Jake Tonkel, 29
29-year-old biomedical engineer and returned Peace Corps volunteer Jake Tonkel has put climate justice at the forefront of his platform to prove how thinking locally can affect the world globally. But to do that, this San José City Council candidate believes we need to make the council more accessible to its constituents, so the local community can be involved in local government.
Name: Jake Tonkel
Age: 29
Running For: San José City Council (District 6)
What was the best piece of advice you received before running for office?
The most important part is connecting with voters one-on-one.
There's a lot of distractions that go into how people campaign. What everyone thinks is important, what shows viability, what shows credibility, all of those things. People scramble for endorsements. People want to be on all types of social media, they want yard signs, you name it, there are 1000 things that can be done to make a campaign have an external look of professionalism and excitement. But unless you're talking to people and connecting in one on one relationships, it doesn't get you very far.
When did the lightbulb go off? When did you realize you wanted to run for office?
It was late. I went through the 2019 New Leaders Council Fellowship training. It was not just about running for office, but also how to sit on nonprofit boards, how to be a community leader, how to make sure progressive policy gets put in place in your city and community, and not always through a political lens. That slowly brought me to a spot where you realize what runs an effective campaign. It took down a lot of the barriers.
Ultimately, I am just trying to make my city and my district work for everyone. So I poked around with people that had run before who had a progressive voice. It was getting later and later. I sat down with one or two people, and said I can do this. Let's see what we can do to make it happen.
Now, you mentioned wanting to make San Jose more progressive. Progressive is a word that gets thrown around quite often into today’s political rhetoric. So in your own words, what does progressive mean?
“Ultimately, I am just trying to make my city and my district work for everyone.”
It’s people that look at the way the system works now, and have either a little bit of naivete or optimism or hope that there is something better out there. We have progress to work towards. It's not just “let's find the balance” for every little piece of policy that we have right now. It is a system changing. Moving from a very old style, very challenging, and money in politics type electoral style and moving to publicly funded elections. It's taking down a banking system that is shown to be corrupt and profit gouging that doesn't put the community first. There is progress to be made to make our community a priority. And that's how I really see that.
What perspectives do you think are currently lacking on the city council? And what perspectives do you hope to bring?
I think there are some great people on council currently. But we need to be a majority. We're in a space where there are only some council members that understand intersectionality, that understand our city as the 10th largest city in the country has a role as a leader in addressing global climate policy in, putting forth new ideas that are going to benefit working-class people. And it's something that I just think I have enough experience where I can help out. I am a returned Peace Corps volunteer, I spent time abroad doing international development, understanding what happens locally affects thing globally. That perspective is really important to me for our leaders.
Climate justice is very central to your platform. But often when people think about climate justice policy, we think about the Green New Deal, the Paris Climate Accords, broad federal policies - not their city councils. What do you think can be done about the climate crisis on a local level?
It's one of the most exciting pieces that I get to talk about, because whether I'm knocking on doors or in forums, panels or debates, people really do see local municipal politics as potholes, police, and constituent services. Those things are important for us to navigate what a safe community might look like for us. A huge piece of what happens at a federal level influences what cities can do. Like how much money is available for cities to take things on? So when we hit walls in terms of our climate goals as a city, generally it's around funding.
Retrofitting a lot of buildings is going to cost us billions of dollars. In those spaces that can seem daunting, that something like the city of San Jose, as big as it is, would take on. And yet, there are so many other policy points that can be implemented in real-time, that make this change from making sure that we have all residential and all new commercial buildings are carbon neutral or carbon negative.
“Cities need to be the leaders because that's where you're closest to your constituents.”
Starting today, that technology exists. It is cheaper in the long run for construction costs, cheaper for maintenance costs, and usage fees. There are drastic changes that are really just about saying we're going to commit to making sure that when there are negative externalities placed on our community, we're going to account for them and therefore know what the real cost is.
When we do something in the right way, when we do something in a way that improves people's lives, that makes the environment cleaner, that tackles the injustices and inequities that we see at our city level, that happens in all types of policy, right? Climate justice is not just about creating clean air and clean water, but it's about empowering people. If we don't have a livable wage and affordable housing in the city of San Jose if we need to get to a spot where people have the luxury of taking public transportation or walk to work instead of driving their car. The intersectionality of addressing climate change is massive.
Cities need to be the leaders because that's where you're closest to your constituents. That's where you're closest to do both the educational piece and policy-based piece to make that change. One of my big platform goals is public banking. How do we shift the funding mechanisms for what we know, is not only the moral and just thing to do, but the cost-effective thing to do for our generation and the next generations to come by taking finance into a different light to put the community first. Put people over profit. That’s something that there are cities looking to take on. We have the city of San Jose evaluating what public bank might look like right now. We got that unanimously passed by city council in 2019. So there's a step that we're taking, that will pull us out of this system make us more local, independent and more resilient. And a lot of that has to do with how we address climate as well.
