Pomona City Councilwoman Norma Torres

AFSCME member, Activist and Rising Star Who Won Re-election Nov. 2

The 12-year-old girl couldn't speak English.

When that little girl called 911, some 13 years ago, Norma Torres was one of the few Spanish-speaking emergency operators with the Los Angeles Police Department. But Torres had many calls ahead of her. As the desperate girl waited, the situation in her home grew worse. Her uncle, in a jealous rage, was roaming the house, brandishing a gun. The girl continued to hold for a Spanish-speaking operator, growing more desperate by the minute.

It took 20 minutes before Torres was able to get through that night's Spanish-language calls and answer the little girl's cry for help.

Torres picked up just in time to hear the girl's pleas: "Uncle, please don't kill me. It's not my fault." Then she heard a loud bang. Afterwards, there was only the sound of the phone, and the little girl, dropping to the floor.

As Torres relived the horror of those 20 minutes over the next year as she helped the police translate the shouting in the background, one thought was tearing her soul apart: that girl died, simply because the city didn't have enough Spanish-speaking 911 operators.

For years, AFSCME activists had complained about the shortage, Torres said. 911 centers were overwhelmed by Spanish-language calls. "My division had only 22 bilingual operators," said Torres. They worked overtime and through lunch, without pay, simply because they couldn't walk away from the job. "How do you go home if somebody is dying?" Torres asked. But city government continued to be unresponsive.

The tragedy activated her. Today, Torres still works at her 911 job by night, but by day she serves on the Pomona City Council, where she was elected three years ago, is very active in AFSCME 3090 as a shop steward and is a political activist in her community. She recently helped Pomona Valley Hospital nurses win their first union organizing campaign. And she helped create a skate board park for the city's youth.

Torres, who was born in 1965 in Guatemala, was five when her mother died and her father moved her and her two sisters to Los Angeles. They moved in with her father's two brothers.

Even then Torres saw the difference between union and non-union labor. Her father rebuilt electrical motors for a non-union company. One of her uncles worked for Ford, and was a member of the UAW. Her other uncle was a post office employee. Over the dinner table, Torres heard them talk about how the union helped them with healthcare, workplace safety and other problems at work.

Her father, on the other hand, was always at the mercy of his employer. "When my father became ill with diabetes, the company fired him -- even though he had served them all his life." Her father now struggles to pay for his prescription drugs because he has no pension or benefits, trying to get by on Medicare and social security.

Torres joined AFSCME 3090 when she began working for the city as a 911 operator. Shortly after starting on the job, the city tried to reduce the 8.25 percent bonus it paid to Spanish speaking operators to 5.5 percent, claiming there had been an accounting error. When they tried to deduct the difference retroactively, Torres was outraged. "My original job announcement advertised 8.25 percent, so we filed a grievance."

"Before I knew it, I was testifying for the public safety committee," she said. Not only did they win their grievance, Torres also took on and won a fight to get $350,000 for the 911 center to make repairs. Paint was chipping off the ceiling and the furniture was a mess. "The bathrooms were especially horrible!" But, with her activism, the repairs were made. Torres soon realized she could make a difference.

When she heard AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee at a conference talk about union members getting elected to offices - school board, water board, city council - it resonated with her. Her own city government in Pomona had been unresponsive to the neighbors complaints about trash and traffic from a new mall in the area, said Torres. "I realized how dysfunctional government was and I wanted to help fix it from within," she explained. At the urging of her neighbors, she decided to run for Pomona City Council..

"I knew my union would stand behind me and help me," she said. "We didn't know what we were doing," she recalled of the early days of her campaign. But the union sponsored workshops on how to run for office. Alice Goff, AFSCME 3090 president, encouraged her to attend the classes. "I went and realized I was doing everything wrong: I had to learn how to register people to vote, how to raise money, how to write mail pieces. I did all the things they taught me."

Ultimately, Torres even produced a television commercial. In the end, she won her council seat by 75 percent, in a mostly Republican district.

The fight to tame the Fairplex mall continues, but Torres has been an enormously successful city councilwoman. She produces a regular newsletter and maintains a web page at www.normatorres.com that describes her many anti-gang activities. She was behind the construction of a skateboard park for the city's teens, she arranged a program to help seniors re-stucco their homes and she got kids to help clean up graffiti. Recently, she was invited to sit on the Democratic National Committee.

What's next for Torres? She is busy working on her re-election campaign for city council. After that, she plans to make a bid for the State Assembly in 2006. At that point, she will be able to leave her 911 job and work full time as a politician -- and an activist. Meanwhile, in addition to raising three sons, helping run the city of Pomona, being active in the union and doing her job as a 911 operator, she is taking classes towards a degree in labor studies.

How does she find the energy to do so much? Ultimately, it all comes down to that fateful Saturday night, when a confluence of racism and an unresponsive government lead to the death of a little girl. "That's my motivation," said Torres. "That event changed my life completely."