Simon is part of a small but vocal coalition in Congress that has spent more than a year pushing the Democrats to take bigger, bolder stances against Trump. She told The Oaklandside that, unlike some of her colleagues, she\u2019s not chasing TV appearances. Rather, Simon said she is focused on passing legislation to advance the health and well-being of her constituents in Oakland, Berkeley, San Leandro, Emeryville, and Albany.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To learn more, The Oaklandside sat down with Simon last week at Kinfolx. The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n
![\"Congresswoman](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Congresswoman-Lateefah-Simon.jpg\")
Rep. Lateefah Simon at Kinfolx in Oakland on March 11, 2026. Credit: Sarahbeth Maney for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n
Rep. Lateefah Simon on the issues<\/p>\n
Democrats are widely expected to take back the House in the midterm elections. Assuming that you do, what should the House accomplish over the next two years? What will your priorities be?<\/p>\n
Lateefah Simon: Well, we\u2019ve got to get there. I don\u2019t think it should be a foregone conclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m actually spending most of the summer campaigning for candidates all over California and other parts of the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been in Congress for almost a year and a half. Every day that we\u2019re on the floor, there\u2019s some crazy legislation that is in front of us, and we typically lose by four to five votes. When the first iteration of the \u201cbig, ugly bill\u201d came to the floor, we lost by one vote before it went to the Senate. It was at that point that I really understood that I am serving in one of the most consequential times in American history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When we take back the House, leadership needs to make a commitment to be as audacious as our foes and begin to redirect the shame and the sham brought forth by the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not going to get presidential approval, but we\u2019re going to have to challenge this Medicaid and Medicare disaster. That, to me, is one of the largest crises. During the shutdown, second-stage clinical trials were canceled all over the country. So you\u2019re talking about children with lymphoma and leukemia, and a second-stage trial, being sent home to die. The healthcare justice framework that I\u2019ve been obsessed with, it\u2019s both personal and very political to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We\u2019re going to have to really be on a road to committing to the American people that when they need a doctor, they will get one. I am very much a proponent of Medicare for all. I understand from all pragmatic sensibilities that may not happen in our lifetime, but courageous Democrats need to be pushing towards care for all, for every single person in this country, regardless of their status. If you step on U.S. soil and you are ill, you should be able to see someone who is going to make you better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Should we win \u2014 which we will win \u2014 election protection is also on my mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s extremely important that we are setting up the framework for 2028 to rebuild government institutions that have been torn down to their studs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was an 18-year-old activist, I wasn\u2019t necessarily thinking about what would happen if we lost the Department of Education. I wouldn\u2019t think about that, and I shouldn\u2019t have to as somebody who was in high school, legally blind. I always had a vision aid in high school, middle school, and elementary school. Those were standards that K-12 in California didn\u2019t create, those were federal standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I worked on the issue of sexual assault and young women, from those who are working on the streets to those who are working and studying at Berkeley, I knew who I could call to investigate their trafficking or their assaults. For college students, that is the Office of Civil Rights under the Department of Education.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We do need institutions that put in place safeguards. The last 62 years of civil rights, Title IX, desegregation, within a year and a half, the institutions upholding these hard-won fights are almost dead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I don\u2019t see this in the next two years, or even the next four, when we win the presidency back. We\u2019re not going to be able to radically change the living conditions or the material conditions of people because they ripped things down so quickly. What we will have to do is audaciously govern. What that means is, don\u2019t worry about poll numbers. It means asking, what\u2019s right? What\u2019s the right thing to do? How do we protect our young people, our elders, and our sick?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m excited to be a very new member of Congress when we take back the House, but I\u2019ve been pretty loud on the floor, hoping to be a part of that change.<\/p>\n
![\"20260303_Harris_EG_020\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/20260303_Harris_EG_020.jpg\")
Rep. Lateefah Simon talking with former vice president Kamala Harris on March 3, 2026. Credit: Estefany Gonzalez for The Oaklandside
