Rebecca Kaplan was born in Ontario, Canada and grew up living with a universal healthcare system, in a family and community which encouraged her to fight for the rights of workers. Stories about the history of worker abuses and the fight for worker rights, such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, as well as people giving their lives for social justice, such as the murder of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were part of Rebecca's upbringing and inform her values.
Rebecca attended MIT as an undergraduate, where she was actively involved in organizing for women’s rights and reproductive freedom, LGBT equality, and part of the successful effort to get her campus to divest from apartheid-era South Africa. She volunteered on the re-election campaign of Senator Kennedy and worked for the City of Cambridge Commission on the Status of Women. Rebecca obtained her law degree from Stanford Law School, where she had the opportunity to learn from teachers like Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) and became involved in advocacy for prisoner rights and against mass incarceration. She worked in Oakland as a tenant’s rights attorney and advocate and helped pass “Just Cause for Eviction” on the ballot. She served for over seven years on the AC Transit Board of Directors, an elected position, and expanded late night bus service, opposed outsourcing, expanded bike-transit connections, solar power, and sustainable fuel initiatives.
Rebecca now serves as Oakland’s citywide elected Councilmember, elected November 2008, and was unanimously selected by her colleagues to be President of the Oakland City Council in January 2019 and unanimously selected to be Vice Mayor in 2021. Rebecca serves on the Alameda County Transportation Commission, which represents all the local government agencies and transit providers in the Bay Area. She led her colleagues in successfully passing the 2019-2021 budget with increased investments to combat the homeless crisis, create and preserve affordable housing, maintain Oakland's parks, and tackle illegal blight remediation. The budget also restored cuts to Parks Maintenance positions and increased funding around police accountability and workforce development. Kaplan is Oakland's first openly-LGBT elected official and has successfully fought for support for LGBT youth programs, to end discriminatory laws, and to support community leadership in boards, commissions, and community-based organizations.
