Cecilia Lunaparra was sworn in as Berkeley’s newest city council member on Monday, the first undergraduate, Latina, and the first openly queer woman of color to hold the post.
Wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh draped around her shoulders in solidarity with Palestinians and to oppose Israel’s ongoing killing of civilians in Gaza, Lunaparra took the oath of office at City Hall, promising to defend the United States Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic,” and thanking her parents and Southside community members who elected her.
Lunaparra was elected with 295 votes to represent the city’s student-majority District 7 against her opponent, James Chang, in a special election prompted by former Councilmember Rigel Robinson’s unexpected resignation from office in early January. She ran on a platform supporting dense, affordable housing in Southside, transit- and pedestrian- friendly corridors, student safety and Palestinian liberation.
She will serve out Robinson’s remaining term until 2026, but Lunaparra says upfront that she doesn’t intend to continue in the position afterward. She has already shown significant political ambition in Berkeley, however, serving as the former president of Cal Berkeley Democrats, a commissioner on the Zoning Adjustment Board and director at Telegraph for People, which wants to make the avenue car-free.
After she graduates on May 11, she said she will “inevitably” grow further from students and their needs over the next two years of her term. She said the post should be held by current students who receive guidance and institutional knowledge from advisers.
“I’m doing this primarily because I really care about the community, and I feel like I will have failed if I haven’t mentored another student (to) run and represent the community afterward,” Lunaparra said.
Her dream is to be a high school history teacher. But after she graduates from Cal in two weeks with a degree in Urban Studies and History, she wants to take a break from academia before beginning the graduate school journey.
She has her work cut out for her in this “break,” and Lunaparra acknowledges that the job of Berkeley City Council member won’t be easy.
When Robinson resigned, he cited “harassment, stalking and threats” that made his political career, which at the time included a mayoral run, impossible. He said the harassment was partially related to his support of UC Berkeley developing student housing at People’s Park.
Lunaparra worked on Robinson’s re-election campaign in 2022, and was appointed by him to the city’s Environment and Climate Commission, for which she later served as the chair.
Robinson described her as “brilliant, kind and principled,” and said her abilities should not be discounted because of her youth. He said people doubted him and his qualifications when he became the youngest member elected to Council in 2018, at the same age as Lunaparra.
“The truth is, nobody is really qualified for this weird job,” Robinson said. “Nobody brings all the right experiences to the table. Those who think they do are dead wrong, and the ones who succeed are the ones who get really comfortable asking for opinions and advice from experts and the city staff actually implementing city policies.”
Lunaparra’s politics diverge from Robinson’s on issues like People’s Park, which she strongly supports as a public park and hub for community support networks, and she isn’t expecting the same harassment Robinson faced. As a young, queer woman of color with socialist and progressive stances, she said she is more concerned about right-wing harassment but hopes she can lean on her community to tackle these issues.
Lunaparra was born in Illinois, moving with her family to Burlingame in the Bay Area Peninsula when she was 10 years old. She is fluent in Spanish and spent the summers with family in Mexico. Her father was raised in the Santa Fe district of Mexico City and her mother in Ciudad Satélite.
Her time in Mexico City is foundational to her interests, inspiring her to pursue urban studies and planning policies that she hopes will make Berkeley more walkable and dense. It also shapes how she finds community locally.
“Culture in Mexico is so incredibly, deeply family-oriented. Living in the U.S and being close to my parents and my sister — it was great — but it was missing (extended family),” Lunaparra said. “In some ways, I feel like I search for that feeling elsewhere, that kind of extended family-esque community.”
She found it in People’s Park during her first year of college during the pandemic, when mutual aid volunteers would host American Sign Language and self-defense classes, Friday cookouts and movie nights. Community mutual aid is one of the reasons she’s a staunch advocate of preserving People’s Park as a public park, and why she pushes back on what she says is a “culture war” myth that park supporters are against student housing.
Barring court delays, UC Berkeley plans to build a 1,100-bed student housing project on its land with at least 100 supportive beds for formerly homeless residents. Pushback against the plans, including large-scale protests, have cost Cal over $10 million since 2022, with the construction yet to begin.
“The amount of money and political capital that the university pours into this project has actively deprived us of other projects that could’ve been built if they started at the same time,” Lunaparra said.
Last week, she also camped out at the UC Berkeley “Free Gaza Camp,” started by student activists on April 22 to protest Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, with over 34,000 casualties so far, and demand the university end financial connections to companies with ties to Israel.
For months, she has supported urging the City Council to pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. She says she will meet with advocates to determine the best course forward, whether that means introducing a new cease-fire resolution or pursuing another strategy.
As a council member, Lunaparra subscribes to the emerging theory of collaborative governance, or “co-governance,” which means grassroots organizations and constituents would influence her decision-making process on the dais. This could come in the form of advisory groups in Southside that help her determine her positions on issues, for example.
Throughout her tenure in office, Lunaparra says she wants to be a visible presence in the community to encourage young people to engage with local government. Lunaparra’s campaign is proud to say that 50% of its voters were newly registered, but she acknowledges that young peoples’ “muted” participation was evident in the paltry 493 total votes for D7’s special election.
“I don’t think that this comes from apathy, I think it’s because local government has so many barriers to participation that makes it so difficult to understand,” Lunaparra said.
Among the barriers she wants to address are long public comment periods during City Council meetings that make attendance challenging for young working people. The City Council is currently working on rewriting its public comment rules, partly in response to monthslong protests aimed at pressing members to adopt a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Mayor Jesse Arreguín, Councilmembers Sophie Hahn, Mark Humbert, Rashi Kesarwani and former Councilmember Lori Droste joined Lunaparra’s supporters in the small, packed room for her swearing-in ceremony in the City Council building on Monday.
“I’m excited that we’re closer to having a full Council,” Arreguín said afterward. “I think she’ll bring new energy and an important perspective to this work that we’re doing.”
Arreguín said the two are aligned on several issues, and have already spoken about housing affordability and police accountability. He said 30% of Berkeley is comprised of students, and she will be another progressive leader on the council that gives voice to D7.
“As the only person of Latinx descent elected to the City Council, I’m excited that now there’s somebody else representing our community,” Arreguín said. “She’s the first Latina to serve on the City Council. I think on a personal level, that’s very meaningful.”
