“We take care of the city. It’s time the city took care of us.”

For generations, our neighborhoods have powered Los Angeles—working the toughest jobs, raising families, and building culture. But too often, we’ve been overlooked. We’re organizing for safer streets, affordable homes, and a government that shows up for the people who keep this city moving. That’s why I’m running for City Council District 9.

Estuardo with child on shoulders

I’m running because I believe Los Angeles should work for the people who make it run—workers, parents, immigrants, and neighbors like mine in South Central.

I’ve spent decades organizing alongside my community, winning protections against displacement, raising wages, and demanding resources stay where they’re earned.

This city raised me, and now I’m raising my daughter here. I want her—and every child—to grow up in a city that values dignity, safety, and belonging.

I’m not here to manage decline. I’m here to build a Los Angeles rooted in justice, joy, and the power of community.


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Endorsements

  • Kenneth Mejia

    Los Angeles City Controller

  • Karla Griego

    Los Angeles School District Board Member

Our campaign fights to:

  • In South Central, thousands of immigrant families live with the daily fear of detention or separation - an anxiety made worse by escalating federal enforcement.

    This plan strengthens real protections so families can live their lives without threat or intimidation. It fortifies sanctuary ordinances, bars cooperation between local agencies and ICE, designates city buildings as safe zones, and creates a rapid-response office with a 24/7 hotline to support families during enforcement actions. It expands legal representation so residents have the counsel they need in immigration hearings, and increases language access through multilingual navigators who help people obtain services, benefits, and protections without fear. It also provides direct support to families affected by raids through emergency rent relief, trauma-informed mental-health care, and citywide Know Your Rights outreach. Finally, it strengthens economic security for immigrant workers and small businesses by simplifying street-vending permits, reducing burdensome fees, adding a dedicated Small Business Deputy, enforcing labor protections, and cracking down on wage theft.

    This is a comprehensive approach to ensuring immigrant families in District 9 can live safely, participate fully, and build stable, thriving lives in the community they call home.

    Read our full Immigrant Rights policy

  • Council District 9 has the second-highest number of unhoused residents in the city - not by accident, but because decades of racist housing policies, rising rents, underfunded mental-health care, and failed “move-along” policing strategies pushed families to the brink with nowhere to go. This plan treats homelessness as a housing and health crisis, not a criminal one.

    It keeps people housed by strengthening tenant protections, expanding rental assistance, creating a dedicated Department of Tenants’ Rights, and targeting support to families, seniors, youth, LGBTQ+ residents, and people exiting institutions. It scales up mental-health care, substance-use treatment, and outreach teams that meet people where they are with dignity, medical support, hygiene services, and real pathways indoors. And it accelerates the construction of interim, permanent, and permanently affordable housing—modernizing public housing, converting motels, repurposing vacant buildings, and building supportive housing with clear timelines, stronger services, and accountability. Finally, it restores public trust by demanding transparent tracking of every homelessness dollar and ensuring that investments actually house people, stabilize neighborhoods, and serve the communities hit hardest.

    Read our full Homelessness policy

  • For generations, South Central residents have built a vibrant economy of small businesses, vendors, makers, caregivers, and workers - often in spite of city policy, not because of it. While other parts of Los Angeles have received hundreds of millions in public investment, Council District 9 has been consistently underfunded, overburdened, and displaced by development that rarely benefits the community.

    This plan changes that. It directs real resources to the neighborhoods that have long been ignored by expanding support for local businesses and street vendors, protecting community-serving storefronts, and investing in worker-centered industries like green manufacturing, garment production, and cooperatives. It reinvests wealth generated here - whether from sports venues, car dealerships, or major institutions - back into our community to fund affordable housing, green space, and complete streets. And it puts people at the center of economic development by strengthening pathways into union jobs, raising wages, expanding benefits, improving access to education and childcare, and supporting residents reentering the workforce.

    This is a blueprint for an economy rooted in dignity, local ownership, and community prosperity.

    I became an organizer to fight for working people. It’s what I’ve done for two decades and it’s exactly what I’ll do on City Council. We need to invest in the public goods that make families strong: affordable childcare, housing working people can afford, and transit options that connect us to opportunity. 

    The Los Angeles we’re building cracks down on corporate landlords who price gouge our communities and protects tenants, making sure no one has to work multiple jobs just to keep the lights on.

    Read our full Economic Justice policy

  • For decades, South Central families have lived with the consequences of pollution, disinvestment, and environmental racism - freeways cutting through our neighborhoods, factories next to our homes, and some of the worst air quality in the nation. Working parents are still asking the same question I ask as a father: What kind of future are we leaving our children?