\nThere have been many cuts to SNAP funding, reproductive health, Medicare, homelessness, and medical research. Do you have a priority list for what you would like to see restored? <\/p>\n
LS: Everybody has a priority list in Congress. I was taught by very smart politicians to be myopic and do more. Health care justice is really important to me, and being an ally for disabled people, for elderly folks, for folks who are sick. That\u2019s really a space where I\u2019m carving out who I am in Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Children\u2019s Hospital, we just got them a million dollars for their sickle cell lab. There was a threat of that being taken away. We helped to get $40 million back to the CRISPR lab over at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n
I thought I was going to be on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I\u2019m BART, all day, all the time. I didn\u2019t get on that committee. And yet, I\u2019m still moving legislation in that space.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I would like to leave Congress in a decade or so, knowing that I was a part of creating a United States where we actually took care seriously. My husband [Kevin Weston] died of a very rare disease, and it\u2019s been 11 years, and I still sometimes wake up in tears, not just from watching him die and raising his child and being bankrupt after \u2014 literally bankrupt \u2014 we had nothing left. I had insurance, and we still ended up with nothing. I just got off the bankruptcy rolls a year and a half ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have an amazing community. My eldest daughter went to law school, and my little one is a super smart theater kid. We survived because of community, not the social structures that were supposed to keep us strong, but that is a disaster. And the people that I\u2019ve met along the way, other cancer moms and cancer-wise folks who survived.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I want little kids to grow old. And I want old people to be able to live with dignity. And I also want to be an effective legislator. That is the gig, to be a part of the body to move important work forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Being on that floor and watching the OGs, like Nancy Pelosi \u2014 I used to consider her a super centrist, but I see her working with those five-inch heels every single day, moving people to push a discharge position or fighting. You can see her yelling on the floor on the other side; she\u2019s not even the minority leader, and she understands that the work is really about organizing folks. I\u2019m fascinated by what that kind of governance looks like. It\u2019s not just voting. It\u2019s not just organizing back at home, not just setting up world-class constituency services. To me, it\u2019s moving a party forward that is in desperate need of folks who know how to manage and organize and who want to see people live longer and live better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Polls show<\/a> that on a lot of major issues like abolishing ICE, and opposing military aid to Israel, the Democratic base is to the left of the party leadership. How will you and other progressives push party leadership leading up to the midterms and after, to get ahead on these issues and get where the base is?<\/p>\n LS: My training and my experience tells me members of Congress won\u2019t do that. The people will \u2014 and they have.\u00a0<\/p>\n Within the last six months, we\u2019ve seen members of Congress who were very supportive in their careers of military action by Israel, supportive of Israel\u2019s military ecosystem that we fund, folks are walking that back. That\u2019s because real people in real communities are connecting the dots every minute, every hour, on what is not happening, and where we are prioritizing our dollars and our time. In my district, 8,000 people still sleep on the streets every single night, and for every 2,000-pound bomb, we are making a choice.\u00a0<\/p>\n I believe that there is a huge shift happening. I really want to start a human rights caucus. We don\u2019t have one in Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is no facilitated anti-war flank. There\u2019s \u201cThe Squad\u201d and other progressive members. (I\u2019m not a squad member. I am a little older than those sisters. I\u2019m a grandmother, but I sit with them. Those are my very close friends, and we pretty much vote consistently together.) But Democrats haven\u2019t yet created a formal institution inside Congress that says we will hold the Pentagon accountable. The Pentagon has, by the way, failed its last eight audits<\/a>. There\u2019s a trillion dollars unaccounted for. There are multi-millionaires and billionaires who are contractors, who have gotten rich off the complacency of both parties in our addiction to the war economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n I think the people \u2014 not just groups like the Indivisible Movement or ACLU \u2014 it\u2019s the grandmas on Saturday by the lake<\/a> with those little signs and their Birkenstocks, it\u2019s that kind of movement that is shifting and facilitating to demand something different.\u00a0<\/p>\n Folks will lose elections if they are war mongers. Folks will lose elections if they don\u2019t stand up for queer children.