When Marcy Winograd was an undergraduate student, she protested against the Vietnam War and fought for farmers’ rights.
Now, she is running for Congress as a progressive, Democratic candidate for Southern California’s 36th District.
Winograd, who received her teaching credential from UCLA in 1993, will be challenging Democratic incumbent Jane Harman at the ballot box in November for the second time in four years.
A graduate of UC Berkeley, Winograd said her interest in politics grew while she was a political science student in the 1970s.
“I came of age during the Vietnam War. My brother was marching in the street, and I was marching as well,” she said. “It was really the politics of the streets.”
During this time, she also worked with the United Farm Workers Union, leading picket lines around liquor stores on Friday nights.
In 1975, she met Cesar Chavez while informing farmers in Central California about their rights to organize and to vote in the coming election.
When Winograd had a daughter, her focus shifted from the political sphere to the world of education. She became an English teacher and department chair at Paul Revere Middle School.
“I saw education as a valuable way to reach young people and talk about the issues that were most important,” she said.
Winograd decided to try her hand at politics once again when she saw Harman’s interview on “Meet the Press” and decided to challenge her.
Harman, who has served eight terms as congresswoman, has been recognized for her involvement in issues such as counterterrorism and homeland security. She has been a member of the House Intelligence Committee for eight years and played an important role in the passage of the Intelligence Reform Act in 2004.
In 2006, Winograd ran on an anti-war, pro-constitutional rights platform in an attempt to unseat Harman. Although the grassroots level campaign lasted only three months, Winograd managed to garner 38 percent of the vote on Election Day.
This time, she said she is more confident that a victory may come in November.
“We have over 100 volunteers in the fields conducting virtual phone banking,” she said. “We have bloggers in Pennsylvania who are phone banking for us.”
Winograd’s campaign centers on issues concerning income distribution, education reform and government spending.
She said one of her goals is to decrease wasteful military spending, which is now a proposed trillion dollars, and to reallocate that money to education and social programs.
“One of my main platforms is that we need to make education a top priority in this country. We have the know-how and resources to educate our youth in something other than war,” she said.
Winograd said she believes there should be more transparency at the state level for public universities such as the University of California.
“I think it’s important that UC open its books to the public so that taxpayers can see where tax money is going,” she said. “That money should be reinvested in the students.”
Winograd’s campaign has garnered several endorsements, including author Gore Vidal and former military analyst Daniel Ellsbeg.
Patty Sharaf, who was active with Winograd in anti-war protests at Berkeley, is now a videographer for the campaign. She said she believes Winograd has been successful in her return to politics.
“She was just always a very capable person, and anything she wanted to do, she could just figure out how to do it,” Sharaf said. “She’s a very responsible and fair and principled person.”