Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of profile articles on each of the four candidates running for three seats on the city council in the Nov. 5 election. The profile of Nasser Alsaadun ran last week.
By K. Mauser, contributor
Javier Calleja’s first job was to go door-to-door selling dish soap to pay his electricity bill when he was 8. More than 30 years later, he’s knocking on doors again for another reason: to spread the word about his campaign as an independent candidate for Harrisonburg City Council.
Calleja, who immigrated to Harrisonburg from South America when he was 18, said he came to the United States for a “better future” and to achieve what he describes as the “American dream” — despite having little knowledge of the country. He became a U.S. citizen in 2007.
“The most precious treasure that I have, my American dream, is far from commodities, titles or degrees,” he said. “It’s my four kids. I want my kids to be able to have opportunities that the 18-year-old guy without [speaking] English — without any other freedom — gets to have today.”
For Calleja, running for City Council is more than just chasing a title: he said he’s running to create more opportunities for other people in Harrisonburg to thrive like he did.
Faythe Silveira, Calleja’s campaign manager who also helped Calleja find a job and housing when Calleja first immigrated to America, said the empathy and compassion Calleja has for immigrants getting settled in America will help him if elected to city council.
“He’s pretty intelligent, but his experiences growing up and coming to the U.S. and having a hard time when he first got here, I think, [also] made him very resilient,” she said.
Calleja has been preparing for his city council candidacy for six years, he said, mainly because he was still in the process of writing his dissertation to attain his Ph.D. in applied linguistics when he first decided to run. He said he waited so long because he “didn’t want to be unprepared for the job.”
“If I’m going to be elected, I’m going to be effective, too,” he said.
To run for city council after such a long period of preparation is “humbling” for Calleja — as he has come to an understanding that the city’s needs are “way bigger than yourself,” he said.
The most important goals for Calleja if elected are working together to move the city forward as well as transparency and accountability, he said.
In terms of city collaboration, Calleja said he hopes to expand on the strategic planning used in Harrisonburg to increase city income and revenue, which he hopes will work toward supporting K-12 and higher education in Harrisonburg. Calleja also said his goal to increase transparency and accountability will help engage people in understanding where their taxes are going.
Executive Director for the Financial Transparency Coalition Matti Kohonen said having city financial transparency can “level the playing field” for companies, making it easier to do things like win public contracts. He also said it’s important for candidates to have financial transparency and accountability values when running for office.
“We think that that’s a very important thing, at the city level, to have basic transparency,” Kohonen said.
Keeping communities safe and smart money management are also two of Calleja’s goals for his candidacy, according to his website.
Silveira said Calleja also plans to have council members be more accessible to the community, adding that he hopes to start a process where people can voice their concerns to council members outside of its meetings every other Tuesday. She said this will ensure residents’ input would be “really taken into consideration.”
“When people sit down and they start talking … and realize what our city needs, those needs are the same for everyone,” Calleja said.
Conversations across political differences is an obstacle Calleja has faced throughout his campaign that he plans to work on if elected to office, he said. And when people put aside their political values, a lot of their needs “are the same for everybody,” he added.
This inspired the official name of Calleja’s campaign, Silveira said — “Javier for Harrisonburg United” is Calleja’s “dream” in bringing the community together in the midst of so much division, she said.
“I think it was important to him because we are so divided right now,” Silveira said. “We need to get back to having civil discourse and being able to discuss problems … we need to be able to have people come together and have civil conversations.”
Silveira said part of the reason Calleja will make a good council member is because he has values that are common among Democrats and Republicans, which will help him be able to remedy “tough situations.”
“At the end of the day … we are all Americans,” Calleja said. “If we unite, nobody can split us apart.”
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