\u00a0<\/p>\n Remember, the polling said at the beginning of this Congress, don\u2019t talk about immigration. Now, every single Democrat is talking about this administration\u2019s vile betrayal of our Constitution and centering the rights of immigrant folks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Our biblical principles \u2014 your Torah, Bible, Quran \u2014 are all intricately linked in how they talk about the foreigner. The faith community is holding it down. White Midwesterners are emerging as a force: they\u2019re going to demand more of Democrats, not just the Republicans we\u2019ve given up on.\u00a0<\/p>\n Democrats, as with Republicans, have a long way to go, and it has everything to do with money in politics. But also, they have to, like a snake, shed their addiction to the old ways of doing things. We do not have to govern an empire that is addicted to the loss of lives all over the country to show our might.\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u2019s your position on the war against Iran that the Trump administration and Israel have launched?<\/p>\n LS: What you\u2019ll hear from any Democrat at this point \u2014 well, except for four \u2014 is that this is a war that we should not have gone into with Israel. That\u2019s the party line.\u00a0<\/p>\n For me, as with any situation where we are choosing bombs over full bellies, it\u2019s been important for me to understand from a very deep place the Iranian diaspora. Because it\u2019s not simple.\u00a0<\/p>\n War, to me, is simple. Absolutely no war. We should not be going into World War Three, particularly over oil. We\u2019ve always been clear that the lies that we talk about liberating countries, we don\u2019t really care about that. We care about the resource. We care about our relationship to Israel and its vengeance on Iran. And we also do care about nuclear weapons.\u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if this administration cared at all about the Ayatollah and the Iranian government\u2019s real devastation to protesters in the streets. While there haven\u2019t been thousands dead here, we have jailed and deported folks here who have lifted their voices for protesting in our streets, we too, have a lot to atone for.\u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t believe that this war has been about liberating folks in Tehran. It\u2019s not about that. In Venezuela, it wasn\u2019t about a liberation from a horrible leader. It\u2019s been about land. That\u2019s not conspiratorial, that\u2019s a fact. It\u2019s about oil and resources. So I am against this war.\u00a0<\/p>\n We get hundreds of calls a day in my office. Iranian folks have asked to speak with me in terms of their understanding and their support and or condemnation. And I have been, night and day. So I represent people, not just an ideology.\u00a0<\/p>\n To achieve a free Iran, a free Cuba, a free Venezuela, for Sudan, a Free Gaza: diplomacy should be our best tool. We are not using it. We also need to understand that Iran has been under siege by a horrible, horrible regime for too long.\u00a0<\/p>\n That being said, you can\u2019t have the United States enter into any kind of relationship where our service members will die, where we\u2019re spending a billion dollars a day, and not consult a dual level of government. That is why we\u2019re there. I\u2019m gonna say and vote no to war. The disrespect, the violation of the Constitution, that\u2019s why I voted no on the resolution saying that Iran is the worst terrorist state in the world. It\u2019s kind of already U.S. policy. We\u2019ve already said that as the three equal bodies, I think we can all agree, Iran has done horrible things to its citizens and its neighbors.\u00a0<\/p>\n I learned about the U.S. and Israel\u2019s strikes in the same morning when you all did. The briefings that we get are theater.\u00a0<\/p>\n I have tried to do the very hard work of being a real listener to folks who do not have my politics in this district. As a legislator, I\u2019m learning more and more that it\u2019s about listening and seeing and trying to deeply understand. So I\u2019ve gone to Shabbat dinners with folks who have said, \u201cLateefah, we believed in you until you came out against Israel\u2019s position on this war.\u201d I may never get their trust back, but I sure as hell I\u2019m going to listen.\u00a0<\/p>\n But I\u2019m not going to abandon who I am and why folks sent me to Congress to be an extension of what this seat has always stood for. That means understanding the Constitution and understanding our place in the human rights community, believing in the United Nations, and that rules and processes are there for a reason.\u00a0<\/p>\n Being a bully will not serve us well. It won\u2019t in the long run. What\u2019s happening is creating an anti-Western sentiment far beyond what I think this administration understands, and that\u2019s not good for us. It\u2019s not good for the folks who are dying overseas either.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oakland has been bracing for a major federal immigration operation since Trump took office again. What are you doing to fend that off, or to help local leaders prepare? <\/p>\n LS: I\u2019m so proud of what\u2019s happened in the last year and a half in terms of how our local electeds have come together. I\u2019d particularly like to lift up Nikki Bas, who\u2019s just been such a cornerstone leader on developing a coalition with NGOs. My office is on the ground level, we\u2019re communicating with organizations, with families, and with our local electeds, around what we hear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n ICE has to talk to members of Congress. We ask them questions. They will let us know if there is an operation. They don\u2019t give us a heads up, but they\u2019ll certainly confirm, yes, we are in East Oakland.