The revelations in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times article about Assemblymember Matt Dababneh’s history of sexual assault and workplace sexual harassment leave no question: Matt Dababneh must resign from the State Assembly immediately.

If he does not resign voluntarily, we call upon Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon to initiate the process to suspend him from the Assembly

Matt Dababneh is a threat to our membership and our community. Therefore, we are invoking our Code of Conduct in order to ban Dababneh from all SFVYD events effective immediately.

We commend Pamela Lopez and Jessica Yas Barker for bravely coming forward to share their experiences despite threats of retaliation. Our executive board commends Jessica for her proactive, full-hearted, and poised leadership around this issue as SFVYD President and for standing by Pamela's side at the live press conference.

We believe Jessica and Pamela, and we support them. We have good reason to believe that multiple other women may have also been victimized by Dababneh. We support them too.

Further, Dababneh falsely maligned our club’s reputation when he suggested that Jessica lied about his record of sexual harassment in their workplace for political gain.

The LA Times correctly described SFVYD as “an organization that has at times criticized Dababneh as not being sufficiently progressive.” We are proud of that record and stand by it, but our call for his resignation is not based on his voting record.

In Jessica’s words: "I disliked Matt's behavior in the office and his lack of professionalism and his sexism and chauvinism long before he was an elected official.”

Calling for an elected official’s resignation, temporarily leaving constituents without representation, is not a position we take lightly. This decision to call forDabaneh’s resignation is one we take seriously, just as we took seriously the decision to call for Assemblymember Raul Bocanegra’s resignation last week.

We believe that the people of the San Fernando Valley deserve representatives who will respect every human being and who will stand against toxic masculinity and rape culture.

We owe it to them to ensure that this is the case.

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Read the story by the Los Angeles Times here: http://latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-matt-dababneh-harassment-20171204-story.html

Watch the live press conference featuring Pamela Lopez and SFVYD President Jessica Yas Barker here: https://www.facebook.com/CBSSacramento/videos/10154966164905671

Read the story by the Los Angeles Daily News here: http://www.dailynews.com/2017/12/04/valley-assemblyman-matt-dababneh-accused-of-sexually-assaulting-sacramento-lobbyist/