    This climate agenda meets that urgency with action. It commits Los Angeles to a clean-energy future by holding LADWP to its 2035 goals, expanding community solar for renters, investing in battery storage and microgrids, and modernizing buildings so families can breathe cleaner air and pay lower utility bills. It transforms polluted industrial areas into hubs for good, green, union jobs and builds real training pipelines so local workers - not outsiders - benefit from the clean-energy economy. And it makes our neighborhoods safer and healthier by planting thousands of trees, expanding parks, retrofitting playgrounds for extreme heat, upgrading homes, strengthening tenant protections, improving air quality, and creating climate-resilient streets designed for people. Finally, it tackles food injustice head-on with bold approaches to grow food locally, explore a public grocery store, reduce food waste, and bring healthy food closer to families. This is a vision for a cleaner, safer, more resilient South Central - one where every family can thrive.

    Read our full Climate Justice policy

  • For too long, South Central families have watched corruption at City Hall rob our community of power. Scandals, bribery, pay-to-play politics, and backroom deals have left District 9 with the lowest voter turnout in the city because people reasonably feel the system is rigged against them.

    This plan is about breaking that cycle. It strengthens campaign-finance rules so big donors and special interests no longer decide who represents us, expands public financing so working families - not developers or lobbyists - shape our elections, and bans the money and influence that have distorted city policy for years. It restores integrity by tightening conflict-of-interest rules, enforcing serious anti-corruption standards, and creating independent oversight that can investigate wrongdoing without political interference. And it rebuilds our democracy from the ground up by expanding council representation, protecting immigrant families in civic spaces, and ensuring government looks like and serves the residents of South Central.

    The goal is simple: a government that is honest, accountable, and finally works for the people…not the powerful.

    Read our full Good Government policy

  • Families in South Central are being pushed out of the neighborhoods they built - rent hikes, no-fault evictions, unsafe conditions, and predatory landlords exploiting a broken system. With nearly three-quarters of District 9 residents renting, and more than half already rent-burdened, people are working multiple jobs just to stay housed while rents and home prices soar. USC’s expansion has added even more pressure by pushing thousands of students into surrounding neighborhoods without providing enough on-campus housing, driving up rents and displacing longtime residents.

    This plan takes on the crisis at its roots: building deeply affordable housing at scale, fully enforcing tenant protections, preserving existing affordable homes, and holding powerful institutions accountable. It invests in public and social housing, accelerates affordable housing production, strengthens renter protections and code enforcement, expands community ownership models, stops displacement, and protects residents from exploitative rent-by-the-bed student housing. And it demands that USC finally do its part by building more student housing, ending harmful off-campus models, and prioritizing land for affordable homes.

    The goal is simple and urgent: a South Central where every family can afford to stay, build stability, and thrive.

    Read our full Housing policy

  • South Central’s cultural legacy is unmatched - from the Dunbar Hotel to the Central Avenue Jazz Festival - yet the artists and creative workers who built that legacy are being priced out of the city they helped define. Our plan protects our cultural heritage and invests in the people who keep it alive.

    It expands affordable housing options for artists, secures permanent creative spaces, and reforms grants so small cultural groups can actually access support. It builds real pathways into entertainment and union careers, bringing good jobs back to South Central by cutting red tape and revitalizing local industrial sites for film, TV, and post-production. And it strengthens community arts by funding third spaces, improving arts education, supporting the Historic South LA Black Cultural District, and making cultural programs accessible to every resident. This is a vision for a district where creativity is honored, protected, and used to build good jobs and strong communities.

    Read our full Arts & Culture policy

  • South Central has always been a working-class community, yet decades of deindustrialization, disinvestment, and unchecked corporate practices have left workers with deteriorating infrastructure, unsafe conditions, rising costs, and too little economic security.

    This plan strengthens the rights, wages, and protections that working families deserve. It supports union organizing across the city, expands worker education on their rights, and ensures tenants can stay housed so economic pressure cannot be used to silence workers. It pushes for higher wages, stronger benefits, safe workplaces, and protections against discrimination, wage theft, and retaliation - especially for women, LGBTQ+ workers, seniors, undocumented workers, and people with records. It calls for accessible healthcare, mental-health supports, safer conditions for outdoor workers, and clear enforcement against employers who violate labor laws. And it prepares for the future by ensuring emerging technologies like AI strengthen - not replace - workers, expanding job-training pipelines, modernizing job-retention protections, and advancing pro-labor policies at every level of government.

    This is a commitment to rebuilding a labor economy where workers are protected, valued, and able to build stable, dignified lives in the communities they serve.

    Read our full Workers’ Rights policy

  • South Central has a long, proud LGBTQ+ history - from Black and brown drag culture to legendary nightlife rooted in queer resistance and joy. Today, that legacy is threatened by a federal administration openly targeting LGBTQ+ rights.

    This plan protects LGBTQ+ Angelenos - especially youth, trans residents, and queer communities of color - by strengthening civil-rights enforcement, expanding legal protections against discrimination, and ensuring city policies reflect the realities LGBTQ+ residents face. It increases access to affordable and LGBTQ-affirming housing, invests in senior housing and interim housing for queer youth experiencing homelessness, and expands mental-health supports and crisis response rooted in cultural competency. It brings queer arts, film, and programming directly into South Central and ensures that LGBTQ+ nonprofits and youth services have a real footprint in the district. And it improves healthcare access by supporting prevention programs, expanding PrEP and DoxyPEP availability, and training clinic staff to deliver affirming care.