You've been on the campaign trail since July? Do you feel that you’ve faced any particular barriers or disadvantages as a young candidate over that time?
Certainly! It’s superficial things, like do I go out knocking on doors with a beard or without a beard? it because it changes people's perception when they open. I have a very interesting race where there is actually a candidate younger than myself - a 19-year-old running. It took a little bit of heat off of me when people said, “Oh, you're the young candidate, right?” I could say no, actually, I think you're you might be thinking of one of my other challengers that is 19 years old.
It fit me in this weird middle ground where all of a sudden people realize 28 and 29 years old, there's a lot of life experience. As the conversation kind of gets past, the first, “You look young, what could you know”, you get to impress people with your understanding of local politics and national politics, your understanding of the community. And that is something that is really exciting.
Certainly doesn't mean I didn't have people that came to me and said, “Sorry, you should have been on the planning commission in the last four years. You didn't plan this out loud enough. Why are you jumping in? Where did you come from?” Those are kind of all the default questions that get asked of someone of my age in our generation. But it was few and far. Once people were willing to open up and have a real conversation, it didn't really matter.
“I have respect for the generation below me. There's a lot to learn from young candidates, young organizers and activists - younger than myself.”
Shifting gears to the reverse, do you believe you have any advantages as a young candidate?
The way that we connect with people right now is a little bit different. There's a mix of social media, but there's also a mix of understanding that we can talk about really any topic. For older generations, they has certainly been a space where you don't talk about religion, you don't talk about money, you don't talk about politics. I think it's something that our generation is pushing the boundaries on and breaking through those barriers.
The community of being able to talk about these sorts of things being engaged, being excited about what change we can make, helps to build a network of younger people in my own community. We can have a night where we go out we grab a beer and talk politics. That's where you know fresh ideas come from.
I'm able to learn not just over a drink, but in community organizing meetings. I have respect for the generation below me. There's a lot to learn from young candidates, young organizers and activists - younger than myself. I'm going on a panel today with the youth climate strike and I'm going in fully expecting to learn from people that are 16 17, and 18 years old, with that open-mindedness that everyone has ideas and opportunities to learn and be experts regardless of their age. It's something that I'm excited to be able to bring to city council as well. That's an advantage in every door knock, or every discussion I have at the door, in every town hall, that every viewpoint is, “I'm open-minded” rather than, “Where did you come from? What are your credentials? How old are you?”
In your platform, you talk about the inaccessibility of local government and your critiques of the public meeting times. How would you like to reform city engagement with its constituents to make it more accessible?
I think we have to reevaluate what is the way that we go through these processes. From Robert's Rules to all the different types of legislative policy pathways through committee and public comment. How do you evaluate it? Who were you reaching out to when you're trying to get public comment? It’s realizing that there are other ways to do it. Do I know all of them and what's best? No, but I know what we have isn't working. There’s some excitement in that.
You have to make sure that there is an opportunity to let people know this is the discussion that's taking place. At public comment, we have people waiting for hours to talk about the one item that's specific to them. I'm not gonna have to step out of work and then not get to be in public comment because the item before went an extra hour longer. It is something that really has to be looked at.
The other piece of it is certainly a huge amount of privilege, right? There is a specific privilege and class of people that can leave work at 1:30 pm to go to a council meeting or that can come to a community meeting at five in the evening on a Tuesday. They can find someone to look after their kids, they can afford someone to look after their kids, they have a partner or spouse that can take those things on. They're not working an odd hour job. Until we have policies that make it so that those folks have the opportunity and the privilege to engage, then we're not going to have the type of engagement and diversity of engagement that we want. So it is really connected to progressive policy at all levels, to build quality of life for your community in order to build what government will look like and who is represented.
What was the best piece of advice you’d give to another young progressive considering a run for office?
Just do it. I mean, it's weirdly cliche I guess as it comes out of my mouth. Yes, this is a lot of hard work, and it's probably not something that you're 100% ready to do. But I think we need more of that. I felt pushed back daily, that I didn't plan it out, right. I didn't sit on the right boards, I wasn't doing x or doing y. There’s never going to be the perfect time. You're never going to have the perfect resume. You're never going to have the best “connections.” What's really important to your average neighbor and community member and voter is that you care.
If you can get over that bit of fear that people are going to think you’re not qualified and sit into a place of “Screw it.” I care about my community. This is something that I want to do to make it better. You're going to win, regardless of the outcome of the election. You're going to continue to build relationships. You're going to move into a space where you have the leverage in political spheres of policy that you want. There are no downsides to running other than you've changed the way that you're using your time. I'm ready, because what's important to me is my community.