An Exhaltation of Summer Interns

Interns (top l to r) Allison Goldberg Brinton Williams, Nichole Klein; (bottom l to r) Liora Ziv, Joanna Kabat.Not pictured: Olivia Stutman.

By volunteer contributing writer Mark Bizzell

Liberty Hill’s internship program allows us to tap into the talent, energy, and insight of students from around the country. Three years ago, Board member and volunteer Paula Litt took on the task to expand the program.  For summer internships, she starts getting emails in January from interested students.

This summer, we have had a full complement of six students working with us for three to five days per week for eight or more weeks between June and September. It’s been an exciting season, with students from a range of institutions, including Ivy League schools and a charter high school, working on often-challenging projects as they joined our efforts to advance environmental and economic justice, to expand LGBTQ rights, and to combat poverty.

Joanna Kabat describes herself as being a bookish kid and volunteering for local organizations at an early age. “Both of my parents were involved with local shelters, schools, religious institutions and health advocacy groups; that really rubbed off on me,” she says. Joanna grew up in the San Fernando Valley, attended Barnard College, and worked for American Jewish World Service and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in New York. She returned to L.A. to pursue a master of public affairs degree from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.  Her research is on the capacity demands that immigration reform could make on L.A.’s community-based organizations.

Among the highlights of her summer at Liberty Hill were accompanying  Community Funding Board (CFB) members on site visits to Black Women for Wellness, Coalition for Economic Survival, and InnerCity Struggle. Under the mentorship of Margarita Ramirez, Joanna took notes as the  community funding board met and she helped develop landscape analysis summaries for the Education, Housing and Land Use, and Workers Rights focus areas of the Fund for Change. Joanna also worked with Liberty Hill’s  communications team on a usability analysis of the website, on the monthly round-up of grantee news articles (“From Frontlines to Headlines“) and on social media marketing.

Liora Ziv has a unique perspective on the world. Her father was raised in a Yemenite slum in Israel while her mother grew up comfortably in Los Angeles. The family moved to Malibu when Liora was just a baby. Growing up, her parents taught her a passion for human and civil rights and to look at the world with a tolerant but critical perspective. She attended Georgetown University, majoring in social justice analysis and spent a semester in Santiago, Chile with a nonprofit called Proyecto Propio that developed grassroots organizing in low-income communities. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at UCLA where she also works as a research assistant on immigrant reform projects. Through her previous employment with Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs, she discovered Liberty Hill’s intern program.

“Liberty Hill has opened my eyes to the world of philanthropy and I want to explore working at a foundation when I graduate,” she says.  Working alongside program department staff members, Liora contributed to the Wally Marks Leadership Institute’s new Commissions Track program by doggedly hunting down minutes from meetings of the more than 50 boards and commissions in L.A. Her research will be used for training materials to prepare individuals from different communities to apply to serve as commissioners. She says that in school the focus of political studies is often on state and federal policies, but her time at Liberty Hills has taught her how local politics have an impact.

Allison Goldberg, from Columbia, Maryland, is proud of her hometown, because Columbia is considered a model of mixed-income housing for the country.  A recent graduate of Loyola Marymount University, she majored in political science with a focus on socioeconomic inequalities in the U.S.  She worked this summer on compiling marketing research for the Wally Marks Leadership Institute, and she also worked on social media and multi-media projects.

“I hope to pursue a public policy career in education and criminal justice reform, and earn a master’s in public policy,” she says.  “In college, I took courses on criminal justice policy, and completed my thesis on the school-to-prison pipeline.”  That is why she is passionate about Liberty Hill’s “Brothers, Son, Selves” initiative, which has made strides in reforming school discipline policy.  Allison, who has been a volunteer at a Boyle Heights nonprofit for the past four years, is also inspired to see how the Liberty Hill-supported “Clean Up Green Up” environmental policy initiative has the potential to improve air quality in some of L.A.’s most polluted neighborhoods.

Nicole Klein grew up in Los Angeles and is entering her senior year at Barnard College, where she is a political science major.  At Liberty Hill this summer, Nichole worked with Barbara Osborn to explore how to best increase Liberty Hill’s and its grantee’s visibility using the social media site Pinterest.  With staff member Blanch Ross, she did research for donor-advised funds, and on event venues for our outreach and campaign work.  Nichole aspires to a career in health advocacy. “The inequality of our health care system is pervasive,” she says, “Public health and the right to health care is an important part of the social justice dynamic.” Her time at Liberty Hill, she says, gave her insights into how local governments, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders work together for real change.

