It’s time to put the people back in government.

The following essay was written by Eliana Kaimowitz, an immigrant integration lawyer at the California Department of Social Services.

I can still picture her sitting across from me, a Latinx woman with dark brown hair and dark eyes, who had risen to the top of her profession. A powerful California state director who made important policy decisions for over 40 million people. I was awed by her; that someone who looked like me could hold so much power and influence.

“I want to do what you do. I want to see how government really works from the inside,” I told her.

Her response shocked me.

“You are too young to work in a government bureaucracy. Go out. Get some on-the-ground experience, and then come back to government.” At the time, her words felt a stinging rejection. Several decades later, I see the wisdom of her words.

Many government workers have had limited interactions with people outside their own communities. This is problematic. People who have limited interactions with those outside their own communities have a very difficult, at times impossible, time designing good policies that actually benefit people on the ground.

More than educational credentials or work experience, policymakers at all levels should have some real-life experience with the problems they are asked to solve. Or at the very least, policymakers should spend significant time with the people affected by the policies they create. They should develop meaningful relationships with community leaders and activists. They should spend time listening — really listening — to the people who live and work and give life to the communities they serve.

That’s why when I research, discuss, and draft immigration policies, I think about the angst in a mother’s eyes as she learns she may be deported far away from her children. I think about the years I spent representing immigrant clients. I think about my own personal experiences as a Latina woman. Human rights become more than a theory when you talk to a person who has been tortured or beaten because they protested a dictator or asked for clean drinking water.

In California, state government has used its power to give immigrants driver’s licenses, access to a college education, and lawyers to help in deportation proceedings. Before any of these policies became a reality, someone had to be that voice who brought the stories of real people to the government. And someone in government had to agree that government could help solve these problems.

We need more changemakers in government. We need more changemakers who have a visceral understanding of the problems they are trying to solve. We need more changemakers in government with connections to the communities they serve.

To all the young changemakers out there: go work in and with the communities you intend to serve, and then go work in government to ensure ours is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”