5:10am | For months leading up to the January 15, 2010 deadline for candidates to file their intentions to run for office, it looked as though current Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster would run unopposed in his bid for re-election this April. A few names were rumored to be considering a run, but as the deadline to file neared, it began to look more likely that Foster would not face any challengers.

That is, until 21-year old Cerritos College student and lifelong Long Beach resident Stevie Merino threw her hat into the ring, filing papers to challenge Foster for the city’s chief elected position. Although the Mayor’s race is nonpartisan, Merino is a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). 

According to the PSL’s web site, it is a “new” party that defines capitalism as “the system in which all wealth and power is held by a tiny group of billionaires and their state” and “is the source of the main problems confronting humanity today: imperialist war, poverty, exploitation, layoffs, unemployment, racism, sexism, lesbian/gay/bi/trans oppression, environmental destruction, mass imprisonment, unionbusting, and more.”

Merino’s age and party affiliation are sure to raise more than a few eyebrows – but little is known about Merino as a candidate, and virtually nothing has been said of her ideas or motivations.

Merino took the chance to explain her positions and reasons for running during an exclusive interview yesterday afternoon with the LBPOST.com. Her campaigning has already begun, and Merino is energetic, motivated, and gladly challenges Mayor Foster to a debate.

“We’ll try to contact him,” Merino said. “I think for democracy to work, one candidate going against the other candidate would be ideal.”

The Mayor’s office wasn’t able to provide a definitive response as of press time, but if the opportunity does eventually present itself, a debate between the two candidates would certainly be interesting.  Merino may be young, but she adheres strongly to her beliefs and is passionate about helping the city’s working class. Growing up near Drake Park in downtown Long Beach, Merino developed a strong desire to defend those who need it most. That desire is what drove her to organize anti-war protests as a student at Lakewood High, it’s what directed her to the PSL five years ago, and it’s what has shaped the ideal that may come to define Merino’s campaign.

“Cut the police budget. It’s over half of the City’s budget, and meanwhile social services are being cut extremely, and teachers are being laid off,” she says. “We’ve put so much money and effort into our Police Department, why don’t we put this much effort into children’s education? 
 
Clearly, the City’s General Fund doesn’t fund education but it does fund some early childhood education and youth job training programs and on those points, Merino is persistent. “Let’s pay the teachers more, let’s continue to give them raises. And this is all with the Police Department and their lawsuit [against the City] because they want to be paid for the time it takes them to get dressed. I don’t get paid to get dressed when I have to go to work, on top of the millions of dollars that the Police Department is already getting.”

Merino says that her position on slimming down the Police Department budget – which does, after all, consume more than two-thirds of the General Fund – is reflective of the things she’s been told by residents in downtown communities that she has been visiting door-to-door for the past two weeks. Her campaign has thus far been based on meeting with the people on the ground and listening to the issues that are affecting them. Those meetings, Merino says, have helped shape her ideas that the money being spent in Long Beach is not reaching those who need it most.

“The teachers and city workers, why are they are taking furloughs and cuts? We have the resources, it’s just going to the wrong places.”

What are the right places? Aside from schools and social services, more attention needs to be paid to housing and job creation. Merino tells many stories about tenants she’s met that are being victimized by slumlords that hike rent without providing basic living conditions for their tenants. Her campaign is staging a street meeting at 7th & Pacific on February 9th to address the issue.

Merino is also adamant that the community is hurting for work above all else, and that any conversation about helping the working class must begin with job creation.

“More jobs is less crime,” she says. “Cut the police budget. Instead of it being over half of the budget, put those resources to create access to jobs, job training. Instead of arresting youth, have youth job training. Jobs provide money. It provides people to no longer have the necessity to do other things, or make other means to find resources.”

Merino is well aware that slashing the Police budget could potentially mean a loss of officers – when asked if that concerned her, Merino replied: “No. Not at all.”  She says that providing social services and care to those who need it should take priority. Her focus on education, job growth and residents’ rights are the driving force behind every word. It’s a philosophy borne from her experiences growing up in working class neighborhoods of Long Beach, but molded through her affiliation with the Party for Socialism and Liberation; a party whose public perception Merino would like to change.

She acknowledges that some may be alarmed by the word “socialism” – Merino describes it simply as “People over power” – but says that she hopes they’ll take the opportunity to examine what her campaign stands for. The PSL web site defines its idea of socialism as “a system where the wealth of society belongs to those who produce it, the working class, and is used in a planned and sustainable way for the benefit of all. In place of greed, domination and exploitation, we stand for solidarity, friendship and cooperation between all peoples.”

“People have this false idea that their things are going to be taken away and it is not the case,” she says. “We just want to meet people’s needs over those of billionaires; which I’m pretty sure most of the people are not.”

Merino got her start in politics when she was drawn to the PSL because of their anti-war efforts, and has since helped organized protests that have included thousands against education tuition hikes, police brutality, housing slumlords and other efforts. At a relatively young age, Merino’s activism is the basis of her political experience. She’s aware of the underdog role she’ll be playing until the April election, and has strong feelings about the process after just two weeks of campaigning.

“When you get in the realm of bourgeois politics and this whole system, you see the contradictions of it. The contradictions of quote-unquote ‘democracy.’ The people who win are the big billionaires who have the corporate bosses behind them, not the interests of the poor working people or the people that they’re supposed to represent. And the fact that so many people make a joke about my age or the seriousness of our campaign goes to show the fact that it’s not true democracy at hand, because if that were the case, then you wouldn’t need millions of dollars to win or to run.”

Merino will officially kick off her campaign for Mayor of Long Beach at 3:00pm this Saturday, January 30 with a speech and rally at Shades of Afrika cultural marketplace located at 1001 E. 4th Street.

Click here for Stevie Merino's Facebook page.

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Disclosure: LBPOST.com publisher Shaun Lumachi is Chairman of the Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Network Board of Directors and is a member of the City of Long Beach Early Childhood Education Business Advisory Committee.

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