Illustration by Adrià Fruitós.
“Politics is often defined or understood as the art of making a deal. But I think, at its best, it’s the art of making possible tomorrow that which we can’t even imagine today,” says Chesa Boudin, the district attorney of San Francisco County. The son of two members of the Weather Underground sentenced to long spells in prison, Boudin was narrowly elected in 2019 under San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system. He talks of the pain of growing up with imprisoned parents; of the collect calls he still receives every Saturday from his incarcerated father; and of his belief, inculcated in him from childhood, that simply locking people up is a failure of the political imagination. “My personal experience shapes me my worldview, my fears and hopes, my dreams and aspirations,” he acknowledges.1