Tony was born at St Luke’s Hospital in 1963. His mother worked for the American Can Company on 3rd St. for years and died of cancer when she was 44. His father died homeless at the corner of 1st and Mission St 33 years ago. He was evicted twice, and was homeless for a brief period of time. Because of these experiences, Tony has been working with activists organizations like GreenAction and Mother Brown’s for over a decade, demanding a proper cleanup of the radiation contamination of Hunters Point Shipyard, housing homeless families and individuals, and creating a public bank to fund 100% REAL affordable housing.
After co-founding the Potrero Stage (then called Thick House) in 1999, Tony became active in neighborhood organizing, and was elected President of the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association 9 times.
As a community advocate and organizer for 15 years, Tony worked with neighors on Potrero Hill to save Daniel Webster Elementary in 2006 and Starr King Open Space in 2009, co-founded the first Green Benefit District in the country, worked to save and creating affordable housing in the district during the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, and worked with environmental justice activists on Potrero and in Bayview to shut down power plants in Dogpatch and Hunters Point, as well as sound the alarm on the coverup of the falisified cleanup of the Hunters Point Shipyard.
