Representative Deborah Gonzalez: The People's Voice
When asked what made her run for office in the first place, newly elected, Rep. Deborah Gonzalez, said, “When I went to vote in 2016, I wasn’t happy that there were no options. 83% of the seats in 2016 went unopposed in the Georgia Legislature so to me that was a problem because to me Democracy means you have choices.” She also felt like “there’s a lot of things that we’ve been taking for granted and if we don’t do something about it we’re going to lose some very basic rights.”
She went on to say that “Somebody had to get involved and nobody was stepping up so I said, ‘Alright, I’ll do it’.” This kind of attitude according to Rep. Gonzalez was instilled into her by her father, a career military man, who served 30 years protecting the United States of America and especially since he would often say, “If there’s something that has to be done and you’re the only person who can do it then you have a duty and the responsibility to do it.”
When asked what she thought some Americans were taking for granted, Rep. Gonzalez said, “They (the government) are coming after some very basic human rights that we have fought so long for. There are threats to our freedom of speech. There are threats to reproductive rights. There are threats to health care, which is to me, a basic human right. We should all be healthy.”
When asked why she, a Democrat, won in a Republican leaning district, Rep. Gonzalez replied, “People didn’t want politics as usual. They wanted a real person. A person, who understood their struggle. A person, who was going to go to the capital to work for them and to be their voice that they can be and not just be like this polished politician always running to get reelected.”
“There’s something that’s wrong here and we need to send people that can problem solve it and who can do it in the best interest of the people they represent. That’s what people responded to. That’s why they came out and voted. ….We have to vote for people to get in based on values.”
“I am of the belief that we need a new contract with government. Between government and the people. We have to have a conversation. We have to have a dialogue”, Mrs. Gonzalez said.
She went on to say, “Give me a chance. Come talk to me. Whether you voted for me or not doesn’t matter because now I’m your representative and the only way I can be the best representative of the people is if people tell me what they need but if they put up this wall because I was a Democrat then we can’t do what’s best for the district.”
Mrs. Gonzalez believes we need to “put this partisan politics to the side and get to resolving the issues that we have. Funding for public education, Medicaid expansion. These are not things that are partisan. These are things that affect everybody regardless of what party you are. Regardless of what party you are, we want to be healthy. We want to have our kids educated. We want economic opportunities.”
Protecting people and especially children from the dangers on the internet is a tremendous passion of Rep Gonzalez which led her in 2011 to start Law2sm, which is a consulting firm partly dedicated to dealing with cyber bullying. She said that we need to teach our kids “critical thinking skills” because they are “being inundated from all these messages” on the internet. She added, “It’s important parents get involved.”
Because she normally is a very private person, the Grandmother and longtime lawyer said, “I never thought about going into politics but one of the things that I’ve discovered after being elected is that people really want me to talk about things. They respect it in a way that maybe they didn’t respect it before because I now have this title of Representative. It gave me this credibility. If that’s what I have then I want to make sure messages that are effective…. are able to be made.”
Mrs. Gonzalez wants to be known for the different roles that she plays and not solely identified by her heritage but she realizes her family being of Latino descent does come into play in how people view her so, therefore, she takes her role as a representative of the Latino community very seriously.
She says people would get along more if they understood that, “No one story invalidates another. They’re all valid stories. They all have value and I think if we can learn to appreciate the value of each other’s stories and see we’re not each other’s enemies” then that will help people to also see that, “there’s enough to go around if we look at it just slightly different. Instead of us vs. them, it’s all us. It’s all one community. …. We have to start with talking to each other.”
In regards to immigration, Rep. Gonzalez said, “When we have good people that want to contribute productively and positively to society they should be given that opportunity. It doesn’t mean we go out of the law. It means, ‘What can we do with the law to take advantage of the benefits that they bring us?’."
Rep. Gonzalez believes, “If you are violent you deserve to be prosecuted under the law.” She does not, however, “condone discriminatory treatment of individuals in law enforcement because they may be a different skin color or they may be an immigrant or undocumented.” She believes “everybody should be treated equally under the law.”