    This policy builds a district where LGBTQ+ residents are safe, supported, and able to thrive without leaving the neighborhoods they call home.

    Read our full LGBTQ+ Rights policy

  • The 2028 Olympic Games will bring global attention and billions in revenue to Los Angeles, but without strong protections, they could also fuel displacement, deepen inequality, and increase policing in neighborhoods that are already overburdened.

    This plan makes sure South Central residents shape the decisions that affect them. It calls for a co-governance structure where labor leaders, neighborhood organizations, and working families have real authority over Olympic planning, with the power to approve major decisions and enforce safeguards. It strengthens labor standards so Olympic jobs are union jobs with living wages, ensures small businesses and street vendors benefit from tourism, and prevents companies with labor violations from profiting. It defends immigrant communities with community-designed safety plans, pushes for a halt to ICE enforcement during the Games, and demands protections for immigrant workers. And it confronts displacement pressures by expanding tenant outreach, restricting short-term rentals, securing housing investments from Olympic stakeholders, and prioritizing affordable housing near venues.

    The platform also reinvests Olympic revenue into green space, parks, community recreation, and long-term transportation improvements that serve residents year-round, not just visitors.

    Read our full Olympics platform

  • Public safety should mean feeling secure walking to school, waiting for the bus, or spending time in a neighborhood park, not just responding to crime after it happens.

    In South Central, decades of underinvestment have left too many families navigating unsafe streets, limited services, and an overreliance on police for issues better handled by mental-health teams, social workers, and community responders.

    This plan invests in approaches that prevent harm before it occurs: expanding unarmed crisis response for mental-health and non-emergency calls, strengthening community-based violence prevention, and building a Department of Community Safety to coordinate proven alternatives like CIRCLE, GRYD, and UMCR. It prioritizes faster and higher-quality emergency response for serious violent and property crimes while shifting lower-level issues - like dumping or trespassing - to trained unarmed teams. It advances trauma-informed strategies to address human trafficking, domestic violence, and gun violence, and expands survivor-centered services and youth protections.

    The platform also tackles the design of unsafe streets by accelerating investments in lighting, safe crossings, school-zone protections, traffic calming, and transit safety. And it strengthens supports for immigrant and LGBTQ+ residents, ensuring sanctuary protections, inclusive crisis response, and access to essential services.

    Together, these measures build a public-safety system rooted in prevention, dignity, and community trust—one that keeps families safe in ways that reflect the realities and strengths of South Central.

    Read our full Public Safety policy

  • South Central’s Black communities shaped Los Angeles’ culture and history, yet continue to face severe housing pressures, a deep racial wealth gap, and long-standing disinvestment.

    This platform focuses on closing those gaps with concrete, community-driven action. It prioritizes keeping Black families rooted in their neighborhoods by expanding affordable and permanently affordable housing, enforcing voucher and tenant protections, revitalizing public housing, and creating real pathways to homeownership through ADUs, lot splits, and community ownership models. It strengthens Black-owned small businesses through a district accelerator, rent and permitting support, and new job pipelines in clean energy and emerging industries.

    It also confronts stark health disparities by expanding bias training in clinics, improving Black maternal health, increasing access to healthy food - including exploring a public grocery store - and converting vacant lots into community gardens.

    Safety is approached as a public-health issue: strengthening the Office of Race & Equity, expanding violence-interruption programs, investing in youth mentorship, and upgrading infrastructure in the high-injury corridors that disproportionately harm Black pedestrians and cyclists. The plan finishes with a commitment to climate justice - phasing out urban oil drilling, expanding tree canopy and cooling infrastructure, upgrading pools into resilience centers, and bringing more green space to historically Black neighborhoods.

    Read our full Racial Justice policy

  • South Central has some of the most dangerous streets and longest commutes in Los Angeles. This plan makes mobility a matter of racial and economic justice - ensuring residents can move safely and affordably without being displaced.

    It calls for fare-free buses, faster and more reliable Metro service, bus-only lanes, protected bike lanes, and a major expansion of sidewalks, lighting, and shade across the district. Safety is strengthened through unarmed transit ambassadors, better mental-health crisis response, school-zone speed limits, more crossing guards, and self-enforcing street designs that reduce crashes without increasing policing.

    The plan links transportation to housing justice by protecting tenants near new transit investments, building affordable homes by stations, and supporting small businesses along major corridors. It invests in green infrastructure: planting thousands of trees, activating vacant lots, upgrading bus stops, and adding community-serving public space.

    Finally, it prepares for the future by expanding zero-emission transit, building a clean-energy jobs pipeline, and requiring autonomous vehicle companies to pay into the neighborhood infrastructure they rely on.

    Read our full Transportation policy

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