This Union Organizer and RN is Running for CA State Assembly
Interview by Joaquin Romero
We spoke with Jennifer Esteen, candidate for California State Assembly in District 20. Esteen is a registered nurse who has spent time in various roles relating to public health and local politics. She has served as the Vice President of Organizing for SEIU 1021, treasury secretary for the Alameda Health System board of trustees, as well as a part of the San Francisco Housing Conservatorship Working Group and the Eden Area Municipal Advisory Council. In her race for Assembly, she has been endorsed by SEIU California, the California Working Families Party, and San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, alongside many other area legislators and PACs. Her district spans a large portion of the East Bay area, encompassing all of Hayward, Union City and San Leandro, plus parts of Dublin and Pleasonton to the east.
Here, Esteen speaks about how her years as a healthcare worker propelled her into politics, and her vision for a universal health care system in California which prioritizes behavioral health.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Rift Magazine: Tell me about yourself – who you are, what you do and how you decided to run for State Assembly.
Jennifer Esteen: Yeah, I’m Jennifer Esteen. I’m a registered nurse.
I found my way to California. I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and had a kid right out of college and was like ‘I don’t know if I wanna raise my son here in the deep south’. New Orleans is beautiful. Special place. Call it home forever – but it’s kind of impoverished. It’s pretty poor, and it’s also full of overt racism. I had a son, and I was like ‘I don’t want my black boy raised here’. When he was eleven days old it was actually when September 11th happened, and I just remember being like ‘what is happening in our world’, so by the time he turned 1 I just was like ‘let’s try something new’. Let’s go to a place where there’s hope and vision and dreams are made. I packed up the car, came with my then-husband. I had another kid, got divorced, then the next thing I knew it was the financial crisis, 2007-2008, and that was a really tough time.
I lost everything. I ended up bankrupt and in foreclosure. And that was what prompted me to go to nursing school, because I knew that as a nurse I’d always have stability of some sort. So I went through a 1-year accelerated program, came out a nurse on the other end, and started working at San Francisco general hospital as a psych nurse in the psychiatric emergency room. It was such a special place to work, such good work, and also very stressful work.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a psychiatric emergency room – most people haven’t – I never knew a place like that existed, but every door is locked. Most people are brought in by police, wearing handcuffs. It’s a tough way to enter the behavioral health system when you’re looking for help. After five years of that work I moved into working in the community. I needed to just do something different. That’s where I saw clients, some of the same people, they had severe and persistent mental illness, but they were no longer in crisis. The people who were doing the best were permanently housed. One day a client came to me and told me they were going to be evicted. And I was like, ‘well, why are you being evicted, this doesn’t make sense’. I work in the transitions division. Any movement of a client is stuff that comes through my office. But they were being evicted, and it turns out it was a policy decision that was made to fasttrack the opening of homeless shelters, and they were going to kind of trade one bed for the office. But I was like, ‘it doesn’t make sense, you can’t trade a permanent housing option for a temporary homeless shelter’, and I started a huge fight with city leaders and my boss.
We went to the health commission to talk about it and they didn’t want to listen to us. It was me and my clients and my colleagues, and when they wouldn’t listen we shut the meeting down. And when we went back the next month and the same thing happened, we shut the meeting down. And by the third month, we had three pieces of legislation passed in the Board of Supervisors.
People were like ‘oh my god, three pieces of legislation in three months, Jennifer you should run for something’. I was like ‘what are you talking about, I’m a nurse, I’m an advocate, it’s my job to advocate for care for my clients’. And they were like ‘no, this is actually special’. It just didn’t make sense to me.
Fast-forward a year, and I got on a steering committee to help write this legislation called Mental Health SF, and a partnered piece of legislation to fund behavioral health expansion in San Francisco. The funding measure was first-of-its-kind legislation to tax excessive CEO income, it was a progressive tax measure on the richest people in the town. And the voters said yes to both.
