An organizer the city already trusts

Walied co-founded TTCriders, the city's leading transit advocacy organization, fighting for the buses, streetcars, and subways that working people across downtown depend on every day. He launched GTA's first U-Pass while a student at U of T. He led the Toronto Environmental Alliance and held key roles with the Canadian Arab Federation, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, and United Way, supporting the communities the city too often forgets.

After the deadly attack on a Quebec City mosque and the Trump administration's "Muslim ban" in early 2017, he co-founded the Coalition Against White Supremacy and Islamophobia. More than 170 organizations joined. They mobilized a national day of action in response.

A track record that delivers

Walied has spent the last decade helping tenants, youth, and small businesses across Toronto Centre navigate city systems and win tangible improvements.

He led the push to keep Toronto's "affordable housing" definition tied to what people actually earn, not what the market charges. That fight protects renters in every Ward 13 high-rise, low-rise, and laneway home. Because of his organizing, one Toronto Centre community is nearly doubling its rent-geared-to-income housing, from 633 homes to 1,270.

He has stood with tenants facing eviction from community housing, worked with BIAs and neighbourhood associations across the ward, and pushed for community-led safety and year-round youth employment downtown. In 2023, after years of that work, one of Ward 13's neighbourhoods recorded zero gun violence deaths. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens when neighbours, organizers, agencies, and the city actually work together.

Showing up

He mentors youth across Ward 13. He has served on the City of Toronto's Confronting Anti-Black Racism Advisory Committee. He shows up at tenant meetings, lobby drop-ins, BIA gatherings, and community centres long after the cameras have left, and he will be showing up at city hall for Ward 13.