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Working for Reform
Alumnus Tomas Evangelista Leads California Dreamers
Stanislaus State alumnus Tomas Evangelista has found his calling by helping others use their voice.
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Self-employed as the executive director of Evangelista Community Relations, the 2014 graduate is a Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and the co-founder of California Dreamers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping undocumented Californians speak out and push for immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship.
“Overall, I have a passion for making life better for our community,” he said. “Undocumented families are close to my heart, and I want to help them improve their lives.”
Abandoned by his father before he was born in Mexico, Evangelista’s mother brought him to the United States when he was 2 years old. A few years later, she died of cancer and he moved to Auburn to live with family members. He embraced the charming Sierra foothill town as his home, and the community returned the embrace; residents even raised funds to help him pay for his final semesters at Stan State.
“When you have that type of support from a community, you don’t want to go too far,” he said, explaining why he happily returned to his hometown after earning his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology.
The California Dreamers organization was born a few years later in response to statements President Trump made about undocumented immigrants. As a co-founder of the organization, Evangelista led members of the group to counter Trump’s rhetoric by using traditional and social media to tell their stories and show that they are not criminals or a financial drain.
In the course of his work, Evangelista met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris (a senator at the time) to advocate for passage of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. He also participated in a live Facebook interview with company founder Mark Zuckerberg to discuss the impact of Trump’s decision to end DACA, which was later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
With a new administration in Washington, Evangelista believes the time is right for California Dreamers to renew its efforts. Being patient and hoping the DREAM Act finally passes is the wrong approach, he said.
“During the last years of the Obama administration, I think we just fell asleep as Dreamers,” he said. “We thought it would all fall into place and it didn’t. Yes, Obama issued DACA, and we had more opportunity, but we should have been more vocal. So that is what I’ll be doing with our group.”
Evangelista is also looking for ways Dreamers can build clout within the California Democratic Party, perhaps as delegates, so that they have a stronger voice in party platform issues.
In addition to leading California Dreamers, Evangelista worked with the Latino Leadership Council on mental health, homelessness and other issues until 2019, when he started his firm. His business quickly picked up contracts to educate residents of ten counties about the 2020 U.S. Census and the importance of responding to Census surveys.
When the Census contracts ended, his firm pivoted to working for five candidates in two highly competitive Placer County school board races. It also provided grant-funded, non-partisan youth voter outreach. By focusing on lower-income and diverse areas of the county where voter registration was historically low, his firm helped boost the county’s voter registration to an estimated 95 percent of eligible voters.
— TOMAS EVANGELISTA
At the height of the campaign season, he had 15 employees on his payroll. After the November election, however, the work slowed, and he started thinking about his next steps. Interested in law school, he began studying for the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) and says he may be making the switch from business owner to law student in the fall.
“It would mean taking a chance, just like others have done before me,” he said. “We often think things are out of reach, but if we take chances, show up, put the work in and ask for help when we need it, I think we can get anywhere.”
From Left to Right: Tomas Evangelista and colleagues met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg.
From Left to Right: Evangelista meets with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