Rep. Gonzalez believes that Immigration and Dreamers, which is children who are brought to & raised in America at a very young age and know no other country, are two entirely separate issues. She said, “When I see those kids, who work hard. How many of those kids are valedictorians? How many of them are in the honor society? How many of them have done dual enrollment in AP classes and are beacons in their community? And then just to say, ‘You know what, we don’t need you. We want you out.’ How much have they contributed and what can they contribute?”
Once again she proves her intention of being a “voice for the people” when Rep. Gonzalez said, “I am very proud of being put on the Committee Judiciary Non-Civil, which is criminal, because one of the things that I do want to look at is mandatory sentencing. These three strikes rules. These kind of sentences that really do give the worse treatment to minorities including African Americans & Latinos.”
3 of the 4 counties that Deborah Gonzalez now represents have never had a Democrat as a Representative so she says she has reached out to every single member of the delegations from these areas to see if they can find common ground.
When asked how she plans on building bridges with people who are in a different political party &/or who have different opinions, Mrs. Gonzalez replied, “I think you just do it one person at a time. One conversation at a time. And just say, look I am here. Give me a chance. I want to talk.”
Mrs. Gonzalez is involved with the organization Street Grace whose mission according to their website is to “end the demand for domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) in the U.S.” and whose vision is to “see a world where all children are free from sexual exploitation.”
Rep. Gonzalez, who plans on focusing a lot of her attention on the issue of DMST said, “People don’t understand, number one, that when we talk about sexual trafficking of minors, we’re not talking about other countries to here. We’re talking about our kids.”
Mrs. Gonzalez showed her aptitude for problem solving when she said in regards to DMST that there is “a bigger cause, a bigger issue that we have to get through. That includes economic inequality. We talk so much about economic development and bringing these big companies here but nobody talks about the other part of the conversation of who has access to that. Is access denied to a certain portion of our population?”
Very much believing in a “livable wage” and living by what you preach, Mrs. Gonzalez says that she pays all of her employees a minimum of $15/hr but she adds that she doesn’t want people to think that a $15/hr job at “McDonalds is the highest that they can aim for. I want them to think that they can go get coding lessons and learn how to code and get one of those top tech jobs that are going at $50-60,000.”
When asked how we go about changing the systematic neglect towards minorities in our education system, Representative Deborah Gonzalez replied, “Tell me where you put your money and I’ll tell you where your priority is and we haven’t done that with public education. We’ve been cutting it back, and two, you can have all the money in the world and you can still have a bad system because the system is bad. It’s about making sure you have the funds and then making sure you effectively use those funds for what’s going on.”
Rep. Gonzalez says that she would like to see more money “go to our teachers”, who she says are “underpaid” and to “better resources for our kids.” She would also like to see each school being treated equally regardless of the amount of the property tax raised in their district.
“The answer to poverty is opportunity and you get that opportunity by preparing people for it and we prepare people through education”, Mrs. Gonzalez said.
She goes on to say that “if you can see it, you can be it” and this is why Mrs. Gonzalez is “very proud to be able to bring a new face and a new voice to the capital” with the four women & four minorities, who will be accompanying her to the State Capital for the upcoming session as interns and employees.
Mrs. Gonzalez, who has also worked with the organization, Family Connection, says that “the studies say that the earlier that you read to the child, the better their success later in life”. She believes some parents need help to learn how to read to their kids and that some kids just don’t have books and we need to find them a way to get the resources they need for a better chance at success in life.
Rep. Gonzalez attributes Dr. Means, the new Superintendent for Athens Clarke County, with the statement, “We have to reach the parents where they are”. She goes on to say, “We can’t have this false sense of parents have to get here. No, we have to go to where they are and help bring them up.”
Mrs. Gonzalez also said, “A lot of these kids are really smart. They just need to have that potential developed.” She goes on to name some reasons why children may have trouble in school and one by one she wants to address and fix those issues.
