The following letter was received from Brooke Westling, a candidate for Emeryville City Council. During the campaign season, Ms Westling has not sought to win her seat or at least she has chosen to not engage with Emeryville voters about her ideas for our town. Early in the season, she declined to answer the Tattler City Council candidates questionnaire; a losing strategy for the only two former candidates that dared to ignore it (anybody remember Frank Flores or Jason Crouch?). Nonetheless, because Ms Westling is a candidate for Emeryville City Council, we extend the courtesy of posting her letter to the Tattler.
Here then is the letter from Brooke Westling:
To the Emeryville Tattler-
Since joining the race for Emeryville City council, I’ve had the unique opportunity to connect with our city, our community, and learned of the many ways our city leadership has led us in the right direction and the times they have not.
Learning that the vacated seats, early on, were not being filled, I submitted my entry into the contest in the hopes that city hall and the people of Emeryville would benefit from a more independently minded candidate to choose from. However, every indication I received confirmed that residents do want transparent, bold representation on city council, but that the race was being skewed into preferences intentionally shaped by powerful interest groups and their historical influence on elected officials..
On the morning of October 20th, I participated in a candidate forum hosted by the students of Emery High School along with Eugene Tssui and Kalimah Priforce. We were the only candidates that accepted their invitation after weeks of preparation by the teachers and staff and it turned out to be a wonderful exchange between us as candidates and the students.
After this experience which includes the camaraderie and kindness Kalimah and Eugene extended towards me, I found them to be the kind of leaders that the city needs for this election. They both reflect the independent open-mindedness I’ve come to admire about them and they are both willing to place a significant amount of resources towards changing the dynamic of the city council in ways that, at this moment, I would rather utilize towards supporting their bids.
Come November 8th, 2022, I will be voting for Eugene Tssui and Kalimah Priforce for the two at-large seats for Emeryville City Council. They have my endorsement and friendship moving forward and I encourage my supporters to do the same. I will continue to lend a voice and play a role in helping to steer the city in the right direction, and I am confident that Kalimah and Eugene’s tenure will be inclusive of people like me and all those whose voices have felt excluded from city hall.
-Brooke Westling
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