Voters in downtown San Jose will have a chance Wednesday to hear candidates for District 3 discuss issues ranging from pubic safety and traffic congestion to homelessness and downtown development.

San Jose is in desperate need of neighborhood coalitions and the community involvement they foster. Crime has increased and extensive cuts have been made to basic neighborhood services. With our quality of life at stake, it is important for residents to get involved with their local neighborhood associations or community groups.

Every year around this time, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and the City Council hold a series of public meetings regarding our city’s budget, which the council must pass it before the summer “recess” in July. This year, the city should needs to make libraries one of its top priorities.

It is time downtown San Jose residents took back Saint James Park. Unlike the glory days of almost a century ago, when presidents and unions held massive rallies in the square, neighbors and downtown workers now describe the park as an unfortunate eyesore.

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, marriage equality advocates have mobilized on social media by sharing a red equality logo. In this column, local community organizer Omar Torres talks about the rights of our LGBTQ community and his own struggle to come out as a gay man to his family.

For decades, institutions of higher learning have been at the forefront of social change. San Jose State University’s CommUniverCity San Jose program is an excellent partnership between residents, the campus community and government partners like the city of San Jose and Santa Clara County.

As an active resident in Santa Clara County’s District 2, I, like so many others, am ashamed of George Shirakawa. The former supervisor blatantly violated the trust of the most vulnerable residents of our district. His deplorable actions have led this district, which suffers from high rates of poverty, gangs, drug issues, under-education and lack of healthcare, to have absolutely no representation until August.

Last fall, more than 200 residents from the four neighborhoods that comprise the Washington community—Goodyear/Mastic, Tamien, Guadalupe/Washington, and Alma—assembled at the corner of South First/Monterey and Oak to fight back against the increase of prostitution in our community.

Omar Torres, executive director of the local nonprofit Santa Maria Urban Ministry (SMUM), joins San Jose Inside as a new columnist. In addition to writing about his work as a community organizer, Torres, who is an elected member of the Democratic Central Committee, will break down how politics work behind the scenes in San Jose and Santa Clara County.