Political Privilege, Pipelines and Pollution

(Editor’s note: The author has contributed to the Sandra Celedon for Assembly campaign.)

Turns out the privilege that sees mediocre students ushered into top colleges as legacy admissions and weak-minded adults into positions of power isn’t limited to white people. Privilege takes on many forms, including a political variant, and it breeds cowardice.

Unqualified, inexperienced people are handed the reins of power. They then bluster their way through critically important policy issues, led by the flattery of lobbyists and money from campaign donors. They make damaging decisions for which they are rarely held accountable and feel pretty damn good about themselves in the process.

As a backer of Sandra Celedon in the race to replace Joaquin Arambula in State Assembly District 31, himself a prime example of political privilege as the son of former Assembly Member Juan Arambula, I’m struck by the political privilege her two Democratic opponents, Annalisa Perea and Esmeralda Hurtado, have built their short political careers on. (And I’m very impressed that the Arambula family is backing long-time community organizer Celedon.)

Like her brother, Henry T. (Perea 2.0), before her, Annalisa (Perea 3.0) rode the coattails of their father, Henry R. (Perea 1.0), into elected office, thanks to name recognition and her father’s campaign fundraising efforts, er, guidance. Now, after just one term as a community college trustee and two years as a part-time Fresno City Council member, she says she’s ready to serve in the state capital. Lucky us.

Esmeralda Hurtado, meanwhile, after just one term on the Sanger City Council, also deems herself worthy of the statehouse and is likewise counting on family connections, those of sister State Senator Melissa Hurtado, to carry her to victory. Their major supporters aren’t backing the individuals but the brand.

A better term for this would be political inbreeding. It produces seriously flawed politicians, like royal lineages of old, and the people who pay the price are their constituents, like peasants of old. And leaders’ seeming contempt for the masses is the same.

Consider south Fresno. Political pipelines have dealt these densely populated neighborhoods deadly blows of pollution and poverty for decades, and Perea 3.0 is following in her father’s footsteps in doing so.

Perea 1.0, who now sits on the High Speed Rail Authority board, left a City Council legacy that included the creation of new, heavy industrial developments along Elm Avenue (“South Fresno Community versus Industrial Pollution,” Community Alliance, June 2021). He then followed up as a paid lobbyist for those landowners and developers in 2023 (“The Rite of Fresno: Composing a Rezone,” October 2023) seeking to restore their right to pollute that had been removed through resident-led efforts.

Now, an unbroken, two-generation legacy of Perea pollution is taking shape as a trucking business displaced by high-speed rail construction seeks to relocate next to Orange Center, a small community overrun by trucks from newly built industrial warehousing.

The rail authority directed the company to relocate to the site north of a rural elementary school, and the matter is to come before the City Council, after having been bumped from the Aug. 13 meeting agenda. It does not look good for residents opposed to further diesel pollution. At no point has either Perea argued on the side of community health protections.

On the contrary, a year ago Perea 3.0 stood with the Fresno Chamber of Commerce in opposition to Assembly Bill 98, which, according to Frank Lopez’s reporting in the Business Journal, “would mandate buffer zones between new logistics warehouse developments and residential areas, and restrict truck routes to and from such facilities…Development in an industrial zone will have new standards…Sensitive receptors include private residences, schools, daycare facilities, public owned parks and playgrounds, nursing homes and hospitals.”

Perea 3.0 thought the buffer zones between diesel trucking hubs and sensitive receptors were a bad idea, bad for business. With at least two Fresno City Council members currently seeking higher office—Perea 3.0 for State Assembly and Michael Karbassi for county clerk—voters should soon get yet another indicator of their values and ethics.

Both have voted in the past to ignore public health impacts. Both have participated in closed-door budget committee meetings in violation of the Brown Act. Only legal action deters them. And election-year politics.

Which is where Sandra Celedon comes in. Half organizer, half policy wonk, the young Celedon has amassed a depth and breadth of experience in policy-making greater than that of the entire City Council combined. Across a long list of social justice and public health issues, she has demonstrated a genius at creating broad coalitions among unlikely allies. The Fresno Building Healthy Communities nonprofit she has headed as CEO for more than a decade has flourished under her leadership.

From the Measure P for Parks and Transportation for All campaigns to the lifesaving COVID-19 Equity Project and a lawsuit against the Assemi-controlled Community Health Systems’ funneling of as much as a billion dollars to Clovis Community Hospital and away from the downtown Fresno hospital complex, Celedon has consistently combined courage with civility. She can work with anyone—anyone who wants to get good things done—and isn’t afraid to stand up to anybody.

As a grassroots organizer with 20 years of direct experience working to better her community, beginning with her hometown of Calwa and growing to citywide and regional concerns, Celedon is a unicorn in Fresno politics—an accomplished, progressive, grassroots organizer who is widely respected throughout the community with a long track record of success.

She provides people frustrated with local and state politics a candidate truly worth supporting—at long last.