Dear John,

With this being the month of giving thanks, and with two days left before this historic election, the theme of gratitude continues to enter my mind. 

Let me take a moment to explain.

I often wish my mother were still alive to see me now. We all cover a lot of ground over the course of our lives, and mine occasionally astounds me when I reflect on it. 

That’s why I’m so grateful to have become the first Democrat in 33 years to challenge the current Speaker of the House for her seat in Congress.

When I was younger, I never envisioned running for office. 

My family moved from London to a small town in rural Missouri when I was 2 years old. We moved from Rosebud—with a population of under 400 people, and not a single stop light—to the suburbs of St. Louis when I was in middle school. Until then, my connection to the world beyond our town had been mostly through books. Our faith congregation on the north St. Louis exposed me to wealth & income inequality, but I remained the furthest thing from worldly.

And when I was 21, I was happy to simply have a roof over my head. 

I spent two years—1992-1994, when I was 17 to 19–challenged by housing insecurity after my family lost our home to foreclosure in 1991. I started college at the University of Chicago that fall, but had to leave school before the end of the academic year due to financial obligations and landed on the couches of a series of friends.

That was a rough time. It taught me a lot, including how little I need, how lucky I am for the chance today to work in the realm of ideas, and how to relate to anyone from any social circle in more or less any circumstance.

After getting back on my feet by landing a job at a bank in 1994, I went to night school at a series of community colleges, exhausted the credits available to me in the night programs at Depaul and Loyola Universities, and then finally graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University Chicago in 2000 before moving west to study at Stanford Law. By the time I finished college, I had spent a decade taking classes. 

At this point, my story turns from one of personal struggle to personal triumph and continued struggle in the political arena: I studied hard, organized direct action resisting Bush’s wars and attacks on civil liberties, worked in the courts to expand civil rights and get money out of politics, and then spent over a decade fighting the surveillance state—to defend democracy—before running to replace Pelosi.

As an immigrant without property or a family legacy taking on one of the most wealthy Members of Congress, I am the walking antithesis of political privilege.

That’s why your support has meant so much to me. At the same time that we’ve raised over $1.5 million to challenge the leader of the corporate Democrats, we’re still outgunned by a ratio of 15:1. And with Pelosi spending a million dollars every month on Facebook advertising alone, we have our work cut out for us.

Thank you for being part of this historic campaign. We—and I—could not do it without you.

In solidarity,
Shahid

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Shahid Buttar For Congress 1769 15TH STREET San Francisco, CA 94103