OUR VOICE. OUR TIME.

Education, Health, and SMART Development.

WHy we’re here

Ben is a progressive Afro-Latino millennial who has been a community organizer with ICUC, and San Bernardino Generation Now and has worked in coalitions centered on worker justice and economic mobility in his hometown of San Bernardino, CA. Ben also has deep roots in the state of Mississippi but spent the majority of his youth and adolescent years in San Bernardino. Ben is a homegrown leader who attended Arrowview Middle, Cajon High, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Loyola Marymount University.

Reynoso’s upbringing and organizing efforts in San Bernardino and his personal experience working in the foster care system have left a profound impact on the lens in which Ben views the world; an understanding that how you treat the most vulnerable is the true reflection of who you are.

Elected in 2020, Ben has advocated for various policies and has had success in items ranging from infrastructure repair and small business grants to minimum wage increases and rent stabilization. Unfortunately I have been the only council member to never vote in favor of a warehouse because frankly we have too many, and the jobs aren’t career opportunities. During his first term, Reynoso lost his father, became a father, worked full-time, navigated being an effective elected official, and remains focused on furthering exactly what he came to do: fight for all people, and inspire the youth to remain hopeful of the future they will lead for not only themselves but one another. You have my word that I will never fold or change up but instead always fight for our working families here in the city of San Bernardino!

TAKE A LOOK AT A VICTORY COMMUNITY HAD WITH THE PASSING OF THE INDIRECT SOURCE RULE (BELOW)

(WAREHOUSE IMPACT FEES FOR SAN BERNARDINO AND OTHER COMMUNITIES FROM DEVELOPERS WHO CONTINUE TO ENCOURAGE POLLUTION)

 Education

I attended Arrowview Middle School and Cajon High School here in the city of San Bernardino. At Cajon I was a proud waterpolo player and swimmer on the varsity teams all four years. To this day, I remain a proud Cowboy!

After leaving Cajon High I went off to the University of Southern Mississippi where I attained my bachelor’s degree in English Language Arts. 

Since returning to California I have attended Loyola Marymount University where I received my Masters in Education with a focus on Literacy and Language Arts. 

Experience

I am your 5th Ward city councilman! To say this has been easy wouldn’t be true, but the goal in 2020 and now is to inspire our youth, young people to get involved and run for office in the city they call home. Since being elected I have done exactly that by speaking to students in our district about never giving up on themselves and seeing themselves as the lifeline to our future as an incredible city. Perhaps the greatest joy of being councilman has been the opportunities to not only speak to our youth and inspire them to be the bosses they are, but to actually involve them in any way I can through our youth council (est. 2022) and having them knock on doors to invite neighbors to neighborhood and community meetings.

I have been a community organizer here in the city of San Bernardino since I was 15 years old. What that entailed was getting people first and foremost involved in the political process through registering them to vote at their doors and my peers in our schools. I believed then, as I believe now, that voter registration should be regularly promoted practice in our schools and city so that students can familiarize themselves with the practice of electing those who they believe will truly represent them. 

 I’ve worked to build power with the community for over a decade. To teach our people to do their research and effectively voice their concerns in the most diplomatic way possible so that the change we seek can be enacted effectively. Unfortunately, here in the city of San Bernardino we still don’t see representatives who care to listen to their constituents, their bosses: the people.

 My first paid job was here working for the city of San Bernardino as a lifeguard. It was a good job for me being that I was a waterpolo player for Cajon High and competitive swimmer of many years. I had the privilege of teaching our community how to swim and stay afloat in more ways than one being that communication and trust are key in these kinds of person-to-person interactions. 

 After graduating from Cajon High I spent six years of my life, from ages 18-24, on the gulf coast of Mississippi with my mother and her side of the family while attending school at the University of Southern Mississippi. While in Mississippi I learned about the culture of a people who most care not to think about. I learned how misrepresentation looked there compared to here in California, but what Mississippi taught me above all was how to truly listen to people. Mississippi showed me a love and respect that transcended stereotypes, racism, and disparities; people all work hard and suffer from the same issues that exist even here in San Bernardino, CA: lack of sustainable career employment, crime, homelessness, and poverty. What was different was that in Mississippi, people speak to one another regularly, as neighbors, which keeps them allied for better on a personal level, with or without real representation. I want to translate some of those things I learned in the deep south here, to San Bernardino, in order to bring real representation to the forefront of our entire culture.

 Upon my return to California in 2016, I worked for two years in South Central Los Angeles as a case manager at a girl’s group home and emergency shelter where I saw and learned from our most vulnerable population. What my time in the foster care system taught me above all is that our youth need the help. Homelessness and mental health should never be a separate conversation. Homelessness among students is at about 8% here in San Bernardino County which translates to thousands of students living in cars, sleeping on friends’ couches, or worse. The same homeless adults we often see and grow frustrated with were once our youth who began decades ago sleeping on our streets. Childhood is oftentimes where homelessness begins, but we have to approach the issue from a perspective of prevention, not intervention, because by that time it may be too late. 

 I was successful in connecting several young women to their families and to new families through adoption while working in foster care, but I also came to face the harsh reality that sex-trafficking and drug abuse are rampant in our communities. Providing mental health resources in our schools early is a surefire way to combat this plague, but we can’t be afraid to tackle this issue head on. Children are the future, so we must do prevention work in order to truly remedy these issues in a sustainable way.

 Today, I continue as an economic organizer here in the city of San Bernardino where I have fight for a living wage for our people and better air quality by working to reign in developers who build without ensuring any type of community benefits. You can’t build a warehouse that will employ hundred with great benefits and wages only to build twice as many warehouses to be filled with temporary employment, starvation wages, and sweatshop conditions; this is unacceptable and it’s time to reign it in. 

 We need jobs desperately here in the city of San Bernardino, but we must make sure we aren’t providing more dead-end jobs that can’t feed our families and pay our bills. By pushing for a Community Benefits Agreement with my brothers and sisters in labor, and environmental justice, we have forged a coalition that will make sure any developer who comes to build here does it the right way, with community at the forefront of the process and real career jobs at the end of these projects. We can set the standard for development culture here in our city that will extend to all of Southern California and beyond, but first our people have to know exactly what’s going on before we begin to build. In order to bring life back to San Bernardino we have to build together.

Our Future

I see a future for San Bernardino full of good career jobs. Teachers, trade apprentices, and highly paid skilled laborers who will build not only San Bernardino, but the rest of the world! Educators who grow here and stay here because they are proud of their city and want to contribute to the betterment of it! Incredible partnerships with our police departments to bring real community policing back to our neighborhoods and streets! We can build the San Bernardino we deserve together, but without some of us we can’t do this.

This work will take all of us!

Family