\u00a0 So we\u2019re in consistent conversations with the federal government so that we can get information to our folks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Has that helped? There are other communities across California that don\u2019t have the same kind of ecosystem of legal support, like legal aid, advocacy, and mutual aid support that we\u2019ve developed. I\u2019m proud of the coalition here.\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been working very closely with Children\u2019s Hospital. We recently spoke with trauma surgeons about immigration issues and patient care and have me directly calling, talking and convincing parents to get their children\u2019s medical needs taken care of. And that we will protect them, if they are facing these horrific challenges.<\/p>\n I\u2019m one of the first African Americans in Congress to say there\u2019s no reforming ICE. Unfortunately, most Democrats still believe we can reform tyranny. You have to tear it down. I said at a recent Oversight Committee hearing that it\u2019s unfortunate now that some folks have had to die. There have been death camps in this country, ICE-facilitated camps. But 22 years ago, it was Democrats who created the agency because we wanted to appear tough on crime post 9-11. We didn\u2019t do an autopsy of what happened and why 9-11 happened.<\/p>\n [Editor\u2019s Note: Congress created the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in 2002<\/a> during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush.]\u00a0<\/p>\n We wanted to appear tough, but communities across the country have been saying ICE was bad news since the very beginning: immigrant justice scholars have been saying that it was government overreach and there were already structures to deal with the fact that our immigration justice system was broken.<\/p>\n What makes me excited about this movement moving forward is if you look at the polling for how folks in this country thought about immigration and deportation at the beginning of the Trump administration, that has drastically changed, and not just in blue states. Folks are seeing their family members, their in-laws, and coworkers taken away.\u00a0<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t new. We have an amnesia problem in this country.\u00a0 What is happening now also happened when the Democrats were in power. We own that too. That\u2019s our fault too.\u00a0 What are we doing? How are we implicating ourselves in other countries? I think that we have a lot to atone for as Democrats. Good governance is different than just having good ideological standpoints.\u00a0<\/p>\n My hope is that when we take back the presidency, we end the operation once and for all of ICE.<\/p>\n I\u2019m also not stupid. Every country has to have an immigration system that is efficacious. You do have to have a border policy. But how do you create the conditions where you don\u2019t have hundreds of thousands of people escaping countries where we\u2019re implicated? I mean, with USAID dismantled<\/a>, can you imagine how much more forced migration is going to happen in the next 10 years because we have all but cut off foreign aid? We keep setting ourselves up.\u00a0<\/p>\n We have to fix our immigration system here first. I think it\u2019s really focusing on asylum, what that looks like, and how to protect the folks who are here who don\u2019t have papers, moving them through a process.\u00a0<\/p>\n Have you had any conversations with other members of Congress about immigration reform? And on the same topic, we\u2019ve seen that other members of Congress have gotten the chance to visit detention centers. Have you visited any?<\/p>\n LS: The Northern California delegation, we will be visiting detention centers this summer. There are four that we\u2019re thinking of going to.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Dems have tried to put forth legislation. I think it should and will be stronger moving forward when hopefully we have some power.\u00a0<\/p>\n In recent votes around reforming ICE to reopen the government, I voted no.\u00a0<\/p>\n Body cameras? I think we\u2019re way past that. We\u2019re way past having conversations about how to improve ICE when its agents only have 47 days of training. The police department here they have 27 weeks of training. And even then, we\u2019re still trying to get our police departments to do the right thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n When we get some power, I\u2019m going to advocate defunding ICE. There are about 10 of us in Congress who are very clear that this department is not worth the money that we\u2019re spending on it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the deal in Congress that I want you all to understand about what I\u2019m trying to do. If I put a bill in the hopper, and it doesn\u2019t have cosponsors, and it doesn\u2019t have sign-offs from the ranking member for that committee on the Dem side, it doesn\u2019t move. So you\u2019ll find a lot of Reps, they\u2019re just throwing bills in the hopper for messaging. You\u2019re paying me to be in Congress. So every bill that I put out, they\u2019re strong, and they have strong sponsorships. That\u2019s because I take this obligation very seriously. I\u2019m a legislator, not a messenger.