It was at that moment I was like ‘well, maybe we’re on to something, maybe this is actually what organizing looks like – raising public awareness, changing opinion, moving policy, doing things for the greater good – but I still will not move to San Francisco and run’. However, I decided then that I would start getting more active. So one of our local supervisors appointed me to a municipal advisory council out here, because where I live is unincorporated. There is no mayor, no city council, no elected leadership that takes care of our town. So I got appointed to that, and then another supervisor pointed me to the health system board of trustees, the Alameda health system board. And I was like ‘I’m a nurse, not a finance person’ but they made me the chair of a billion-dollar budget. So I had a lot to learn, and started learning. You know, what is governance? What is health policy implementation? How do you manage thousands of healthcare workers in four hospitals; our level 1 trauma center, our county psych hospital, two community hospitals, 318 beds of our skilled nursing facilities? And it’s been quite a valuable education. It also helps me understand healthcare from a different lens. I’m a nurse, bedside is one thing, implementation of policy is another.
When COVID happened, that was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back, because in my unincorporated town of Ashland, people of color in my community were getting sick and dying of COVID more than anybody else in this Assembly district. I saw this study from Harvard not too long ago that if you have prolonged exposure to air pollution you are 15 times more likely to die of COVID. And so what I was seeing in my community was now proved by some researcher. The thing is; Interstate 580 is one street behind me. 238 is a couple blocks that way. 880 is just right there, and the Oakland airport is a mile away. So we have diesel fuel and jet fuel around us all the time – of course we’re dying. And we have less equitable access to resources because we don’t have anybody advocating for us, we don’t have a budget structure, and we’re in trouble.
And so I was like, ‘you know what – people have asked me to run, people have told me to run, I’m already doing all this stuff, I have a voice, I understand these things, and I really want to make a difference, I think I’m gonna run’. And that’s how I got to this place. The campaign I want to run is corporate-free. I’m not taking money from corporations. It’s a people-powered campaign, literally. It’s all volunteer-based, and it’s really amazing. More than 1,000 people have given up their heart and soul and hard-earned money to support the campaign. We’ve gotten great endorsements, like the biggest labor union in the state, SEIU California, has endorsed. The Working Families Party has endorsed. People’s Action National has endorsed. Nina Turner, who I think is kind of a symbol of how my campaign is also running, has endorsed. You know, she ran a campaign for the people after working for Bernie Sanders, and corporate interests took over that race so that she wouldn’t get a seat of power. And I feel that those dynamics are similar here. There are people who have a lot of corporate money behind them, or institutional money behind them, and that’s not who I am.
Rift: So as someone who’s a registered nurse, who’s worked in the healthcare industry, who’s worked on the administrative side of it, as you were saying, how do you see that impacting how you would approach policy in the Assembly?
JE: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I’ll start out by telling you this little story. So over the last couple years I’ve been working as vice-president of organizing for SEIU 1021, and also serving on this board of trustees. This week we had a board meeting where 98 people showed up, and that’s a lot. Normally 20 people show up, and they’re all staff. They showed up because it was the doctors who were saying that they needed a pay raise. One anesthesiologist got on the phone and said ‘it’s been nine years since I got a pay raise, and I’m overdue’. 20 different people spoke for public comment, every single one of them a doctor. The thing is, those doctors just organized their union, and they are joining SEIU 1021. So while serving as trustee, secretary-treasurer of the board, chair of the finance committee, and vice-president of organizing – these doctors joined my union. My commitment to the health system is based on the fact that in order for us to provide care, we have to care for the people doing the work. No worker forms a union unless they feel like they need representation and help. These doctors had been retaliated against, they had been intimidated, and they had been fired for advocating for good patient care. They have gone nine years without a pay raise, and now that they have organized themselves into a union, the boss is offering them a pay raise. So that’s how I’ll address policy: through organizing.
The first policy I want to see, #1 on my agenda because I'm a psychiatric registered nurse, is to expand behavioral healthcare in a meaningful way. I think what we saw last week, AB 1400, Cal Care not even getting a floor vote – it’s just appalling. And I think what I learned from my campaign to save my clients from being evicted is that it takes a lot on the public. It takes a lot of work on public opinion. And I think the work wasn’t necessarily being done in a way that made people feel comfortable. How are we gonna fund universal healthcare became the question.
