Following a vote by our Board of Directors, we are honored to officially endorse Dr. Randy Villegas for the United States House of Representatives in California’s 22nd Congressional District.
In Randy, we recognize an authentic son of the Central Valley whose leadership emerges directly from the lived experiences of our communities. Born to Mexican immigrant parents, raised in a home that navigated the realities of poverty, and dedicated to expanding access and opportunity as a community college educator, Randy does not encounter systemic hardship through the detached lens of policy briefs, rather he understands it intimately. He knows what occurs when governance abandons farmworkers and immigrant families, and he has made the deliberate choice to invest his scholarship, his labor, and his heart directly back into his home community.
For generations, unregulated industrial agriculture, corporate polluters, and petrochemical interests have operated under an extractive economic model that treats the Central Valley as an acceptable sacrifice zone. Across Kern, Tulare, and Kings counties, working families are forced to navigate the devastating human toll of some of the nation’s most toxic air, where pediatric respiratory illness is not an anomaly, but an externalized cost of corporate profit. We stand with Randy because he possesses the clarity to name this reality for what it is: an unsustainable systemic injustice. He approaches clean drinking water, breathable air, and environmental remediation not as political concessions, but as foundational, non-negotiable conditions for human dignity.
California’s 22nd District is a ground zero example of our national struggle for genuine democracy and environmental justice. Contending for this seat is about restoring democratic self-determination to communities whose labor feeds this country, yet whose voices have been systematically marginalized. When Dr. Randy Villegas enters the halls of Congress, he carries with him the collective will, the enduring resilience, and the ancestral mandate of the Central Valley. USMUST is proud to stand with him as we organize to ensure our people’s votes translate into tangible protection, systemic justice, and enduring power.
— Ife Kilimanjaro, Board Secretary, U.S. Mobilizing for Urgent Sustainable Transformation
