Aproaching
Act i v i s m Act i v i s m
When Paula Perez frst moved from the bustling streets of Oaxaca to the sunny sprawl of Mountain View, California, everything was different and strange. The majority of people spoke in English rather than Spanish. The governmental and educational systems, which she would have to navigate, were completely alien to her. But Perez wasn’t scared… she was excited: “when I arrived in Mountain View it was unknown. But at the same time, I felt like
“Oh… I like the atmosphere!”
Perez was originally a newcomer to Mountain View, but since then she has risen to a leadership role within her cSWWommunity. She was part of the movement that pushed for rent control, and continues to fght for affordable housing. And she worked tirelessly during the Covid-19 pandemic to support those who were struggling. She is an activist, a community servant, and a volunteer; motivated by her compassion and worry for others.
The Latino community in California is huge and interconnected, but somewhat isolated from the greater Bay Area community. They work different jobs, and live in different neighborhoods than other groups in California. Many feel nervous interacting with the government because of their documentation status. This community needs leaders like Sra. Perez paving the way to connect them to the established institutions, so that they can enjoy the same freedoms and resources as everyone else.
Like most Mexican immigrants, Perez came to the US. with one specifc goal:
“I wanted my children to go to college”
Motivated by this dream, she enrolled them in a local bilingual school, Castro Elementary and started going to meetings, trying to get involved with her child’s education. There was only one problem: the school meetings were held in English. “I noticed that many Hispanic families didn’t come to school, didn’t come to meetings, to events” (Perez). A school that champoined bilinguality, and yet all the important information was shared in English. Perez went to the bilingual teachers and asked: “Maestro, I came to the
meeting yesterday, but I didn’t understand much of what they were talking about?” (Perez) after they brought her up to speed in Spanish, Perez started reaching out to the latino community, wondering why they weren’t getting involved with the school. The parents told her they didn’t come to the meetings because:
“We need translation, we need childcare”
Seeing they were having the same problems she did, Perez pushed the district to implement translation and childcare during meetings. Afterwards, Latino parents started becoming more involved with the school.
Through her involvement with the school, Paula Perez met a woman named Marilu, a local community activist. She invited Perez to join her advocacy group, the Community Action Team or CAT for short. They advocated around the Mountain View Whisman school district. They would convince the district to add traffc lights or security— little changes that would have the biggest impacts on their kids health, safety and education. Perez refects, “[Marilu was] like a guide for us in leadership…she taught us many things. Like we should always go kindly, with education, we’re not going to shout, we’re not going to insult, we always have to ask with respect”.
Through the advocacy of these women, Castro Elementary School was becoming a place for Latino voices to be heard. Perez and others got involved with the goal of helping their children but then ended up helping their whole community. Tania O’Connel, a parent at Castro and Paula’s friend, explains, “what has been really amazing to see is how the schools have become a hub for empowerment and for activism”because
“once moms get together in public schools…they become a force.”
Since Perez learned from Marilu how to speak for the issues of her community, it prepared her for the challenges to come.
In 2014, housing prices and rent in Mountain View skyrocketed. “The Housing Affordability Index
(HAI)1 for California was 30 percent in the third quarter of 2014, down from 32 percent a year earlier” (Appleton-Young). The (HAI)1 calculates the “percent of households that can afford to purchase a median-priced home” (Appleton-Young). This price jump was even worse for latino renters, as rent raises always rush to get ahead of local infation. People who had had stability before, were being evicted overnight. Perez remembers Hispanic kids coming to school “sometimes crying, saying Oh, they’re kicking us out of the apartment, we have to leave, we don’t know where.” (Perez). Perez thought the evictions felt so unjust that there must be a solution.
And there was: other cities such as San Jose and East Palo Alto had already implemented rent control laws to help renters keep their homes. Perez and others thought,
“Well, let’s start the fght for rent control”.
But there was immediate backlash. People told them “you guys are crazy, that’s not going to happen in Mountain View!’(Perez)’ But Perez’s group thought “why not?” they won’t know if it will work until they try. So they started gathering people, organizing themselves, and protesting. At the marches Paula Perez met a man named Anthony Chang, another leader[b] who works in non-profts, who would help her later on. Their little group was joined by others and it became bigger, and bigger, and in 2016 the city of Mountain View passed measure V, creating the rent stabilization division which would support renters through future crises (“Housing”).
With this success under her belt, and with her love of education, Perez attended many educational adult programs. One of these was the Spanish Language Civic Leadership Academy. This was a program hosted by the Mountain View government to teach Spanish speakers about the workings of government, so that they could increase their civic participation (“Spanish Lang”). Here, Perez got to know Anthony Chang, who was involved with activism and government[c]. But most important of all, Perez says, “He has a huge heart and he’s also very wise”. Through this program Perez strengthened her connections with the local government and activists, always keeping her community and family in mind.
