San Mateo County Community College district trustee seeking Assembly seat

“There is a tale of two counties, there are the haves and the have-nots and that divide continues to grow,” Goodman said. “That’s why I’m running to be that voice, to be that representation of hope for community members throughout our county.”

He is running against South San Francisco Councilmember James Coleman; Redwood City Mayor Giselle Hale; San Mateo Deputy Mayor Diane Papan; Tania Solé, a former candidate for Redwood City Council; and Republican Mark Gilham. The Daily Journal will be profiling the major candidates and running a series of stories on the various issues of the race.

Goodman, a Bay Area native, knows what it means to be a have not. He grew up in public housing in San Francisco’s Fillmore District and was just 8 years old when his mother died, leaving him and his five siblings wards of the court. Goodman would eventually be raised by his grandmother, who began working again to support him.

He became a father at 18, and began working two jobs after graduating from Jefferson High School in Daly City. He would later enroll at Skyline College before transferring to California State University, East Bay, where he earned a degree in criminal justice. Goodman spent nearly a decade as a legal paraprofessional.

But he recalls several life events that spurred him to push for change in the community beyond his day job, including in 2005 when he was assaulted by a police officer. The officer was fired and, as a result of a settlement, Goodman was paid an undisclosed sum. Goodman said he viewed the payment as “blood money,” and used funds to save a child development center in San Francisco that was going out of business.

“That whole experience shook me to my core,” he recalled. “While I was in custody at that time, I saw an older Latin man and an African American man to my left and right, and just in those moments I knew that [money] wasn’t for me.”

Goodman said he became credentialed to teach and ran the Candlelight Child Development Center in San Francisco for as long as he was able with the money.

Goodman was similarly called to action as a student at Skyline College, when a security guard referred to a group of Black students as “monkeys.” His organizing in response to the incident led him to serve as the associated student body president and later be elected as a student trustee.

On the South San Francisco school board, Goodman said he’s most proud of his work to increase diversity within the administration’s leadership, in addition to extending the district’s free and reduced lunch program to undocumented students. Goodman was also the first Black man to serve on the board, and he said the administration had “no significant people of color” in leadership when he was elected.

On the college board, Goodman helped lead the district through the process of switching from at-large to by-district elections. He has also been involved in the district’s effort to build affordable housing for students, as well as efforts to offer free community college. Last year, Goodman helped secure a $2 million grant from the county Board of Supervisors for the task.

Goodman serves currently as board member for the Boys & Girls Clubs of North San Mateo County and the Bay Area chapter of the American Red Cross. He is also a founding member of Bayview Hunters Point Mobilization for Adolescent Growth in Our Communities, a nonprofit organization aimed at providing resources to disenfranchised youth in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco.

If elected, Goodman said his first piece of legislation would be protections against inequities in health care and the workplace, drawing from lessons learned during the pandemic to establish a “new normal of equity, of representation.”

“When you hear a lot of people talk about going back to normal, for far too long and far too often, for people of color and marginalized communities, that normal was never good for them,” he said. “Those communities need to have protections and it shouldn’t take a pandemic to get those protections looked at.”

Goodman had not filed a campaign finance report as of the most recent deadline. He declined to say how much he has raised or who is endorsing him.

corey@smdailyjournal.com

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