D9 Supervisor Candidate Jackie Fielder, Part 1 (S7E2)

Jackie Fielder is quick to credit her ancestors with her life and where she is now that she's 30. In this episode, meet Jackie, who's running to be the next District 9 supervisor. District 9 includes the Mission, Bernal Heights, and the Portola. She begins by sharing the life story of her maternal grandparents, who are from Monterey in Mexico. Her grandfather worked in orange groves in Southern California, while her grandmother was a home care worker. She also did stints at See's Candies seasonally. Sadly, both grandparents passed away when Jackie was young. But she learned more about them as she grew up. On her dad's side, Jackie is Native American. Her paternal grandparents grew up on reservations in North and South Dakota. Her dad was born in Los Angeles and raised in Phoenix and went to Arizona State. He got a job as an engineer in SoCal, where he met Jackie's mom. The two met at a club in the Eighties. Her mom's first job was at Jack in the Box, where she got minimum wage. She dreamed of becoming an EMT, but that was before she met Jackie's dad. She ended up working as a secretary for a school district. Jackie is her parents' only child. She was born in 1984. Her dad joined the US Navy. When she was six, the Navy deployed him to Seattle for six months, and the strain on his marriage during that time away never really subsided. It was hard on Jackie, too, of course. When he returned home, her parents separated. Her mom took her to live across the freeway from where they'd been, in a low-income apartment community. Jackie's life changed, dramatically, she says. She was in the same schools, but stopped hanging out with her friends after school or on weekends. Her mom didn't want her playing outside much, in fact. She felt that the new area she moved her kid to was too dangerous. In her new living situation, Jackie and her mom found community. Neighbors helped one another out in myriad ways. Jackie looks back on that time as formative to who she's become as an adult. She also spent time with her mom's extended family in South Central LA. Many family members were in the LA low rider culture. Jackie was immersed in that Latino community from a young age. This also informed her world view today. ​At this point, we pivot to talk about music—how it came into her life and what it means to Jackie. She grew up around disco and Motown, Spice Girls and the Men in Black soundtrack, CCR, TLC, Backstreet Boys. In middle school, Jackie found alt rock. She saw Foo Fighters with her mom. Jackie attended public schools the entire time. She was a good student, got good grades, liked her teachers and they liked her. In hindsight, she wishes she had engaged with sports besides soccer, which she played from age 4 or 5. She says that in Southern California, sports were as important as academics. There were something like 4,000 students at her high school, 900-something in her graduating class. But despite this, Jackie didn't simply receive her education passively. She was on an AP track and did community service work with other students. ​In high school, Jackie worked to establish gardens in elementary schools in her area. She paints the picture of having been such a quote-unquote "good kid" that I ask if she ever had a bad streak or a time when she got anything out of her system. She says not really, but then I half-jokingly suggest that maybe her life in electoral politics is just that. College was expected, though she wasn't sure where she'd end up going to school. She didn't think Stanford was a possibility. Berkeley was her goal, but she didn't get in. Friends and community, though, convinced her to apply to Stanford. She did, and she got it. Thus was Jackie Fielder's move north. ​Originally, she planned to do pre-med in her undergrad years. The motivation behind that plan was wanting to help people. But being interested in education thanks to her mom's work, she attended a talk on public policy and college admissions that opened her eyes, both to the larger societal issue and to her own experience getting admitted to Stanford. She really started thinking about how race and class factor into policy, both public and private. This led to an imposter syndrome-type feeling in her place at college. Still, despite that, she made friends at Stanford, some she's close with today. I note that it's my belief that Jackie is really, really smart (I've listened to and read many things she's said and written, and seriously ...), and suggest that she's driven to knowing things by virtue of a deep curiosity about how systems work. Jackie agrees about that motivating factor, and points to 9/11 and watching a lot of Travel Channel. Both experiences teleported her to different parts of the world, and left her with a deep desire to learn and know about how people organize themselves into societies. Her father was redeployed after 9/11, and that, too, had an effect on young Jackie. But back to her move upstate to Palo Alto. She spent four years there before earning her bachelor's degree. She was in a sorority for a spell, but got disillusioned by that. She describes rubbing shoulders with the kids of billionaires. That initial idea of doing pre-med gave way to working toward a degree in public policy, something she dove into head-first. She says that meant mostly studying economics. And economics at Stanford means the Hoover Institute. And the Hoover Institute means conservative theories. She got through it despite disagreeing with the theory. She told herself it was worthwhile to understand how the proverbial other side thinks to better understand it and be better equipped to debate folks who think that way. She also set her sights on getting a master's degree, and decided to major in sociology for that. During this time, she spent a semester in Istanbul, Turkey, an experience she relishes. She learned a lot about Middle Eastern history in her stay. Much of what she discovered about the struggles of the oppressed halfway around the world rang true for Jackie with the experiences of her father's people in the US. It took Jackie four years to concurrently earn both a bachelor's and a master's degree. I mean, I told you that she's smart. We end Part 1 with Jackie's story of deciding that San Francisco is where she needed to be. It's a story that involves working for Lateefah Simon. We recorded this episode at Evil Eye in the Mission in September 2024. Photography by Jeff Hunt