BYE BYE NEO-LIBERAL NANCY! DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST BEATS PELOSI INTERVIEW WIITH THE SHAHID BUTTAR CA12

An immigrant of Pakistani descent from the United Kingdom and the youngest of four children, Shahid grew up in the midwest and first came to the Bay Area in 2000 to study law at Stanford.While a student at Stanford Law School, he served as Executive Editor of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal and professor Lawrence Lessig’s teaching assistant for Constitutional Law. He also spear-headed a campaign to promote sustainable building practices by the university, a day of action to shut down a Lockheed Martin facility, and a student strike against the war in Iraq. After growing immersed in the movement to end the war, Shahid moved to Washington to work for Heller Ehrman LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm that later collapsed during the 2008 financial crisis. His work there included litigation championing the right to marry the partner of one’s choice—nearly 10 years before the Democratic establishment finally embraced marriage equality—and an appeal defending bipartisan campaign finance reform from being undermined by the Federal Election Commission. Since graduating from Stanford Law School in 2003, Shahid has worked in both San Francisco and Washington as a legal advocate, a non-profit leader, a grassroots organizer, and a poet & musician. His wide-ranging work reflects a commitment to intersectional feminism, democratic socialism, and international human rights. His passions have long aligned around a common purpose: building the movement to place human rights and human needs like peace and climate justice before corporate profits. An early advocate for marriage equality for same-sex couples and a prolific organizer in the movement to end warrantless government surveillance, Shahid most recently built a national grassroots network for the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the organization’s Director of Grassroots Advocacy. In addition to LGBTQ rights, privacy, and the right to encryption, Shahid’s work has also advanced immigrant rights, campaign finance reform, government transparency, international human rights, and police accountability. His writing has explored issues from the right-wing attack on reproductive freedom to the erosion of voting rights, and from effective counter-terrorism strategies to examples of counter-cultural activism promoting progressive politics at the intersection of art and organizing.