City Government

Richmond City Council Appoints Latina Woman to Council

Published

9 years ago

September 19, 2017

After Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin announced that effective mid-July she would leave her seat to focus on her campaign for lieutenant governor, last week the Richmond City Council recently appointed her replacement and it was a surprise. Young Latina woman, Ada Recinos, 26, was a unanimous selection to fill McLaughlin’s vacant seat.

Recinos was born in Los Angeles, is the daughter of El Salvadoran immigrants, and grew up on the Southern California towns of Hawthorne and Torrance. She is a 2014 graduate of UC Santa Cruz, where she earned a degree in global information and social enterprise studies

Since October 2015, Recinos has been an advancement manager with Prospera Community Development, a non-profit committed to education and entrepreneurial opportunities for Latinas, where she leads the fund development team. Most recently, Ada was researching effective strategies to improve school meals for migrant farmworker students at the Migrant Legal Action Program and organizing immigrant tenants with Causa Justa in the Fruitvale as an Emerson National Hunger Fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center. She is the second youngest candidate to serve on the Richmond City Council and was recently appointed to the Richmond Human Rights and Human Relations Commission, where she currently serves asVice Chair.

Recinos’s activism in the Latino community was a strong enough influence for current Council members and reaffirms their commitment to seek more Latina representation on the council, given the city’s 40% Latino makeup. Furthermore, the Council expressed their excitement to have a younger candidate ready to take on a leadership role in the City. They also felt that a younger candidate taking a leadership role is good for Richmond.

Richmond City Council is a 6-person body, which includes the mayor, and members retain their private industry endeavors while serving. For more information about Recinos’ work with Prospera, go to http://prosperacoops.org.

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

Published

7 days ago

July 5, 2026

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Inaugural Juneteenth Awards Ceremony Celebrates the Fillmore’s Black History, Leadership and Resilience

Addressing more than 100 Black and Asian attendees, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie stated “San Francisco is reliant on the Black community, and we must invest in this community.”

Published

2 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown, Pastor Emeritus of Third Baptist Church, SF Mayor Daniel Lurie. Photo by Linda Parker Pennington.

By Linda Parker Pennington

The Fillmore Community Ambassadors held its first annual Juneteenth Wesley Johnson White Horse Awards ceremony on June 19 inside the newly reopened Fillmore Heritage Center.

The event featured awards for former San Francisco mayors London Breed and Willie Brown, along with Third Baptist Church Pastor Emeritus, Rev. Dr. Amos Brown.

The Koret Heritage lobby at the newly reopened center at 1330 Fillmore St. held a standing-room-only, culturally diverse and multi-generational audience while the art gallery featured photos of Fillmore community members in action, red Japanese lanterns, art and calligraphy, and Chinese artwork, giving the space a multicultural feel.

Addressing more than 100 Black and Asian attendees, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie stated “San Francisco is reliant on the Black community, and we must invest in this community.”

District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood acknowledged that “the Fillmore community has had a difficult history. Thanks to Rev. Amos Brown’s continuous focus on accountability and resistance, you hold us accountable and continue to inspire us.”

Mahmoud is referring to the Fillmore’s Japanese residents who were forced from their homes and sent to concentration camps during World War II. Black people occupied those homes until the return of their Japanese neighbors and then gave them back, while homes that had been unoccupied were lost. The presence of the Asian community on Juneteenth is a testament to that shared history.

In receiving his honor, Amos Brown elicited a powerful spontaneous call-and-response, where members of San Francisco’s many Black churches proudly shouted out the names: “Bethel AME! Providence Baptist! Jones Memorial! Glide!”

Awards program Master of Ceremonies Shawn Richards of Brothers Against Guns warmly introduced Breed, highlighting her many accomplishments, particularly on “March 16, 2020, when she became the first mayor to shut down a major U.S. city due to COVID-19, saving thousands of lives.”

The audience was captivated by Breed’s emotional speech touching on past traumas, present conditions, and future hopes for the neighborhood where she grew up.

She recalled another trauma of the neighborhood during the City’s redevelopment era in the 1960s, where Black residents were forced to move with a promise of being able to return that was largely unfulfilled.

“We remember when this land was just a field because they bulldozed hundreds of Victorian homes that Black people owned. They built the Fillmore Center, where most Black people can’t afford to live or start their own business. But we are still here.”