As the legendary labor organizer Joe Hill once sang, “There is power in a union.” I learned that truth firsthand.
For years, I worked low-wage jobs: serving late night fast food, bagging groceries, desperate for the next day off. I had no control over my schedule, no say in my conditions, no future I could plan for. I figured that’s how it would always be.
Then I got a job at Columbia University, joined UAW Local 2110 and everything changed. For the first time, I wasn’t alone. My coworkers had my back, and together we had power. We won a contract from a multi-billion-dollar institution that wanted nothing more than to ignore us. That experience is what I want every worker in this country to have.
I’m running for Congress because the system that made me feel powerless is the same system grinding down working people in New York City. It’s the landlord raising your rent every year. It’s the boss who won’t give you a predictable schedule. It’s a federal government funneling our tax dollars to billionaires and war profiteers while we go without healthcare, stable housing, and a healthy environment.
What changed my life is the same thing that just elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York: working people deciding we don’t have to wait for permission. I know what we can accomplish when we fight together — and I know it doesn’t happen by waiting for politicians whose long resumes and big donors taught them to be cautious instead of brave.
I don’t wait. I called for a ceasefire in Gaza when establishment Democrats stayed silent — or worse, voted again and again to fund the genocide in Gaza. I was arrested outside of Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office protesting arms sales to Israel.
This congressional district is 77% tenants — working people, families, artists, immigrants — people who have built something beautiful here and are watching the real estate industry try to take it away. My opponents talk about gentrification and displacement while taking money from the people causing it. I’m the only candidate in this race who doesn’t take a dollar from the landlords and developers raising our rent.
In Congress, I’ll fight for Medicare for All — because no one should be one diagnosis away from financial ruin. I’ll fight for housing that working people can actually afford, and a tenant’s right to organize against the landlords and developers who treat our homes like commodities. I’ll fight to abolish Trump’s paramilitary immigration machine that’s terrorizing our neighbors. I won’t support another dollar for the genocide in Gaza and the illegal war on Iran. And I’ll push for legislation making it easier to join a union — the best way to strengthen our democracy and take power back from the oligarchs.
The Democratic establishment has been telling working people to expect little and get even less. They’ve offered procedural complaints in the face of rising fascism. They’ve waited for polls to tell them when it’s safe to do the right thing.
Valdez is running in the Democratic primary for the 7th congressional district covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens.