January 2013 Frontline to Headlines

Hector Flores of InnerCity Struggle and Lizette Patron of Monica Garcia LAUSD Board President’s office at opening day Esteban Torres HS.

January Frontline to Headlines

The new year means that some changes in state and federal law enacted last year and supported by Liberty Hill grantees are now being implemented (such as the Homeowners Bill of Rights and changes in school discipline). But it’s also clearly a time of new proposals, and there’s a lot of energy behind the push for immigration reform. Most recent items first.

January 23 to February 4

Liberty Hill’s 2013 Leaders to Watch announcements are being gradually rolled out to the press and we hope to follow these Fab Five ambassadors for Liberty Hill throughout the year. The wide range of interest is already apparent in these clips, one Witness L.A., a blog that covers the criminal justice system, another from A Wider Bridge,  a blog that is “building LGBTQ connections with Israel,” and stll another from radio station KPFK. From the blog for KPFK’s show “Uprising,” here’s a  video of an interview with two of the Leaders, Rabbi Heather Miller (Liberty Hill Advisory Council) and Ariel Bustamante (GSA Network).

January 30

Martin J. Blank offers an update in Huffington Post describing how InnerCity Struggle and its allies support the success of Torres High School (opened 2011), the school that community activism not only built but runs. Read about the community school model, the student-founded mentorship program and other innovations.

January 29

Some members of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles went in caravan to Nevada at the invitation of the White House to hear President Barack Obama’s presentation of proposals for immigration reform; some stayed in L.A. and held a viewing event and rally.  Local CBS was on hand for the latter.

January 28

“Progressives have achieved the impossible” in California, says The New Republic in this analysis of the passage of Prop.30 due to the “massive increase in political participation.” California Calls and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) are among the Liberty Hill allies and grantees in the successful “Reclaiming California’s Future” coalition.   

January 25

The Press Enterprise reports on a coalition including Pomona Economic Opportunity Center that protests the targeting of day laborers in border patrol roundups.

Here’s an in-depth report on Youth Justice Coalition’s alternative high school with students, experts and Liberty Hill 2013 Leader to Watch Kruti Parekh contributing to the discussion.

January 17

In a series of comments to reporters including this one to L.A. Weekly’s Patrick Range McDonald, Coalition for Economic Survival challenges mayoral candidates to address housing issues.

January 15

In its highlight of a partner organization, the “Fix School Discipline” blog from Public Counsel interviews Executive Director and Founder of CADRE, Maisie Chin, who emphasizes parent organizing and empowerment as strategies for change.

January 11

Liberty Hill is facilitating the “Building a Lifetime of Options and Opportunities for Men” (BLOOM) initiative, which launched an online community for the youth participants, described in an item on the blog “Black
Gives Back.”

January 2

New Year, New Laws: Southern California Public radio’s “Multiamerican” blog untangles the technicalities of the law allowing the DMV to accept license application paperwork from young people who have signed up for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration status, with comments from Jorge Mario Cabrera of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Right in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and other advocates are excited about the passage of the California Homeowners Bill of Rights, described in this blog by Southern California Public Radio’s Frank Stoltze.

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Announcing 2012 Fund for Change Grants

Byline: Shane Goldsmith

We’ve just announced $716,500 in grants through our Fund for Change. These grants are informed by Liberty Hill’s Community Funding Board braintrust. (If you haven’t seen our fabulous video about how the grant process works, watch it below. We use a grant decision process very different from many other funders.)

Of all the exciting things that I see among this year’s grantees, the thing I’m most excited to share is the opportunity around the mayor’s race. If organizers do a good job now of getting candidates to commit, and then once they are elected, hold them accountable, there is tremendous opportunity to leverage power and win real change for the millions of Angelenos who need better schools, better wages, homes they can afford, and healthier
communities. The opportunity for change exists right now and our grantees
are figuring out how to take advantage of that. And they’ve got more fire-power than ever: This year, Liberty Hill grantees counted twice as many leaders – 32,000! – within their organizations than last year. That’s a tribute to the success of the Wally Marks Leadership Institute!

Here’s the list of just-announced grants, hot off the press.

2012 Fund for Change

ACCE Institute $50,000
Asians and Pacific Islanders for LGBT Equality (API Equality-LA)  $10,000
Black Women for Wellness $25,000
Californians for Justice Education Fund $18,000
Coalition for Economic Survival $30,000
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) $30,000
CADRE   $20,000
FTM Alliance/Gender Justice LA  $38,000
Gay Straight Alliance Network LA  $10,000
Housing Long Beach  $30,000
InnerCity Struggle $10,000
Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA)  $25,000
Jordan/Rustin Coalition  $10,000
Khmer Girls in Action $5,500
Korean Resource Center  $10,000.00
Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance  $35,000
L.A. Voice PICO   $25,000
Labor Community Strategy Center  $50,000
Latino Equality Alliance  $10,000
Los Angeles Black Worker Center $20,000
Los Angeles Community Action Network (L.A. CAN) $35,000
Los Angeles Youth Justice Coalition $25,000
People Organized for Westside Renewal$50,000
Pilipino Workers Center  $28,500
Pomona Economic Opportunity Center $10,000
Restaurant Opportunities Centers United Los Angeles (ROC-LA)  $25,000
Southern California Education Fund  $13,000
Strategic Actions for a Just Economy $30,000
Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education $10,000
TRUST-South LA  $18,000
Union De Vecinos $10,000

TOTAL: 31 organizations    $716,000

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Speaking Out for Students

 

Byline: Susan LaTempa

Last month, Liberty Hill grantee Labor Community Strategy Center and allies including grantees Youth Justice Coalition and CADRE hailed a decision by L.A. Unified School District Police to follow the example set by the LAPD in April and stop  failed "truancy ticket" policies.

"Truancy tickets" were once touted as tools against attendance problems but were in fact pushing kids away from school and resulting in racial profiling.

It's a victory for students like Nabil Romero, a freshman at West L.A. College, who says, “You just see the statistic, you don’t ever hear about the struggle behind it. I want to speak up  because when people hear what I went through they know it’s not just about me, but it’s me and my mother and my brother.”

When you hear about police giving out "truancy tickets," you might envision officers finding school-skippers loitering around malls or convenience stores. But in fact, Labor Community Strategy Center learned from students that police were conducting "sweeps" outside targeted high schools in the minutes just after classes began. As students arrived for school, sometimes just after being dropped off by a parent, sometimes with a parent's written excuse in hand, sometimes just stepping off a Metro bus, they'd be slapped with a $250 ticket that required a court appearance with a parent.

Nabil, who's turning 18 this month and hopes to become a doctor, was a senior at Roybal Learning Center when he was twice handcuffed and prevented by school police from attending classes that he was late for but urgently trying to get to. How do we know he was trying to get to class? For one thing, he was on the football team and it was game day. You have to be in school on game day to play!  

Nabil became a student activist with Labor Community Strategy Center and testified in August at Juvenile Court Judge Michael Nash’s  Truancy Task Force which is investigating alternatives to the punitive policies that are pushing kids into what a Harvard study calls "the school-to-prison pipeline."  

He told the task force how on one occasion, he was with about eight to 10 kids exiting the city bus and heading into school. They were all cuffed, searched, put into squad cars and taken to a detention hall until afternoon.  Another time Nabil and his brother unexpectedly had to walk the distance that they usually covered with two bus rides. As they got near campus, wearing their jayvee and varsity football jerseys, they were stopped by police, cuffed, ticketed and questioned until they’d missed the classes they were hurrying to on foot.

Nabil had tried to stand up for himself and fight the $300 fine by going to court, even though it meant his mother losing a day of work and him missing another day of school. He wanted to explain to a judge how unfair the ticket was. “If you’re going to blame somebody,” he says, “Give a ticket to somebody for walking away from school not walking to school.” Other students report that if even if they're just a few minutes late, they stay away from school to avoid getting a ticket their family can't afford.

But he wasn't successful fighting the ticket alone. Then he learned of other students who’d been helped by Labor Community Strategy Center. With counseling and legal help, his ticket was dismissed. Then, "since I felt like honestly that if you do something for me I’m going to do something way better for you," he wanted to get involved in the Strategy Center's Community Rights Campaign.

 "I attended a meeting aimed at other young teenagers who have been affected, have seen others affected, or who just wanted to help make a change. We brainstormed for the hearing where I made my speech to the Truancy Task Force."

Of the 47,000 tickets that were issued in 2004-09, 62% were given to Latino students, 20% were given to Black students, just 7% were given to white students, and 11% were given to other students. “My mom works in Beverly Hills near the high school,” Nabil says, “And she never sees this happening to kids there.”

The new policy prohibits “sweeps” during the first hour of classes or the ticketing of students on the way to school, and requires police to see if students have a valid excuse or parent note in reference to “daytime curfew” violations.

In addition to working to change the ticketing policies, activists have pushed for "positive behavorial support" rather than punitive disciplinary policies that make normal non-criminal behavior cause for police action. According to the Public Counsel Law Center, Labor Community Strategy Center and CADRE, the positive approach has positive results. At Roosevelt High School, after ticketing stopped, attendance went up 50%.  At Edison Middle School, with School-Wide Positive Behavioral Support (SWPBS), suspensions have fallen from 255 in 2005 to 24 in 2009-10.

Says Nabil, "I learned firsthand the concept that united we stand and separate we fall because if we all unite and speak up for ourselves and the others around us we can move towards making a positive change in society that will benefit us all," and adds, "I thank the Strategy Center for having given me the chance to speak up for all the other students that have been harassed and oppressed by this biased, prejudiced and unjustified law."