There are 15 council members in Los Angeles, and exactly one of them is a woman: Nury Martinez.Women

There are 15 council members in Los Angeles, and exactly one of them is a woman: Nury Martinez.Women’s History Month is wrapping up, so we sat down with Martinez to talk about how she got started, her path to City Hall and her advice for other women leaders. Here’s an edited excerpt of the conversation. How did you first get involved in leadership or civic action?One day, my mother came home and said her company had announced that they were going to move to Mexico. That was pretty devastating. She was in her 50s by the time she was laid off. So I began to help my mom by serving as the interpreter. I helped translate between the company and the workers, who staged a series of demonstrations and hunger strikes and protests to try to convince the company to not relocate, to stay in Pacoima. I think it took between three to five years for the company to finally shut down. I became involved in my mom’s fight to save her job, out of necessity.When did you decide you wanted to go into politics?Having to help my mom out, I really began to understand what community organizing meant, and the cause and effect of that, and how to fight for better representation. It was born out of necessity. But I’ve always been interested in politics, and at a very early age, I always knew I wanted to serve. I was probably in 5th grade when I said I wanted to do this. How did you know so young?I always watched the evening news with my dad in Spanish, because my parents don’t speak English. And my parents always read the paper religiously, every single day. And we would always talk about current affairs. Latin America, international relations, always knew what was going on in Venezuela and other parts of the world. I think my father just sort of instilled that in me. Tell me about your first job.When I was in high school, I had gotten a job at a local nonprofit called Northeast Valley Health Corporation. I was hired to talk to other teens about the spread of HIV and STDs. I was part of a small theater group that would re-enact situations where me – the girlfriend – would ask the boyfriend to put on a condom. I was very lucky to have parents who were very progressive and ahead of their generation.Why did you take that job? I grew up in a community where you didn’t necessarily talk about these issues. You didn’t talk about sexuality, you didn’t talk about questions you had about sex, how you got pregnant, how you can become infected. But at the same time, I was exposed to data and statistics that show an increasing number of Latinos, particularly women, who were being infected by their partners. That just intrigued me. I don’t understand why we we’re not making a huge outcry about protecting our kids. Again, I was very lucky that my parents were incredibly progressive. We talked about this stuff in my house, but I went to school with girlfriends who never spoke to their parents about sex, who never brought a guy around, whose dads were probably very traditional. I think my home kind of became a place where my friends could have honest conversations.Tell me about your college experience and post-grad career path.Throughout college, I started volunteering in local campaigns, became the volunteer coordinator for some of these races, then I began to run the races myself. I got people elected, and eventually there was an opportunity for me to run for office, and I took it. The first office that I held was in the city of San Fernando. I got elected there in 2003 and served on city council both as council member and as a mayor for six years. And in 2009, I won a seat on the LAUSD school board. That was interesting because I actually gave birth to my daughter two weeks before I got elected to the school board. I would never recommend that. That was very difficult.What’s your advice for current or future women leaders who might feel like underdogs because of their gender?I think a lot of times we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. I certainly did when I first got here. I felt I needed to be the most prepared, and the smartest person on the council. That’s the kind of pressure we put on ourselves as women, because we want to be able to do a good job. I have a saying: You cannot be what you cannot see. Unless we see more women in leadership positions, and unless we see more women taking that plunge to run for office and winning, it makes it difficult, especially for moms who want to plan their family, who want to get married, and then say to their partner, “Hey by the way I want to run for office.” It’s a huge sacrifice.Men don’t have to worry about going to Sacramento and representing us in the state legislature and figuring out when they’re going to give birth. They don’t have to take all that stuff into consideration, or find a partner that is going to be comfortable with the woman being in the spotlight and being in the paper and running for office. You just have to take the plunge.Why aren’t there more women in politics? What’s the problem?The irony of politics is the majority of people running our elected offices once we get elected are women. The majority of the volunteers that help you get elected are women. The majority of the people who help you put together the fundraisers are women. So women are at every forefront of the political world – they’re either running your campaigns, helping you get elected, or running your office once you become elected. So you can’t tell me there aren’t any women capable of running for office. Some of them are running nonprofits, and they’re taking on incredibly complicated issues like healthcare and immigration reform. There’s a lot of women at the forefront of all of these issues. So we’re absolutely capable of running for office. The issue becomes that pipeline. Once a seat is open for somebody to run for office, a lot of the women are not in that pipeline to immediately say yes I’m going to jump and I’m going to run for office. There’s a lot of men in that line before they get to the woman. So we need to create that pipeline for women especially in our communities where we know specific women who championing education issues or heading incredible nonprofits. These are the women we need to tap early on, when we know there’s going to be an open seat down the line so that she can prepare now to be able to run and win. That’s what’s missing.And you are the one female city council member who other women can see and look up to as an example. How does that feel?Yeah but when I was growing up there were five! There was Jackie Goldberg, there was Janice Hahn, there was Wendy Greuel, there was Rita Walters, and I can go on and on. So we’re going backwards. Are we grooming the women to take these offices? That’s always an issue. – Annie Z. YuFor the record: There are 15 council members, not 18. We’ve updated this post. Our apologies! -- source link

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