Brinton Williams is interested in politics, and he volunteered with President Obama’s second presidential campaign during the summers of 2011 and 2012 while a student at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada Flintridge, California.  He grew up in Pasadena, and starts his second year at Yale University this fall.  Friends and family recommended Liberty Hill’s internship program after Brinton expressed interest in progressive issues.  Over the summer, Brinton worked with staff member Cassie Gardner on a project with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, conducting outreach to create a database of business owners and citizens in Commerce which will be used to do a survey on the environmental situation in the community.

“This summer has been an excellent opportunity to see the fruition of years of effort by Liberty Hill in the fight for environmental justice, with the City Council voting to develop the “Clean Up Green Up” policy,” Brinton says. The post for Liberty Hill’s blog that he contributed about that important step in the campaign was a surprise assignment, but when asked, he gamely wrote up an informative on-the-scene article. Brinton wants to pursue a career in public policy, perhaps becoming a community organizer or working for an organization like Liberty Hill.

Olivia Stutman enters her sophomore year this fall at Palisades Charter High
School in Los Angeles.  She is a member of YMCA’s Youth and Government Organization, which emulates governmental processes for students.  There she debated a prison reform bill which was before Congress in a mock-government setting.  It’s one of the activities that she has pursued because of her interest in social justice. Olivia worked this summer with staff members Adrine Akopyan and Carol Lee, updating the Liberty Hill database and inputting events and contacts.

“Interning at Liberty Hill enabled me to see how a foundation operates and my work this summer exposed me to the many donors that make equality a reality,” she notes.  Olivia aspires to attend an Ivy League school, majoring in political science and business.  She is currently in the process of developing an organization that assists families with a loved one in the hospital by providing them with essential services.

Liberty Hill’s 2013 summer internship experience was anchored by six “brown bag” education sessions during which staff members made “101” style presentations on Liberty Hill’s history, social justice communications and fundraising, grassroots organizing, grassroots leadership development and training and the Clean Up Green Up campaign. The special educational opportunities are a highlight of the summer, but Liberty Hill’s internship
program runs year-round.

“We advertise online, but get a lot of interest word-of-mouth based on Liberty Hill’s reputation,” says Paula Litt.  “In addition to undergraduate and graduate students, there are opportunities for high school students.”  Some obtain school credit for their internships, and the program is structured so that participants get hands-on experience in meaningful projects.

For postings of current internship opportunities, please go to  https://www.libertyhill.org/aboutus/jobopportunities, and to apply for these or inquire about future opportunities, please send a cover letter and resume to Paula Litt at PLitt@LibertyHill.org.

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Timely Philanthropic Opportunities – Spring-Summer 2013

By Blanch Ross

Grantee Spotlight
Periodically, Liberty Hill makes recommendations of exceptionally timely philanthropic opportunities for our donor advised account holders. This time we are recommending two of our Fund for Change grant recipients, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Restaurant Opportunities Center.

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) is a statewide community organization working with thousands of members in eleven counties creating transformative change by helping ordinary citizens to organize and take action. ACCE-LA plans to pursue an aggresive campaign to win renegotiation of bad municipal finance deals that are providing windfall profits to major Wall Street firms and costing LA taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

ACCE-LA continues to lead the RE-Fund campaign, a coalition effort including SEIU Local 721 and Good Jobs LA. The coalition advanced major modifications to the city’s Foreclosure Registry Ordinance, including raising the registration fees banks must pay for each foreclosed house to fund inspections that could result in fines of up to $1000 per day for failure to maintain those homes.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center of Los Angeles

Did you know that Los Angeles has the largest restaurant industry in the nation – 300,000? And that the restaurant industry is currently one of the largest and fastest-growing segments of the U.S. economy, providing millions of jobs annually both to newly-arriving immigrants and millions of U.S.-born workers? Although the industry offers great potential for immigrants to move to livable-wage positions, most immigrants lack the training, policy backing, and social networks to do so.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center of Los Angeles (ROC-LA) is a multi-racial,
grassroots restaurant workers’ center dedicated to winning improved working conditions and raising industry standards for all Los Angeles restaurant workers. ROC has recently released the 2013 ROC National Diners’ Guide to Ethical Eating providing information on the wages, benefits, and promotion practices of the 150 most popular restaurants in America in 9 major cities across the country, from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. to New York City. The Guide also lists responsible restaurants where you can eat knowing that your server can afford to pay the rent and your cook isn’t working while sick.

