Q&A: Supervisor-Elect Chyanne Chen On Her Vision For District 11

A fresh face will soon represent District 11 at City Hall.

Labor union organizer Chyanne Chen, 40, has devoted her time to being an advocate and educator since coming to San Francisco 23 years ago. In her supervisor bid, she campaigned on public safety, providing cross-generational support for all residents and small business revitalization. In the tight race that was called just over one week from election night, Chen secured the win by 196 votes.

“District 11 deserves the attention,” Chen said. “District 11 is ready to collaborate and work together to make sure we are heard and seen. My campaign victory has demonstrated that bringing people together and building community will get us to a victory.”

The Mission Terrace resident, who will succeed termed-out Supervisor Ahsha Safaí next month, is eager and hopeful to build community togetherness and work alongside other city officials like Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie to shine light and support for District 11 such as completing the long-awaited new Ocean View Library project.

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“I will try my very best to make sure that our mayor gets to hear and see District 11 on a regular basis so that he understands the needs and he understands the changes that are needed,” Chen said.

The Ingleside Light caught up with Chen to hear her thoughts on election night and her plans in the District 11 office.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How does it feel to be the next District 11 supervisor?

I am very excited but at the same time I'm very grateful and thankful that our voters have chosen me and given me the confidence to represent our district. I truly believe that we should continue to deliver bringing people together, building community and amplifying our true community voice. I'm excited about a lot of work ahead but I'm very excited to make sure that we continue to work as a community — and not settle.

It was a pretty tight race, how were you feeling on election night?

Actually, it was not that tight. I think [District 1 Supervisor] Connie Chan was like ‘I won by 123. You got more votes.’ Then another one, District 4, lost by also a few hundred votes. Every vote counts. Yes, it’s a small margin but this is why you have to be popular whether you're number one or number two. You have to be popular with the majority.

Election night was a very mixed. I was happy it was the end. My campaign volunteers’ energy was very high, centering and building community and building family and uplifting each other, which was a very positive momentum. But that was also the night when we lost the presidential election. I am also very concerned, like I don't want to use the word depressed, like depressed is a little heavy. It's very accurate but it's also like I'm sad in general like oh my God in the next four years what are we going to do with a lot of the issues? A lot of the issues concerning our community are about immigrants. As an immigrant something that I think is very important is trying to build community. I'm not trying to be a racist, right? It was that mix of like locally we were excited. We ended with a very positive momentum like people were cheering and it was a high note and then, personally, it was very sad and angry with what happened at the national level.

What is something you learned about the community while campaigning?

Our community is genuinely very kind and nice. They will offer you water. I got an energy bar. A lot of them have lived in the community for a long time and they are easy to talk to. I didn't run into very angry people. But there are little issues that people care a lot about. Everybody cares about public safety but also pedestrian safety. This is across the entire district. In every neighborhood, people will name the street to you [and say] “I wish we could have a four-way stop sign. I wish this is a speed bump so you can be in.” All this is everyday basic stuff. Cleaner streets. In general, people really want to contribute. I've seen recreation centers, like in the Crocker-Amazon, where people buy their own ping pong table. People just form their own groups. I think District 11 people are very motivated and sometimes it's very self-organizing; they help but at the same time if we can amplify and bring them together it could be a very powerful community that is able to uplift a lot of things. I'm very hopeful and I want to get it done, I don't know how many years but I really want to make sure that we have our library.

What do you plan to do in your first 100 days in office?

Make sure we continue to have a team. The budget is coming, right, so make sure that we can form committees, meet with the constituents in the district to make sure that we have our priorities, make sure that we have a strategy to make sure that budget cuts minimize the impact in District 11. Also like forming our team to make sure that we have our priorities like I said the library is one of my priorities. Making sure that we can continue to learn and craft policy that is supporting the children. What can we do to continue to engage in policy that continues to support our kids? [Also] community safety. So I also talk about what can we do, it's bilingual. To me, it's really about how can we make it more accessible? We are bringing people out that we're actually connecting. The word is connecting, it's how can we make sure that we can make changes.