I come about my love for public transit naturally. I have always believed that people should live in dense and diverse cities. That requires public transit. I grew up in San Francisco in the ‘50s and ‘60s and it had adequate public transit. My mother was French and I would visit my maternal grandparents in Paris. Paris has real public transit – the most dense metro system in the world with trains every 90 seconds; buses every 4 minutes.
I grew up in San Francisco and attended Notra Dame des Victoirs, a French-American Catholic school (where I was the only protestant).
My parents were divorced when I was quite young and I was raised by my mother, a first generation feminist and chemist. I got involved in my first political campaign, Jack Kennedy’s run for president, when I was in elementary school.
I went to Riordan high school in San Francisco (again, as one of few protestants). Even in elementary school, I was active in the early civil rights movement. That continued in high school and broadened into strong support for Cesar Chavez’s then relatively new farm worker movement.
Through my Presbyterian church I became active in the antiwar movement shortly after I started high school and stayed in that movement through beginning of law school and the end of the Viet Nam war in 1975.
I went to Crown College at the University of California Santa Cruz the first year it opened. I considered doing a special major in urban studies but decided again instead to major in Politics. It was basically a major in political theory, studying everyone from the pre-Aristotelian Greek irrationalists through Hobbs & Locke to modern political philosophers like Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Jack Schaar and Sheldon Wolin (Jerry Brown’s favorite professor at Cal.). My primary professor was Peter Euben, who had studied under Wolin and Schaar. I was extremely active in the antiwar movement, serving on the strike committees in the springs of 1969 and 1970. In 1970 I served on the UC wide strike committee. I was also on work-study my entire time at UCSC
I worked my way through college with a teamster union blue-collar job (Brewers, Malsters and Yeast Workers, Local 893) during the summers and continued that job for about five years after college, while being very active in progressive politics in San Francisco. I took about a year off to wander around Europe on a Eurail pass. I served on the Board of the UC Santa Cruz Alumni Association for about 15 years.
I went to Hastings Law school, took all the labor law classes I could and worked for the Educational Employment Relations board at the recommendation of my labor law professor, Joseph Grodin, who later became a California Supreme Court justice. I served on the Board of the Hastings Public Interest Law Foundation for about 10 years after I graduated
I tried to get a job in labor law, but the only ones that were available were with management side firms and I refused to work for such a firm. I spent most of my 33 year career practicing complex business litigation for money and doing political in some environmental work pro bono. For 16 years I was the general counsel of the united Alameda Democratic Campaign, Alameda County North. I was a good lawyer, but very bad at being paid for my work.
I am very active in local community issues, serving on the Board of my local neighborhood group, being active in campaigns every election season, serving on the Board of Operation Sentinel, the Oakland fair housing agency, the Center For the Study of Race, Crime and Social Policy of Cornell University, two Charter Revision Commissions, the Oakland Ethics Commission and as the first administrative assistant to Councilmember Mary Moore.
In 1997 I was appointed to fill out the term of my friend John Woodbury as an At-Large Director of AC Transit. I have been elected and reelected to that position six times. My fellow Board members have elected me as president 5 times and I have chaired every committee on the Board. I have been the lead director on AC’s zero emission bus work and our environmental justice in transportation work. I have helped guide AC through three recessions, including the “Great Recession” of 2008 – 2010. Useful for these times.
I have chaired or co-chared the last 4 AC Transit parcel taxes, each of which passed with more than a 2/3rds vote.
I have worked on every “self help” county transportation sales tax in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties for the past 30 years. I worked on the first Alameda County transportation sales tax (1986’s Measure “B”) and helped get 11% of that tax for AC Transit. 2014’s Measure BB which allowed AC Transit to do a substantial increase in service.
In Contra Costa County I represented all four bus transit agencies on the Contra Costa Transportation Authority in the drafting of Measure “X” and worked with environmental, labor and social j ustice advocates to get as much for bus transit as we could. Measure “X” failed. I worked with the same coalition on March 2020’s Measure “J”’s follow up. It was much better for bus transit that Measure “X.” I worked on that campaign mostly in West County, where “J” passed by more than 2/3rds. Unfortunately it failed in the rest of the County.
For the last 20 years I have participated in the prestigious TRB (the Transportation Research Board) Conference and am a "friend" of its Alternative Fuels, Environmental Justice in Transportation and Public Involvement Committees. I also attend, and have been a speaker at, other national and international transportation conferences. I have served as a bridge between the academic community and AC Transit (primarily thorough the TRB (the Transportation Research Board) and ITS (Institute for Transportation Studies) at UC Berkeley and UC Davis).