There’s this thing that I heard recently, I’m gonna try to share it with you so it makes sense. They say; ‘give people brownies, not the recipe’. However, there are times where you’re making such big change systematically, that people really do need some of that recipe. There’s this other thing that people say – ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time’. I think pulling out [and foregrounding] behavioral healthcare, which has typically been ignored, is one way in. And the reason I think behavioral healthcare is the way is because our state superintendent, Tony Thurmond, already said he wants 10,000 behavioral health clinicians in schools statewide. Rebecca Bauer-Kahan is trying to move 988 as an alternative to 911 for behavioral health, which would include a funding mechanism. Sidney Kamlager passed legislation last year to create a 5-year pilot program for crisis intervention, crisis response. So there’s already this hunger, desire and appetite within the state to have attention on behavioral healthcare. And I think because of my 12 years as a psych nurse, I have a different kind of understanding. Because of my work in the health system, I have a different understanding of implementation of policy. We have a need that is so great. Here in Alameda county, where I’m running, we’re home to the most 5150s per capita in the state. Our county jail is about to go into receivership because the Department of Justice cited them for not providing behavioral healthcare, and they are going to be forced to create a ‘therapeutic jail’, which is a big fucking oxymoron, like there is no such thing as a ‘therapeutic jail’. But there’s all this need, and 90% of all 5150 calls are nonviolent, so you don’t need police response. But we have to have the people to do the work. We have to have providers.
So what I want to do is create reform and funding around moving people into behavioral health work, plus getting people out of the jail so that they can get care in the community, as the Department of Justice said they want to see at the Santa Rita jail. But we need providers to do that, and we need to fund their education, and we need to pay them a living wage once they’re finished. There’s this other weird thing when you’re a behavioral health clinician. You can come out of school with a Phd as a psychologist, or a Masters in family therapy, and your first 3000 hours of work are not licensed. So that’s like, if you work 40 hours a week, that’s a year and a half of work unlicensed, which means people don’t get paid well. Sometimes they’re making no money as an intern, or they’re working for very, very little money. That’s not an incentive to bring people in. So this is like one little barrier that I can explain in depth about behavioral health and all the fixes we need. When you think about universal healthcare, there’s just so many barriers all throughout every level, and I think segmenting might be an avenue to solving that problem, and I think I’m the right person to do it.
Rift: That’s very interesting, and I want to push you on that a little more, especially on that point that the conversation around what was AB 1400 was just not where it needed to be; focusing on money and funding rather than the absolute need that we see in the state today. Again, as somebody who works in healthcare, who has that experience and who’s running for Assembly, what do you see your function being to try and prioritize what I’m sure will inevitably be the next universal healthcare proposal that comes to the floor?
JE: An organizer. An absolute organizer on the inside and on the outside. I see myself as someone who will help to move legislators. We have a democratic supermajority in our state legislature, and we have a democratic governor. That means any democratic proposal should be passable. And yet we still struggle, we’re still drilling for oil, we don’t have universal healthcare and all this stuff that feels common sense and urgent isn’t happening. So we need to organize the shit out of the people who are casting votes. We also need to make sure that our community groups are being organized. And that public opinion…for universal healthcare, public opinion is clear. Those different questions around how you fund it, are not so clear. So we need to make sure people are educated. I think one of my unique talents is being able to break down issues in ways that are not threatening. So the way I talk about universal healthcare is the way a lot of people talk about it; the only thing we all want is to go to the doctor, walk out and never have to pay a bill. That’s one way to talk about it. Another way to talk about it is to ask people, ‘How much money are you spending on your pharmaceuticals right now, on prescription drugs?’, ‘Do you have a friend or family member who has asthma or diabetes? How much does that stuff cost them every single month?’, ‘Have you ever had a medical bill, like an emergency bill, because you got into a car accident, or something happened, and you showed up to the ER or the urgent care, and they sent you a $5000 bill, or a $10,000 bill?’, ‘Have you ever avoided going to the doctor because you were going to be hit with an expense you couldn’t cover, and so you waited and waited?’ I think that when we put people in the space of remembering their own experience – their current lived experience – they begin to focus on what they already pay, and then it’s less about where this money is gonna come from, it’s actually that they’re already spending that and can’t afford it.
Rift: So when I talk to people that are in California politics, the things that get brought up the most are housing and homelessness. They are the issues which are unavoidable in this state, I think, given the situation we’re in. So as Assemblymember, what will you do to address those in your district?