I asked if my perception was true that she’d rather “educate vs legislate” to which Mrs. Gonzalez replied, “Absolutely! You can’t assume people know what to do but if you just take them and say, ‘Look, here’s a new way of doing it. You can do it or you cannot but just let me make you aware.’ Sometimes that can make all the difference.”
When asked about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent moves to ignore States Rights in regards to the issues of Medical & Recreational Marijuana, Rep. Gonzalez replied, “I absolutely believe that medical marijuana should be accessible by those who need it. We have enough studies that have been done to show that there is a benefit.”
Showing her ability to be practical, Mrs. Gonzalez said, “We have to remember also that medical marijuana would be regulated. It’s not like it’s just going to go out haphazardly.” She says that as a child she bought into the idea that “marijuana was a gateway drug” into harder drugs. She goes on to say, “Part of me now, as an older adult, doesn’t know, was that just part of propaganda? Was that true?”
Rep. Gonzalez said, “What we are really looking at is the decriminalization of marijuana.” She mentioned the 70 people recently arrested near Atlanta, Georgia for less than an ounce of marijuana by saying, “That’s ridiculous. I mean, what harm were those 70 people going to cause over less than an ounce of marijuana? We have to have some rationalization. We have to have some reasonableness in this.”
“We know from an economic standpoint it’s an economic driver. We’ve seen what happened in Colorado and that the funds could help the state for many things. Help fund some of the educational projects that we need."
Mrs. Gonzalez goes on to say, "We have to be reasonable about it. We have to limit the amounts that go out. You don’t want it to be unlimited, however, it reduces crime. People are not going to stab others over a joint.”
Rep. Gonzalez also agreed with the many studies showing that marijuana helped to drastically reduce opiate addictions and overdoses in states where it is legal and that it was, indeed, of great benefit to military soldiers with PTSD.
When asked what she thinks about politicians, who profit from that which they legislate such as politicians against legalized marijuana who happen to also own stocks in the for profit prison industry, Mrs. Gonzalez replied, “I have a real problem with people who flaunt conflicts of interest. I am very concerned about that. Whenever you are in a position of power and you can abuse that power for your own self-interest, that’s wrong. Regardless of who does it, that’s wrong. If you profit from your power then there’s a problem.”
“As for the corporate prison system, when you are in business, one of your goals is to keep in business. When we say we need reform or when we talk about that we need to change the system so that we’re not building these prisons so that basically we want to get them out of business, they’re not happy, so, they’re going to try to influence who they have to so that certain laws that can help us won’t be passed.”
Rep. Gonzalez believes the 13th Amendment which essentially declared that “you can’t take away anybody’s liberty unless they’ve committed a crime” was created as a “loophole” since slaves were no longer allowed. She believes that “started us down this road of mass incarceration and privatization of prison systems.”
“How do you move a mountain? One pale of sand at a time”, was the response Rep. Gonzalez gave when asked if she felt the corporate prison system could be dismantled. This is the kind of answer David would give going against Goliath. An answer that is somehow both unafraid & unassuming while also being filled with persistence and promise.
Her optimistic and cautious sides come out in the following statement, “I’ve been encouraged because I’ve been told by a few Republicans that ‘We’re actually more in agreement than you would think. Than what people portray us to be. We’re not as bipartisan as that’.” She went on to say, “I don’t know until I get there.”
Rep. Gonzalez believes people in general are definitely way more in line with each other than not and especially when talking about “the basics”. “People need food. People need to be healthy. People need education. People need a job.”
When asked what we do about people in government, who stand in the way of common sense, Rep. Deborah Gonzalez replied, “If you want to highlight, let the sun shine in. I vow transparency and the idea of letting people know what actually goes on and what’s happening. You have to let them see the light of day. You have to let people know what is going on, ‘Those are the individuals and that’s their interests’.”
Rep. Gonzalez, who is a big proponent of net neutrality because she feels it keeps the costs low for the internet, thereby, allowing everyone access, said, “I want to see that idea of a principled statesman come back. What it truly means to be a representative of the people. That’s been lost in this race to get reelected every single session.”
