Candidate for
Council Member; City of Oakland; District 2

Aimee Allison is a 35-year old biracial businesswoman and mother raised in Antioch, California. Holder of a BA in History and an MA in Education from Stanford, she has lived in Oakland since 1991. She currently works as a training and development consultant for youth development nonprofits and other small businesses.

Aimee was a Conscientious Objector in the Persian Gulf War. Attracted by the army's offer of education, she enlisted as a combat medic in order to pay to attend Stanford. As an undergraduate she developed a strong commitment to pacifism while caring for veterans at the Palo Alto VA Hospital. Aimee says, "they were just pieces of people, fractions of body and mind. Many had been homeless. The VA hospital was overcrowded and they were getting really bad medical care. I was 18 and I was taking care of indigent older men. That's when I started questioning war."

For more than a dozen years Aimee has been a counselor to military personnel who are seeking CO status, a public speaker against war, and a nonviolence trainer. She has been featured in the documentary Blood Makes the Grass Grow. As the lead organizer for the Defense Committee of Stephen Funk, the first openly gay Conscientious Objector, Aimee worked closely with Out Against the War, Asian Pacific Islander Coalition Against War, and Veterans for Peace.

Aimee spent four years as a high school Social Studies Teacher. As Latino Student Advisor during the campaign against the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, she supported a student walkout. Under pressure from her school administration, she left teaching to become a consultant on the uses of technology in the classroom. She has remained a consultant since the late 1990s.

Aimee is married to Aaron Baluyot, an immigrant from the Philippines. They have one child, Isaiah, who loves to breakdance. Aimee loves Oakland because it is a mecca for interracial and other nontraditional families, and pledges to serve on the City Council as an advocate for all families.