2L Jesús Ibáñez making change happen in California hometown

Last year, Brandeis School of Law 2L Jesús Ibáñez was given a Community Champion award from the organization CARAS, in Gilroy, California, near his hometown of San Jose. Ibanez began working with the organization – which provides mentoring for at-risk youth and other services – in 2011, while also attending community college.

“A lot of them have low self-esteem. I came from a similar background. I can relate,” he said. Ibáñez eventually worked his way up, providing mentoring, teaching, history lessons and more. Even while earning a degree from Chico State, he returned to the organization every summer.

“We started setting up workshops, doing all sorts of community work, hosting festivals. We started helping clients fill out their immigration paperwork, filing for taxes. We are also still mentoring kids,” he said.

During his time with CARAS during the summer of 2014, Ibáñez noticed that a lot of clients were frustrated with the local police department. For example, some officers, clients told him, would ask for their immigration status before helping them with an emergency call. Noticing a trend, Ibáñez facilitated a survey to get a clearer picture of citizens’ grievances. Hundreds of residents in Gilroy, which is about 75 percent Latino, responded within just a few months, most claiming they were being treated with disrespect.

“We uncovered broad harassment and presented the results to the police department. They were open to suggestions on how to strengthen the relationship with the community. The residents know a community can’t function without police. They just want respect,” Ibáñez said.

With the help of this research, the police department is now holding training sessions and implementing policies that better serve this population, he said. The Tamale Festival has also been created through meetings between the community leaders and its citizens, and brought in 15,000 people during its first year.

Ibáñez worked with CARAS again throughout the summer of 2015, with a focus on getting more funding to expand services. He returned home for the holiday break with a full agenda, as well. This time, his objective is to work on the elections process in Gilroy. Currently, the town holds at-large elections, Ibáñez said, so if three council seats are open, the three people who get the most votes are automatically the new council members.

“The issue is the people who advertise more tend to get the most votes and the people who can advertise are those with money to do so. We believe districting is better, especially since money is always allocated to one side of town,” he said.

Ibáñez has tried to uncover how deep the issue is in Gilroy, finding that the last Latino mayor served in the 1950s (Gilroy is majority Latino), while very few council members from 1852 on have been Latino.

“The issue has especially been disproportionate on the city council,” he said. “This is a problem, so we’re trying to come up with a solution.”

So far, Ibáñez and others at CARAS have started a coalition and have formed a relationship with a former mayor of Los Angeles who solved a similar problem through districting. Ibanez also met with Robert Rubin, an attorney who co-authored the 2003 California Voting Rights Act, and other community and business stakeholders. The next goal is to put this issue on the ballot next fall.

“We plan to kick things off in January and get people in the community to work on grassroots stuff to gain awareness. I’ll spend all of my time home (holiday break and summer of 2016) laying the foundation,” Ibáñez said. “I’m fully dedicated to this.”

Aside from his work in Gilroy and with CARAS, Ibáñez has been very active on the University of Louisville campus as well. During a recent Diversity Discussion, led by UofL President James Ramsey, Ibáñez was chosen by underrepresented students to speak on their behalf.

He received a standing ovation for his remarks.