Then in 2019, Perez’s activism came to an
abrupt halt. Covid hit, and everyone had to shelter-inplace. “We didn’t know how everything was going to go,”(Perez) says Paula Perez. If the pandemic “would last a short time, a long time.”(Perez) [d]And, according to an article in the California state controller, “While the job losses were widespread, they were greatest in industries that involve people coming in close contact” (Ansell). Many Latinos in California work jobs where you must be in person, like: leisure and hospitality, retail, child and healthcare (US bureau of labor stats[e]). Latinos experienced unproportional job loss during the pandemic.
“So...
it was chaos,”
says Perez. “It was very sad, very sad because the schools closed, jobs closed, families were left with nothing”. Through her continued attendance of school Zoom meetings, Perez kept hearing terrible stories of hunger, loss, and abuse. The government was giving checks to the unemployed, but many Latino families were not getting their checks. “The poorest, those who didn’t know how to handle technology, those who didn’t have an email, didn’t make their applications” (Perez). And their situations kept getting worse. Others did not apply because they were afraid, they thought the government would charge them, “and how am I going to pay?” (Perez). Many Latinos had a fear of the government because of their undocumented status.
“You need a Social Security number, you need an address, like you need to be in the system [to get these benefts],”
says Tania O’Connel. Seeing this struggle to get unemployment checks, Perez and her friends tried their best to help these families one-by-one, making them emails, navigating them through the system. But it wasn’t enough.
One day Anthony Chang reached out to them again, asking how they were doing. “And we told him it’s chaos, very bad… and he says ‘oh, well, I have an idea.’”. Anthony’s wife had received a $10,000 bonus from working on covid tests, and their family had decided to donate it. But Chang wouldn’t settle for any charity, he wanted the money to have a direct impact on those struggling in the community. And that is why he went to Perez, a strong leader, directly connected to the vulnerable members of the community. Paula Perez was shocked by the offer, she remembers thinking
“‘Wow, is this a miracle?’... to give away $10,000 today?”
But Chang was trusting them to distribute the money throughout the community, so they got to work.
“We decided that we were going to distribute that money among 20 families giving each family $500”.
Which was just enough to pay for necessities like toiletries and food. Perez was noticing how the money could really help these families. “We distributed the money to those families and we asked them please write a thank-you letter” (Perez). With the cards they had the material to invite more people “to invite my friends and neighbors who want to be supportive with the families” This model, relying on the solidarity of the community to raise money, was really working.
After doing this for a while, Chang proposed that they form a nonproft organization. But Perez was reluctant— she had no experience working in nonprofts, and had no career in the United States. But Chang told her “you have a relationship that many people don’t have, a relationship of trust, a relationship of empathy with the whole community” (Perez). don’t underestimate the value of that. “You tend to hear about Doctors Without Borders or Habitat for Humanity and these huge, huge nonproft organizations that do a lot of good work for humanity.” Says Tania O’Connel, what you don’t hear about is “this type of local hyper local activism”. Which can actually have some of the biggest impacts on the neediest individuals. Perez and Chang created their organization and named it: El Fondo de Solidaridad or, in english “The solidarity fund”.
Now that El Fondo de Solidaridad was an offcial non-proft, they were able to apply for bigger donations. When the federal government started the American Rescue Fund and gave money to California to boost the economy, the solidarity fund applied. They didn’t know what they were getting into. “1
million” dollars Perez whispers, “1 million to distribute to the community of Mountain View”
She remarks that what surprised her even more than the amount of money, was how quickly it got used and distributed.
Now the latino community is on the mend after covid. But Perez and her friends in CAT are still hard at work, distributing tests, masks, and registering people for the vaccine.
Perez refects that through the pandemic, “We became more resilient, stronger…
more empowered to say [that] no matter what happens, we have to keep going. We have to support each other as a community. And above all, set an example for our children”.
Perez’s children are all grown up now. She recalls, back when her son was in middle school, a friend told him he couldn’t go to college because he wasn’t born in the US. Heartbroken, Perez assured him that he could, that they would fnd a way. Now, her son has graduated from college, and the others are sure to follow. Her children’s future was the original reason she began advocating. And now that she isn’t so busy with the pandemic, she has more time to impart wisdom to her younger children. “I know that right now they may not pay much attention to everything I do because they are young”, Perez muses wistfully,.
“Someday I hope they will do something like I do for others”.
About the author
Lilllian Husky is currently a junior at Mountain View High School . When she was youger, she attended mistral elementary, formerly known as Castro Elementary. There, she learned more spanish than they teach you in all 7 years of middleschool and highschool. Lillian enjoys art, and hopes to bring awareness to the beatifull and inspiring things happening in everyday life.
