that. So yeah, that brought me a lot of joy and I found a lot of appreciation for it. Especially as a lot of the issues that we were talking about correlated really intensely with my classes, and the things that I was learning specifically around housing and transportation and policing. My sophomore year, I joined Telegraph of People, which is a progressive urbanist organization working to create a pedestrianized Telegraph Avenue and also advocating for transit and urban justice at large.
I have also organized with Cal YDSA, kind of intermittently during my freshman year and then more again starting junior year around the UAW strike. Then last year I was the president of Cal Berkeley Democrats and that was a wonderful experience and I learned so much. And over the summer I was the president of telegraph for people.”
Do you have a specific event either that happened to you personally or otherwise, that shaped your views as a person and as a political activist?
“I was thinking really hard about this question, and I'm kind of struggling to come up with something, because truly, it just feels like one thing after another, and they all kind of culminate, I changed my position on so many things so many times.
There are a lot of issues and a lot of moments that have fundamentally shaped the way that I think and see the world. And I think one of them is, and this is probably true for a lot of people, but something that laid the foundation for this kind of revolutionary hope idea that I strive for, that is at the forefront of how I think and see the world came about in the summer of 2020. I saw so many people throughout the country stand up and fight for what they believed in, in a way that I hadn't seen before. And as a result, we saw…policy change, saw rhetoric change in a really drastic way that reminded me of what I had studied about, you know, in the 1930s and the 1960s, and it all happened really quickly all at once.
And, seeing how that has changed over time and how now we're in 2024 and the political reality at local levels is completely different than it was in 2020. That moment just made it obvious that there is people power that can and will lead to change.
We just have to galvanize it and hold on to that hope. A better world as possible.”
Why did you decide to run for city council at this moment? And why do you think you personally will be the best person to hold this position?
“Yeah. So I know some of the people that have worked really hard to get District Seven to be a super-majority district. And, the reason for why that is, is to give students the direct representation that they deserve in the city of Berkeley.
Students make up a little less than a third of the entire population of the city. And we are drastically underrepresented in city hall and in commissions on the council. In meetings where our future and the decisions that directly affect us are being talked about. We don't have a seat at the table. We are the district that is consistently the most progressive district in terms of voting patterns in the entire city. And I really am so passionate about making sure that those voices are being represented at the local level.
And that progressivism and those values are being prioritized at the city level, especially because I think that they aren't at all right now. I mean right now there is no District 7 representative, there is absolutely nobody that is representing such a large percentage of the population. And so that kind of leads into why I decided to run. District 7 is 95% of students, mostly undergraduate students. The median age is 19 years old because the majority of the students in the district are in freshman dorms.
And so I strongly believe that somebody with strong ties to the undergraduate community, someone who has been there to fight for and represent those voices, especially those young progressive voices, should be in that seat. And at the end of the day, I'm not a politician in my future, I want to be a high school history teacher. I'm here because I really care about this community and I really care about it being represented correctly and holistically. And with the ties and kind of knowledge that I've gained over the years and I have the pleasure of having, I want to fight for my community and represent us.”
What changes would you most like to see enacted in the city of Berkeley, and what would be your priorities, if you got elected to the City Council position?
“Leading from my last answer, I want to work really hard to expand opportunities for students to be involved in Berkeley local government. And that means a lot of different things, that means bridging the gap between students and other residents. Both District 7, and the rest of the city, need to ensure that students are involved in every step of every decision-making process. And part of the reason why that isn't the case right now is because students have a lot going on and I don't blame them.
So I think that we need to be able to meet students where they are in order to get them involved. I want to increase the accessibility of the resources that people need in order to get involved. Local government can be really complicated and I want to help alleviate that gap that exists so that people, especially students who are humanities students that really care about these things but don't know where to place their energy, are able to find that place in local government.
I want to listen to my constituents and hold regular town hall meetings and office hours and meet with community and community organizations to make sure that District 7 residents are constantly being heard while also amplifying their voices, like I said earlier.
So that's one aspect of it. I'm personally really passionate about policing and public safety and addressing violence at the root causes rather than criminalizing it and incarcerating people. Something that I'm most excited about is pushing for a specialized and unarmed non-police response team to respond to noise complaints and other non-violent issues stemming from parties and social events. I would really like to see police not be the ones that show up to big parties when neighbors think that they're being too loud because that causes a divide between the community and the people who are supposed to be serving them. Especially since it causes fear in students who have had negative experiences and discriminatory experiences with police departments in the past. We also need to put more into investing in programs that are already de-policing public safety, such as the specialized care unit.
