WASHINGTON — Congressman Mike Thompson, who represents California's 5th Congressional District (Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma Counties), held a virtual press conference on Tuesday, coinciding with President Biden's State of the Union address later that day and introduced this year's virtual guests for the State of the Union.

"Every year, there's a State of the Union. I'm allowed to invite a guest from my district, but because of the pandemic, we're not having any guests in the Capitol. What I thought I would do is address some of our friends and neighbors of constituents from the district to join on a zoom," he said. "We've had a pretty good year. We were able to keep businesses from being foreclosed on, kept people in their homes, got them back in their jobs and children back in schools. With the American rescue plan, we know that our economic growth is up, wages are up and unemployment is down."

The congressman introduced the guests of the event, declaring that "we really owe our success to all of you, because none of this would be possible if it weren't for the millions of hardworking Americans whose preservation, perseverance and tenacity, despite this pandemic, has fueled our nation's historic recovery. We have a great representation of the heroes and heroines across our country." Among those were the executive director of Generation H, Jen Klose; the owner of Provisions Café, Nicole Hodge; the founder of ZIATA Wines, Karen Cakebread; the director of Contra Costa Health Services, Dr. William Walker; President of Chandi Hospitality, Sonu Chandi, introduced by the congressman as "an incredible entrepreneur and a very prominent and important figure in Sonoma community; and the former Lake County Board of Education trustee, Madelene Lyon, "a great friend from Lake County and a longtime school board member."

"I'm really honored to be invited here amongst all these impressive folks and grateful for the invitation. These are weird and scary, unpredictable times, with the events in Ukraine, emergency COVID and ongoing political divisiveness. It is really times like this when I know I and I think lots of Americans need the stabilizing and unifying leadership from our president. The State of the Union address is really well timed," said Klose. "Generation H puts efforts to get people in housing. I'm really grateful to lead generation housing here, locally, where we advocate for more and more diverse and more affordable housing. We have a housing crisis in Sonoma County, the whole North Bay, all of our district, and that played out tragically during the pandemic. We need 50,000 homes in Sonoma by 2030. We're 30,000 behind. We have to quadruple our production to meet this goal. Some folks are daunted by this number and don't want to acknowledge it."

Hodge recognized there would not be any chance of survival of her business without the financial support of loans. "It was instrumental in providing me with not only the money to pay my staff, but to have the courage and the strength, knowing that I was being backed by my government. It felt amazing. It's been a rough couple of years, but we're here and we're better than ever," she said, thanking the government officials present.

The businesswoman, founder of ZIATA Wines, is, on Mike Thompson's words, "a real pillar in our community". She headed up the vaccination program in the upper part of the Napa Valley, volunteering on its organization. "We've done an amazing amount of vaccines a little over a year now. I also served on the board of directors for the Napa Valley grape growers. We were just having a board meeting about how we are going to keep our workforce healthier through the pandemic. We had a Mobile Health Unit, so we mobilized that unit to go out into the vineyards and test all the farmworkers every week. Once January rolled around, we finally had some vaccines available. We opened up a clinic in St. Helena and been running it for a year now, and we're still getting people showing up for first shots, which is kind of amazing to me. The rewarding part is it was completely run by volunteers, except for our nurses at the hospital," said Cakebread.

"None can guarantee that there won't be another variant or there won't be another spread. We know how to deal with it now. We have the community knowledge and the abilities to do it," said the director of Contra Costa Health Services, Dr. William Walker.