Steven Estrada

Steven Estrada

Rossana Cambron

Rossana Cambron, Steven Estrada, Arturo Cambron.

Council run

Steven would go on to graduate from high school with honors and was admitted to San Diego State University, the first in his family to attend college. However, like many in the US, he found that a college education in California is extremely unaffordable and was forced to withdraw from classes. Yet never one to accept failure, he enlisted in the US army as a way of paying for education. During this enlistment in the Army, he rose to the level of Sergeant, qualified as a paratrooper and deployed twice to the Middle East. While he was proud to serve alongside his fellow soldiers, it was this experience that enlightened him to the exploitative nature of US imperialism, a system that manipulates American youth from poor working class families to fight wars that profit only the wealthy.

Now, Steven, a father, veteran, Long Beach State graduate and community organizer seeks to use his newfound skills and experiences to build worker power. Since moving to Long Beach in 2018 he has helped found the development of mutual aid networks that feed the homeless population in Long Beach, has aided in the organization of anti-war protests and been a vocal critic against police violence. As the representative of District 1 in City Council, Steven Estrada believes it is only through the organization and unity of working people that we can solve poverty, inaffordable housing and make Long Beach home again.

Radicalization

Steven Estrada was born in Glendora, Calif., and raised with an absent father in Riverside, primarily by his grandmother during his formative years. It was from her that he picked up his conversational Spanish, though he claims it’s not yet quite adequate enough for him to explain the programmatic points of his campaign. His wife, from Perris, Calif., came from a Spanish-speaking home and it’s her first language.

At the age of 19, shortly after graduating from high school in 2010, he enlisted in the U.S. Army as a way of paying for his future education, graduating from basic training in 2011. During his stint in the Army, he rose to the level of Sergeant, qualified as a paratrooper, and deployed twice to the Middle East. PW asked how he reflects back on his military career now, and why he emphasizes his veteran status so prominently in his campaign.

“I feel a strong connection to others who went into the service, though I see it now as exploitative, targeting underserved people. I knew my immediate jobs and assignment, but I was confused and disillusioned about what it was that we were doing. What was the bigger picture? My reading now shows me we were in service to the rich, against poor people in other countries. But service doesn’t need to be that way. Long Beach has a large VA hospital, several recruitment centers, and a lot of vets live in Long Beach. There was a Veterans for Peace chapter in Long Beach, and some of us are trying to revive it.”

Upon his return to civilian life, he attended community college in Riverside, then commuted for a time to Long Beach State University, finally moving to the city in 2018. He graduated in 2019 with a degree in sociology and trained as a legal assistant. Now a veteran and a father, he uses his skills and experiences as a community organizer “to build worker power.”

Since moving to Long Beach, he has helped found mutual aid networks that feed the unhoused population in Long Beach, has aided in the organization of anti-war protests, and been a vocal critic against police violence. His work providing groceries and meals left him wanting something more, a national structure for effecting change, and he started looking into the Communist Party USA. He’s been a member for about two years now.

CPUSA

Despite the passivity of the Council, one small group is helping those in need in Long Beach. The Long Beach CPUSA/People’s Collective has stepped up when others have stepped out; a group of regulars (Steven Estrada, Julia Estrada, Hannah Howe, Ana Garcia, Breana Marquez) along with others are not just reading Marxist-Leninist theory but actually putting it into practice in the form of mutual aid for the community.

Starting back in March 2019, they’ve tabled once every three weeks or so around Gumbiner Park or near the MHA Village, which is a homeless shelter, and they provide 50–60 meals made at a home of a mutual aid club member.

The group usually makes an assortment of delicious burritos, eggs, chicken, and rice that is nourishing and goes over very well, and which is all put together in member Steven Estrada’s own apartment.

But it is a commitment that brings real dividends. Besides the numbers of the unhoused who are fed, and at times are given hygiene kits such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, combs, and lotion, there’s a chance to have genuine and positive conversations about socialism — as those in need are genuinely intrigued by the pamphlets also handed out (“Black Lives Matter,” “Marxism in the Age of Amazon,” and other introductory texts) that help explain why the unhoused are put into the position they are in. Socialism, it would seem, is a topic of hope and understanding, and those who are in what would seem to be hopeless situations grasp it better than most. The days of kneejerk reaction to the words “Marxism” and “socialism” seem to be nearly gone; for the unhoused living in a capitalist dystopia, these ideas make all the more sense than they did in Joe McCarthy’s America.

Unlike groups in other cities, the Long Beach CPUSA/People’s Collective faces little to no harassment by the police, but witness it consistently against those they are trying to feed and comfort. Guns being drawn by police officers enforcing whatever meaningless regulation is an all too common sight. For those around this part of Long Beach Boulevard next to the Walgreens, the heavy hand of the LBPD is always in the open and ready to strike.

Nevertheless, the project has gone so far, so good, with the collective and the local party growing. Not content to just learn theory, the group has engaged in pure praxis, and the distribution of food and hygiene kits in Long Beach has to be one of the finest examples of what the people can do when working together and not against each other. A regular clothing drive has also started (through the help of Breana Marquez), as well as other elements of political education. The club also has members working with the Tenants Union of Long Beach (such as Ana Garcia) to fight for the rights of renters — those who are lucky to still have a home, but face on a constant basis the depredations of landlords looking to increase their rates or evict families and push them into the ranks of the unhoused.

In the end, the Long Beach CPUSA/People’s Collective has over the course of a year started a small movement for change in the International City, as Long Beach is known. But just like a pebble can start an avalanche, a small movement like this can create change, even in one of the biggest cities in California. And it is doing just that.

People’s Revolutionary Party

People’s Revolutionary Party Long Beach member, Steven Estrada, speaks as he and other protesters stand by the Long Beach Police Department during a Stop LBPD Brutality Rally on Sunday, February 23, 2020. (Photo by Ana Garcia)

DSA Facebook group

Members of the California Democratic Socialists of America, statewide Facebook group, as of February 8, 2019 included Steven Estrada.