Linda Gomez's Blog

Who serves our community as Los Angeles District Attorney matters.

As D.A. George Gascon will bring black and brown people home. He will give them a chance at life. He will repair a racist criminal justice system.

George Gascon has already transformed my life and one of my brother’s life. The life of another brother hangs in the balance.

I could well be in prison today. I had been in the system since I was 11 years old.

I am the youngest of four children. When I was just 6 my mom took us away. I thought it was a game. It wasn’t. She was helping us flee my abusive dad.

We escaped to Riverside. My mom worked 12-hour shifts as a nurse trying to make ends meet. She could not keep her job because she was an epileptic. And she could not find another job because there was not a lot of opportunity for black and brown folks.

We had to go on welfare and live in section 8 housing. There I was introduced to gangs, drugs and crime.

At 11, I was first arrested for drug possession. At 12, my school gave up on me. I was expelled. For the next 6 years I was in and out of the juvenile hall system for multiple charges.

Back then there were no programs to repair the lives of children like me. They treated me like a dangerous adult, but I was in fact just a lost child. The system gave up on me.

At 17, I was tried as an adult for assault with a deadly weapon. I was sentenced to 24 years. 10 years was for the crime. 14 years because they claimed it was gang related. It was not.

I went straight to prison. I was then 18. I thought my life was over. I adapted to prison. Life inside was like life outside. I sold drugs. I was violent.

They thought they could scare us straight. They gathered us in a group. Another girl yelled at me. More abuse did not help.

In 2006, my life changed.

The group Beyond Incarceration targeted “at risk youth” like me. They were the first people to give me the chance to tell my story. It was the first time I spoke of how my dad abused me.

I started working with other people inside. It gave me the feeling that for the first time in my life I was doing good. We, incarcerated people, were changing our own lives.

That was the beginning.

In 2015, California passed Senate Bill 260 giving inmates who were minors at the time of sentencing, a chance to be paroled. The law gave me 8 years of my life back.

In 2014, Proposition 47 changed certain low-level crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. It gave my oldest brother, who had been arrested for drug possession, a second chance.

Today he is a drug and alcohol counselor and I am a civic engagement specialist for the Community Coalition.

Yet much reform work remains to be done.

My second brother was arrested for gun possession. It was his so-called third strike. As a result, he was sentenced to prison for the rest of his life.

Criminal justice reformers, like George Gascon, have transformed so many lives already.

As the San Francisco DA he reformed excessive sentencing, investigated the police, made police data publicly available, and closed juvenile hall.

Now he can help heal our community. Please vote for George!