JE: Great question, you’re right. It’s all about housing. Housing, housing, housing. There’s two things I want to see: massive development that is deeply affordable, that is situated around mass transit, that is mixed-income, and mixed-use, so that people can start to have a community-centered approach. I want to also see that we have resilience hubs in those areas, and I want to see mass transit that is dedicated to clean energy and that is bus-related, because I think we can upscale with the buses way faster than we can with any train. So that’s one of the things I want to see: massive development. And the other thing I wanna see is vacancy taxes. I think we have to have a statewide vacancy tax. In our major cities we already have enough vacant units to house every single person in the state. So if we can make vacancy so expensive month after month, where you have penalties and fees that you are paying, it will become too expensive to keep people on the street.
Rift: Interesting. The other thing I always hear is things pertaining to environmental policy. I’m in southern California right now, and there are a lot of candidates who talk extensively about policy which is modeled after the national proposal for the Green New Deal. I’m not sure how that pertains to the discourse going on in Sacramento right now …
JE: I think not enough, man. Not enough people are talking about the Green New Deal.
Rift: Okay, what would be your proposal then. What would you be fighting for in the Assembly as it pertains to environmental policy?
JE: I mean, I wanna see fossil fuels stay in the ground. Right now. The end. No more drilling. Not in California and not off our coasts. No more fracking, none of that shit. I think implementing the Green New Deal does something for our communities that is pretty amazing. The Green New Deal is a recipe for millions of jobs, millions of good-paying, union jobs. And I think the Green New Deal was actually an answer to the question of, ‘How do you stop drilling for oil, because so many people are going to lose their jobs?’ Well, we found a solution for you. And I understand if people don’t want to stop doing that work. Folks can make six figures. Big time. 2 or 300,000 dollars a year. That’s a lot of money to walk away from.
There’s already like 65,000 jobs [in solar energy]. To harness the power of the sun in California is a no-brainer. We grow hella food from the power of the sun. We feed the nation, right? We could do the same thing with solar. If we had rooftop solar on every house in this state, everybody could work in solar. It already employs 65,000 workers. People can be formerly incarcerated and have businesses. There’s a dude in southern California right now, his name is Ken Wells, he’s formerly incarcerated and he’s got a million-dollar business doing solar install. That’s a success story, and that’s actually more money than 2 or 300,000 a year drilling oil and tearing up our environment. I think the Green New Deal allows for that plus when you imagine the massive development of housing – that’s other jobs people can have. Plus when you imagine the need for healthcare expansion – that’s other jobs people can have. There are ways that all of this can become a holistic solution that puts people to work in the community.
We just have to be willing to do it. I don’t think that it’s far-fetched. But change is hard, and I don’t think we can have an incremental approach. I mean it’s like 80 degrees out here right now. Northern California, February 11th, 80 degrees.
Rift: Southern California too. It’s not good.
JE: Not good. The snowpack is melting faster than anybody’s ever seen. It’s a problem.
Rift: Yeah, and when you’re talking about an approach towards policy which is not incremental, which is trying to take strides rather than small steps, I think the key to that in a lot of ways is what you were talking about; organizing. And also getting more and more people in office who share those kinds of priorities. California is seeing this real influx right now of progressives, candidates who are fighting for the same things that you are, who are prioritizing those kinds of issues. As somebody who is one of those candidates, who has their priorities in that place – why do you think this is happening?
JE: I think folks are really fed up. I think – I hope – that the status quo of the system, the way that elections operate, doesn’t get in our way. As a person who’s running right now, who’s trying to run corporate-free, who is – thank god – successfully fundraising amongst individual donors…it is not easy running a campaign. Yes we have more and more people trying to step up, and we have more folks that are doing it, and I hope we all win – but we are up against something powerful. We are up against millions of dollars.
I mentioned Nina Turner; the candidate that ended up winning in her race was a black woman, just like she is a black woman – it’s not about identity. That other person had money from Trump and Clinton. That is what we’re up against. Because we have such a concentration of wealth in the corporate elite, they don’t care what letter is on your ballot. All they care about is making sure that policy is written, or policy dies if it doesn’t benefit their corporate profits. And I think there are enough of us that have been angered and excited and want to see something different. There are enough people of color who are over this bullshit. There’s enough women. There’s enough people who saw what happened to George Floyd and got pissed off, who have seen too many people have too many disadvantages, who have family members who are being deported, like we are over it. And I hope we all win. Because if we can flood this democratic supermajority, and make it into a real, progressive, action-oriented supermajority, then we can have these policies. We can enact the Green New Deal. We can bring healthcare to the masses, and we should be able to have it all. And the corporate class doesn’t want to see that.