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m hoping to be a champion for immigration reform in my time in Congress. And it will look different. Our systems will look different in the next decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the meantime, we just have to look after our folks and be real and not gaslight them. It\u2019s dangerous out here. I went to Minnesota<\/a>, and I went up to a regular residential street where Ms. Good was murdered. We brought flowers to pay respect. There were about 150 white Christians, and it was hella cold. I\u2019m from here, so it was like eight degrees. They were reciting the Lord\u2019s Prayer over and over, and it shook me to my soul, because right is right and wrong is wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n LS: I\u2019m going to stand up for young people every opportunity I get. I walk around with Black skin. People have scapegoated Black people for years. People have scapegoated queer kids and queer people for years. People believe that folks with HIV should just die. It took courageous legislators to stand in the center of that to do the right thing. I have worked with so many transgender young people, particularly in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. I know how much resilience they have.\u00a0<\/p>\n How dare Democrats or Republicans degrade children. But I think that that is just a consistent dehumanization of our children, of our young people, folks in our communities. I\u2019ll never have polls or sentiment dictate how I communicate based on basic values, loving our folks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Big tech, which includes the AI industry, has a huge influence on many Democratic leaders in the Bay Area. Do you see big tech as too powerful? Does it need to be reined in? If so, how do you see that happening? Do you support the California billionaires\u2019 tax?<\/p>\n LS: I haven\u2019t taken a position on the billionaire\u2019s tax because I actually support a taxation system that is long-term with folks paying their fair share. I worry about the five-year cap, and I worry about the unrealized gains component of the billionaires\u2019 tax proposal. I worry about it because oftentimes that money isn\u2019t even there, and it\u2019s not even real yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s important, if you have resources, you need to pay your fair share. And I want both the state and the feds to have a taxation system where poor people don\u2019t pay a percentage higher than their millionaire and billionaire counterparts. I would love to see a long-term solution around tax equity. What the billionaire\u2019s tax purports to do is to provide the state with a cushion, given the Medicare and Medicaid debacle. It\u2019s federal and it\u2019s short term.\u00a0<\/p>\n My focus, as I talked about earlier, is going to be reversing this crazy \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u201d that tears almost 17 million people away from Medicare and Medicaid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regarding tech being too powerful: every good sector needs a little regulation. There is a place in California for the best and the brightest in technology. That\u2019s who we\u2019ve been, and I feel like it\u2019s where we need the axis of this industry to stay. Regulatory opportunities exist, particularly around child safety and war. For me, deep fakes in porn and trafficking, all connected to AI, are very scary.<\/p>\n I spent time at OpenAI and with the folks at Andreessen Horowitz and Anthropic. I\u2019m very proud of Anthropic for taking the stand it did, to say we\u2019re not going to create bots that just kill babies. We\u2019re not going to do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think a smart politician in California, particularly in the Bay Area, can ignore tech. A smart politician also needs to be very honest. I\u2019m on the Oversight Committee. I will be right there, calling into question how dangerous this technology can be and ensuring that there\u2019s not only conversations but action protecting people.\u00a0<\/p>\n We have to create safeguards. We know that China is not. So I understand the conundrum facing these tech providers. I think it\u2019s important for the United States to set the standard across the world. And I do think that in our bodies, like the United Nations, which typically focuses on food and hunger, we need to be more focused on the fear we all have about an automated world.<\/p>\n You boycotted Trump\u2019s State of the Union speech and gave your seat to Nola Brantley from MISSSEY, which is an anti-human trafficking group in Oakland. Can you talk a little bit about what you\u2019re doing to prevent sex trafficking in the city? Are you in touch with federal agencies on enforcement efforts<\/p>\n LS: Some of the first work I ever did was in San Francisco with Kamala Harris, before she became DA. I was on a task force to stop the pattern and practice of arresting, charging, and incarcerating girls under the age of 18 who are being trafficked on the streets. We don\u2019t really have a track or a blade in San Francisco to this day because of that work that we did. The Young Women\u2019s Freedom Center that I helped create is still there. We provided a political home for young women who\u2019ve been trafficked, not just to get straight and get out of the system and get off the streets, but to ask \u201cwho are we politically and how can we exert our power?