And then finally, I want to work with students who are facing homelessness, as students and other residents are facing homelessness at a really high rate. And I want to work to alleviate that by building more affordable housing for students and non-students alike. I want to work with the rent board to expand rent control and tenant protections while also expanding the accessibility of those. Most students don't know the many tenant protections that they have that they're able to use.
I also want to work to dismantle exclusionary zoning practices throughout the city that limit the construction of homes at low-income levels and continue to outsource our housing crisis to the most vulnerable parts of the city and to other cities. That was a lot of things, but those are some of the many things that need to be worked on.”
Since you’re looking to represent District 7, which is composed largely of students, how would you more specifically go about solving the student housing crisis?
“Yeah well like I said, dismantling the exclusionary zoning practices that originated in Berkeley, that inflated home prices in the wealthiest part of the city, while burdening the poorest parts of the city. In addressing the housing crisis, I would like to see that continue to change, as the City Council has been working on that. I'd also like to see more affordable housing. I want to work with the University to build more student housing, especially on more of the opportunity sites that they laid out, such as the parking garages, to build more student housing, to build more dorms that are affordable to students.
I want to work with the Rent Board, like I said, to expand rent control and tenant protections, pass the tenant right to organize and the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, both of which would provide more stability for tenants. And I want to work with the student government and other student leaders to make sure that students know what rights they have with their landlords and their housing situation. They have plenty of tenant protection that are hard to access or hard to know about.
I really want to work on spreading that information. I want to help provide support and stability to the Berkeley student cooperatives, which is a really important fundamental part of student housing, and work to be able to expand that opportunity to as many students as possible. And then in terms of interaction with our unhoused neighbors or other students, I want to fight against the criminalization of homelessness. Harmful sweeps of unhoused people, their belongings, and their pets. I want to work against the anti-homeless architecture that is all over our city and instead work to fund 24 -hour shelters, and 24-hour weather shelters, and build more permanent supportive housing.”
Do you have anything more you'd want to say about a particular issue?
“I mean the first thing that I can think of is spreading and sharing information. For example, the city of Berkeley has a program where if you participate in a city commission and are low income. which most students are, they can make 110 dollars per meeting, per commission meeting they attend. That's something that most students simply don't know is true, and this is not only a great way to get people more interested in city commissions, but also people who would otherwise want to, you know, volunteer for the city, but don't have the opportunity to because they're students and they're working, and they need to be able to pay their rent.
They otherwise can't participate, but with this information, they can. And that's just one example of many kinds of forms of participation that I want to help get and spread the information to students. Something that really inspired me was seeing how directly the things that I was learning in class, whether it be history or urban studies, could affect and build the environment around me. Living as a young person in Berkeley, the things that I was doing could directly affect the lives of many others in a positive way.
And I hope that can be communicated better and I am able to help bridge that gap both in knowledge and accessibility, but also in passion and feeling. What you’re doing is changing something, is doing something.”
Throughout my extensive interview with her, I could tell how passionate Cecilia was about the issues she has and wants to continue fighting for, and that feels rare to see in someone looking to be a local representative these days. Not only does she have a proven history of being the change she wants to see in the world, but also has a detailed plan for how she wishes to change the city that has accepted her within these last four years. She may just be 22 years old, but she has the legislative understanding of a seasoned policy expert while also maintaining the passion and drive that has had so many people get behind her message of progress.
Recently her establishment opponent, James Chang, was boosted by an Independent Expenditure from a PAC worth thousands and thousands of dollars. This is a lot of money for such a localized race, and it's because there are many in this district and beyond who do not want to see someone like Cecilia in power. They see her endorsements, the people power she has behind her, and want to do everything they can to keep her out of office.
Recently, District 4 representative Kate Harrison resigned from her seat because, as she claims: “Berkeley’s processes are broken and I cannot in good conscience continue to serve on this body”. Well, Former Representative Harrison has endorsed Cecilia for the District 7 seat, obviously seeing her as the kind of person we need to “unbreak” the governmental processes in this city.
With all that being said, do your duty, and vote for Cecilia at the YWCA at 2600 Bancroft Avenue by 8 P.M. on April 16. And if you are able to, donate to her campaign here.