One Voice Can Change Everything
A brief story about a dear family friend that took a leap to serve his community
It’s been a few days since I’ve posted anything substantive about the 2020 election results on my social media, I’ve been pretty hunkered down.
I was so caught up in finishing strong volunteering for various candidates I support, that I haven’t really had time to process a lot of the news that’s been flowing nonstop.
After the clock struck 8pm on Election Day, I’ve been wrapped up in the tension of the ballot counting at every level of government that I haven’t fully had time to process everything that’s unfolded in the last few days.
There is still a razor thin race in my neighborhood for who will represent me and my fellow Richmond District neighbors at city hall (and I’m rooting for you Marjan Philhour!) and the math is looking increasingly positive for us to finally rid ourselves of Trump and restore some decency and liberal policymaking to the White House with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (though I refuse to feel good until Trump has lost every legal appeal and the results are certified by the authorities).
However the thing I want to focus on for a brief moment is the smallest of elections that happened in my hometown of Walnut Creek, California where a family friend of mine, Christopher Grove, ran AND WON a seat on the Acalanes Union High School Board 🥳
I’ve known Christopher since my brother, Niki Esfandiari became friends with him after we moved to the eastern side of Walnut Creek in 2002. As Niki and Chris became friends, I got to know Christopher’s older sibling, Lilyth Grove, and we all became tight friends as well throughout middle school, high school and beyond.
The Grove family has been good family friends of the Esfandiari family for well over 18 years at this point, and we’ve had a lot of laughs, and good times along the way.
However when Christopher texted me earlier this summer out of the blue and sorta dropped the news that he was going to be running for a seat on the Acalanes Union High School District board, the same school district that included Las Lomas High School where he and I and all our siblings went to school…I don’t know how to say this…I was absolutely ecstatic and caught off guard 😍
I’ve worked for one campaign (Obama 2012), and volunteered for at least a dozen campaigns since 2012, and while I had volunteered countless hours to people in my life who I had met through friendships or introductions, I had never had someone in my life, so close to my childhood decide to pull papers and run.
Christopher’s story is the story of so many people just trying to make it in this world and do good deeds along the way. He was a good student, yet one that struggled in our underfunded schools like myself and so many others. He ended up going to the same university as me, Santa Clara University. After graduating, he joined Teach for America. Then he got his Masters in education policy and went to teach in Stockton, CA for a few years focusing in particular on special education.
I always knew that Christopher was going to do great things in his life journey, but it never really dawned on me that he would pull papers and run for public office. In our conversations I gave him what knowledge and advice I had from my previous campaign experiences, I donated to his campaign (I even got the shirt!) and since we were in a pandemic and I wasn’t exactly comfortable with trekking back to Walnut Creek, I made a point of pressing my parents to volunteer for Chris and to spread the word about him. They reached out to everyone in their networks and while they probably didn’t know it, they were practicing the power of relational organizing in real time.
While I stayed focused on the volunteering I had to do here in San Francisco for the candidates I was supporting, Chris put his shoulder to the wheel. He put out a positive message centered on the students and communities he wanted to lift up as a school board member and how he wanted to work to improve our educational system, the one that he and I are both rooted in.
He took some of my advice around building a volunteer driven field operation that would ensure that by the end of October, most voters would have heard from him at least once. He even got my brother to volunteer in local politics, and that’s no easy feat! Throughout it all Christopher made a point of reaching out to every group he could get ahold of within the district and made a good faith effort to pitch them on his values, his vision and why he felt he would be a great member for the school board.
He ultimately ran a campaign that his family, friends and colleagues could be proud of, and lo and behold the voters of Contra Costa County saw fit to elect him to represent them on the Acalanes Union High School District.
I’m not 100% sure, but I’m fairly positive he’s the youngest board member they will ever have, and someone who is uniquely qualified for the role and who came to it not with a desire to springboard to higher office, but with a deep passion for the students of the district and the people who work to teach them.
I’m so proud of Chris, and while this was one of the campaigns that I was minimally involved in this cycle, it’s one of the brightest spots in the results from Tuesday night in my book.
The beauty of this country, for all of its warts and problems, is centered in the idea that you can pull papers with the local county clerk, build relationships with your neighbors, form a vision for what you believe should happen in our various layers of government, and then the people cast their votes and decide if they want you to represent them.
As someone whose family is well aware of how fragile this concept of democracy is and what autocratic dictatorships are capable of (my parents fled Iran) I cherish stories of people like Christopher Grove. This is truly a story I didn’t expect to end up telling by the end of election season in 2020, but it is one of the ones I am most humbled to be able to tell.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your vote doesn’t matter or that you can’t run for office because it’s not your turn or you don’t have the resources. If you believe you can do some good for your community, if you believe that the current representatives are not up to the task and you can make a case for why you can do better, then run for office, or support someone else that wants to.
I’m proud of you Chris. Get some rest and then get ready, the students, teachers and residents that are all part of AHUSD are all looking to you to do the work now and steward the school district alongside your fellow board mates through some choppy waters ahead.
Your friend and fan,
Bobak Esfandiari