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been working very closely with the Epstein survivors. If we can\u2019t get justice for those women, how are we going to get justice for those sisters on the track, on East 14th? To this day, it shocks me that folks will literally ride through that community and see girls as young as 12, and just keep riding and shake their heads, because they\u2019re little Black and brown girls. Who are we? I\u2019ve tried to address this problem from my work on BART, to my work in philanthropy, of funding movement groups who were not just trying to get girls out, but addressing some of the structural issues, like jobs, opportunities, and diversion programs for folks on both sides.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m working with Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove on this issue. She and I represent the two districts with the largest, what we call \u201cblades\u201d or \u201ctracks,\u201d in the country. She\u2019s got the Figueroa Corridor, and my district includes E. 14th Street. Both our cities need more resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Oakland, I\u2019m working with Charlene Wang\u2019s office. I\u2019ve been really supportive of her work. I don\u2019t want to touch anything where our girls are pathologized. I\u2019ll support efforts where you can really shine a light on the johns who are selling these young sisters and also folks who are pimping them out.\u00a0<\/p>\n I want to be clear: I\u2019ve worked with enough girls to know that there are some young women who are using survival sex to live. We failed them because we have very few economic opportunities for girls who are surviving on the streets. I\u2019ve never been convinced that just a complete abstinence-only model works. I don\u2019t want girls to be out there on the streets. But I also know that you could have a girl who\u2019s filled out 30 applications for jobs and she\u2019s not going to get hired. We have to figure out real economic opportunities for our girls. But we also need to be very clear that folks who are plying and selling them need to be held to account. I\u2019m going to continue doing the work here, working and organizing with young women.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kamlager-Dove and I will be figuring out how to bring some more DOJ resources to district attorney offices all over the country for victim advocates to be able to support young women getting places to live and leaving their pimps. You can\u2019t just arrest the pimp. So lots to do there.<\/p>\n UC Berkeley is in your district. While some other universities, like Harvard, have more aggressively defended themselves<\/a> against Trump\u2019s attacks on higher education, the UC has sought to negotiate with Trump. Do you think the UC\u2019s strategy is working? How should academic freedom and research be protected?<\/p>\n LS: I am of the mindset that if we capitulate with the administration, you\u2019ll find out really quickly that they\u2019re not acting in good faith.\u00a0<\/p>\n My hope is that UC will be the beacon of light in this country, and go hard and stand up. Their endowments are large. They have some of the best legal minds. I think that there were universities like the UC system that tried, in good faith, to negotiate. My hope is that they go harder. I was disappointed when names were provided to the federal government of protesters.<\/p>\n I feel like our students are at risk, our Jewish students, our Muslim students, and our intellectual freedoms. While we have to fight true antisemitism and Islamophobia, it\u2019s extremely important for universities to be the sites of anti-war deliberation and conversation. The sort of the provocative nature of this war changed how protests happen in this country. I think we have to applaud young people for being very concerned about their neighbors.\u00a0<\/p>\n So, yeah, UC needs to go harder.<\/p>\n Ok, lightning round. Name your three favorite spots in Oakland and Berkeley<\/p>\n LS: I don\u2019t really have a lot of hobbies. I\u2019ve always had two or three jobs. This is the first time I\u2019ve only had one job. So I spend time with friends when I can. And of course, my kids. We like to go out to eat.\u00a0<\/p>\n I really like Jaji<\/a>, which is an Afghan restaurant. The other place I take friends a lot is Cafe Eritrea<\/a> on 40th and Telegraph.\u00a0<\/p>\n I was going to say Lake Temescal, but that\u2019s not Berkeley. I want to say, because I like to cook, the Berkeley Bowl<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n You know why? Because in DC, tomatoes don\u2019t taste the same. Food doesn\u2019t taste the same. The food is better here. The culture is better here. I know what taco trucks to go to and the ones not to go to here.\u00a0<\/p>\n So I spend most of my time with friends around food. I\u2019m a Bay Area girl, so I like it all. The pupuserias, the amazing dim sum in Chinatown. I don\u2019t have three favorite spots.<\/p>\n Any food trucks? Or taco trucks?<\/p>\n LS: I don\u2019t even know the name of it, but I\u2019ve been going to it for 15 years. It\u2019s the taco truck by the flower shop, right by the BART headquarters. It\u2019s so delicious. And it\u2019s a red truck. They have a corn tortilla that is so good.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"_MG_8129.dng\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/_MG_8129-dng.jpg\")
Oakland Congresswoman Lateefah Simon spoke at Oakland\u2019s \u201cNo Kings Day\u201d protest on Oct. 18, 2025. Credit: Richard. H. Grant for The Oaklandside<\/p>\n