Representative Lateefah Simon is a nationally recognized advocate for civil rights and social justice who has been serving her community in Oakland and the Bay Area for more than 25 years. She first began organizing as a teenager, when she worked for and later led the Young Women’s Freedom Center, an organization focused on supporting and inspiring local girls to create a positive change in their lives and give back to their communities. From there, Representative Simon’s track record of delivering positive change in her community led then San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris to call on her to spearhead Back on Track, a first-of-its-kind anti-recidivism initiative. In 2016, galvanized by the death of a 22-year-old Black man named Oscar Grant, she ran for and was elected to the Bay Area Rapid Transit board of directors, where she has made public safety a key focus of her tenure. And in 2024, Representative Simon took another step forward in her public service journey by earning the trust of voters in California’s Twelfth District and becoming their congresswoman.

As one of the inaugural recipients of GIFFORDS’s Champion Award—an honor given to candidates running for office that are laser-focused on being among the strongest gun safety champions nationwide—it’s no surprise Representative Simon has already established herself as one of the foremost advocates for commonsense gun safety measures on Capitol Hill in just two short years in the US House. Like so many in this movement, Representative Simon knows that gun violence is a public health crisis that must be addressed head on, and she’s been a strong, vocal proponent for universal background checks, a federal extreme risk law to disarm those who pose a threat to themselves or others, and lifesaving safe storage standards. She’s also championed efforts to adequately fund efforts to research the root causes of gun violence, to allocate needed funding for community violence intervention programs, and to get dangerous hardware off our streets and out of our schools.

For too long, our leaders in Washington DC have put politics over the needs of everyday Americans and refused to pass necessary gun safety laws. While we’ve made some progress in recent years, there is still so much more to do if we are going to build a safer future for the next generation. It’s time to send champions like Representative Lateefah Simon back to Capitol Hill to get the job done once and for all as part of a renewed gun safety majority. We know she’ll never back down in this fight until every Californian can grow up in a world free from violence.

We are proud to endorse Lateefah Simon for the US House of Representatives.