Treva Reid is a community leader, advocate, and overcomer. She was raised in a family of educators, entrepreneurs, civil servants, and laborers with a deep respect for hard work. Treva’s passion to serve stems from growing up in a large civically engaged family where her great-grandmother’s political activism informed their values. As a young single mother in college working multiple jobs, she leveraged strengths from her upbringing to provide for her daughter and graduate from Hampton University.

Treva has a tenacious determination to overcome seemingly impossible situations. Her personal experience with childhood trauma, gun violence, domestic abuse, poverty, and housing instability motivates her passion to fight for justice and challenge unfair practices.

Beyond passion, Treva has the leadership skills and policy experience necessary to protect and prioritize Oakland residents who have experienced poverty, disparities, and cycles of inequity.

As a Senior Field Representative for then Assemblymember (now State Senator) Nancy Skinner, Treva advocated for housing policies, gun violence prevention, job training programs, legislation for incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated individuals, and other critical efforts in support of her neighbors in East Oakland.

A lifelong Democrat, Treva serves as an Associate for Assembly District 18 on the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee and is an Emerge California Alumna. She is also a ministry leader at Shiloh Church in Oakland and engaged in numerous community partnerships.

I’m a proud son of Oakland -- educated in Oakland public schools before going to Morehouse College and law school at Loyola University of Chicago Law School. After law school, I founded a community legal clinic, and represented churches, non-profit organizations, and 100’s of homeowners fighting to save their homes from the big banks. I represented cities and counties on economic development projects promoting  job creation through a green clean energy economy. The renewable energy software company I founded makes underserved neighborhoods the owners of the technology of our energy future.

People on the streets of East Oakland are running out of hope. The city government that's supposed to represent them is far away, detached, and has long since run out of energy and urgency. Today, our kids just expect the constant threat of homelessness to hang over the heads of their family and friends. They thinks it's normal to walk past huge piles of trash on every corner, and abandoned cars on every block. They think "parks" are places where the homeless sleep and criminals congregate. They think these things because we've allowed it. We haven't given them the freedom to know and expect better, from life and from the people at the top who are supposed to have their backs.

I've spent my adult life in public service trying to shape that better world for the next generation -- going to court day after day against the big banks for families who are just trying to stay in their homes, going into the schools as a teacher to not only teach and mentor, but to listen to our young people and hear their struggles and their dreams for the future from their own mouths. They deserve to know that in a world better than the one we've given them, their government will listen, and then their government will act.

So what's my "political philosophy"? There's a lot of labels getting thrown around in politics right now, and I reject them all. My philosophy is that government must listen, and then must act. I've had the opportunity to do a lot of listening since moving back to my hometown after law school. Now, if I'm elected, I promise to make the most of the opportunity to act on all I've learned from my fellow East Oaklanders. My platform reflects what they've told me we need as a community, and if elected I pledge to: