Remembering Ed Lee

By Emma Yu

    Ed Lee was an amazing person and San Francisco’s beloved mayor who sadly passed away on December 12, 2017. He was a huge influence to many during his lifetime and achieved things most people wouldn’t even dream of doing.
    He was born into a family of Chinese Immigrants in Seattle, Washington on May 5th, 1952. His father passed away when he was only 15, and he worked at restaurants to support his family. He got a B.A. at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and a J.D. at UC Berkeley School of Law. After college, he became a civil rights attorney and practiced law for the San Francisco Asian Law Caucus, fighting for the rights of Asian-Americans like himself. In honor of his fantastic life, here are some pretty amazing facts about him.

Top Five Facts About Ed Lee:

1. He helped with tenants’ rights and housing issues in the Asian Law Caucus. As a result, his work resulted in eviction rates, rent, and house prices to drop.
2. He won the majority vote for mayor of the Board of Supervisors by a staggering 10 to 1.
3. Ed Lee wasn’t even going to run for mayor at first in 2011 after his first term expired and it took the support of three political activists, his daughters, and former two-term mayor Dianne Feinstein (who together created the “Run Ed, Run!” campaign) just to convince him to run for a second term.
4. He took actions to provide more affordable housing for teachers and the lower to middle class, like creating a Housing Trust Fund, the Ellis Act Housing Preference Program (which prevented people from getting evicted by their landlords), and started a $44 million project to create houses that teachers could afford. He’s also added the most houses to the housing market than any other mayor before him.
5. His goal was to have renewable energy make up 50% of the total energy consumption in SF by 2030. Thanks to his actions, greenhouse gas emission dropped by 28%.

​Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Lee_(politician)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/us/ed-lee-dead.html
http://sfmayor.org/about-mayor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowdoin_College
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/12/ed-lees-legacy/548174/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/us/08mayor.html

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