Referring to politicians who accept financial support from companies and people they morally disagree with, she went on to say, “I’m not too thrilled about that company but he’s giving me a check so I’ll look the other way and just hold my nose and take the check. NO, we should be sticking to our values.”
Deborah Gonzalez, who was already a practicing lawyer, moved to Athens, Ga in 2007 “for a job at the University of Georgia with the Family Institute of Leadership to help them run community leadership programs and very specifically the Hispanic Leadership Program.”
When asked what she liked most about Athens she replied, “Everything. I think it’s such a great community in a sense of community. I think the people are so incredible and they’re talented and they’re artistic and they care. They care about each other. They care about the community.”
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg” is a role mode of Deborah’s because “she’s got this quiet confidence and strength and power just by being her. Silent but strong. When she speaks it means something. There’s thought behind it.”
“That quiet confidence of I’m doing my job. I’m doing it right. It doesn’t matter the cost.” is what Deborah said she admired about Sally Yates, who recently served as Attorney General of the United States.
“It’s one of the deadliest roads”, Rep. Gonzalez said about Hwy 316, which is the most dangerous and most used road connecting Athens to Atlanta, and, therefore, she has many ideas for alternative transportation including autonomous vehicles and a train. Rep. Gonzalez believes “there are many ways that Georgia as a state can be a leader, a model for other states.”
When asked how she will help connect the many different communities living in Georgia to each other, Mrs. Deborah Gonzalez replied, “So many people have been hurt. They’re in pain. Whether it’s historical damage or whether it’s more recent, I think that it’s caused a lot of people to be suspicious of others…. We need people, who can cross those walls. It takes time to build trust with people but we’ve got to keep doing it. One conversation at a time and being there for each other. I think the presence of a person speaks loudly.”
When asked what she wants people to most know about her, Rep. Gonzalez replied, “That I’m here. That I’m here for them. They gave me this job. They hired me with their votes and I really want to do the best job that I can but they have to talk to me.”
When asked what the message was that she wanted most heard, Rep. Gonzalez replied, “That they (the people living in America) matter. Whether it’s their job, their health, their education for their kids, they matter.”
When asked what she is most proud of about America, Mrs. Gonzalez replied, “I’m proud of the people of America. I think we have a resilience. I think we have a caring, a true caring. …. I remember as all this (9-11) was happening how people were gathered together. There was a promise of what it meant to be American. It’s the people that I’m most proud of because they always come through.”
When asked what we can change, Deborah, replied, “I want to change the mentality of scarcity. That people think that if I take, you can’t have. I think that we have enough for everybody if we just really take stock of what there is and learning new ways of sharing it. I don’t believe that people are inherently selfish and evil. I believe that people are inherently good and that they care.”
When asked if she would attempt a long term career in politics, Rep. Gonzalez replied, “I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere. Whether that means that I’m going to be a Representative, I hope to win another election and I will be campaigning for that, but the thing is I am not going away.”
When asked about something she volunteers for that makes her proud, she replied, “I do a lot with the Georgia Lawyers for the Arts pro bono. Legal clinics for musicians and artists. I am proud of that work because they make the world a beautiful place but they get taken advantage of a lot and it’s because they’re not really about the money. They’re about their craft. They’re about making the world beautiful. They’re about making their statements. I’m proud of the work that I do with them. I’m proud of the work that I did with Domestic Minors Sexual Trafficking Act”, which helps protect minors from the sex trafficking industry.
It became clear to me after spending time with Representative Deborah Gonzalez that she is: extremely kind & sincere, very wise, passionate & compassionate, looking towards the future with solutions to problems, always willing to have a conversation, respectful of her responsibilities and those with opposing views, as well as, generous with her time as a Volunteer & now an elected Representative.
She is also somehow still managing a successful law career, while also doing what matters the most to her, being a loving and very present mother and grandmother, who sets positive examples for her kids (& all of us) with her visionary, consistently caring & productive actions.
DEBORAH GONZALEZ IS GOOD PEOPLE.
To read more about Rep Gonzalez visit her website: VoteDeborahGonzalez.com
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*photo credit: VoteDeborahGonzalez.com