Funding Needs
The LAUSD Adult Education budget was recently slashed creating a vacuum where quality English-as-a-Second Language/Vocational-English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL/VSEL) classes used to exist. With the vision of placing restaurant workers in High Road restaurants and Union Hotels, achieving  true immigrant integration and real career development opportunities ROC-LA has partnered with Community Career Development, Inc. and the Hospitality Training Academy on a pilot program offering ESL/VSEL classes to immigrant restaurant and hospitality workers.

Contact a Liberty Hill staff person to discuss making a grant>>

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From Frontlines to Headlines November

Alliance of California for Community Empowerment

Many Liberty Hill grantee groups were deeply involved in get-out-the-vote work, and news media coverage of their election-season activities continued through the first week of November. But November also started with a bang thanks to the Nov. 1 announcement by a coalition of groups that of a $17-million community benefits settlement with the developer of the proposed NFL football stadium downtown.  As the month continued, there was newsworthy work in several issue areas. Most recent stories listed first.

November 28

San Fransico Bay View ran a story about a writing workshop called “Voices in Poverty Resist” held  at Community Assets Development–Redefining Education (CADRE) and L.A. Community Action Network (LA CAN). The first link is to an article is by the workshop leader and includes quotes from essays by participants; the second link has a post by the workshop leader followed by an essay by a participant.

November 21

Sothern California Public Radio interviewed Rev. Marvin Ajic, one of the Roman Catholic clergy members  joining forces with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) and other advocacy organizations on a new campaign for immigration reform.

November 20

The philanthropy news site “Black Gives Back” highlighted the release of Liberty Hill’s new report, Giving Black in Los Angeles. This report focuses on African American giving in Los Angeles today and offers  some surprising findings on the three most frequent donor profiles.

November 12

On Nov. 14, the “Don’t Waste L.A.” Coalition led by Liberty Hill Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and including such groups as Pacoima Beautiful won an three-year campaign to overhaul of L.A. City’s commercial and multi-family waste and recycling system with standards to ensure cleaner trucks, green jobs, and more recycling. These two articles describe the coalition’s positions.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amartinez/transforming_las_trash_collect.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-matsuoka/los-angeles-recyclying_b_2092706.html

November 6

This real estate trade publication calls Occupy Our Homes, with chapters in 20 cities, the most active of Occupy movement offshoots. The group, with partners including Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, has won significant settlements.

November  4-7 ROUND-UP OF PRE- and POST-ELECTION NEWS

First link covers Community Coalition’s 2012 election-coverage viewing party; second link describes Community Coalition’s effort to reach 22,0000 new and occasional voters.

This follow-up Fox News story about the Latino vote in shows how the media turns for comment on the national scene to Angelica Salas, executive director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) and speaker at Liberty Hill’s 2012 Change L.A. party.

Boyle Heights Beat spoke to Hector Flores of InnerCity Struggle about voter outreach in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles.

This video of a Cambodian TV broadcast is not translated into English, but the pictures show Khmer Girls in Action promoting voter turnout and civic engagement in their communities.

Governor Jerry Brown paid a visit to InnerCity Struggle on his tour in support of advocating Prop 30.

L.A. Times covered the coverage of its election coverage by “Deadline L.A.”, the weekly KPFK radio show co-hosted by Liberty Hill’s Director of Communications, Barbara Osborn.

November 1

A major community benefits settlement with developer Anschutz Entertainment Group was won by a coalition of neighborhood and anti-poverty groups, including Los Angeles Community Action Network LA CAN.  Says
the L.A. Times: “The deal includes the creation of a $15-million trust fund for low-income housing in the area and nearly $2 million in traffic- and air-pollution-control measures…”

November 1

New York’s controversial stop-and-frisk law was the subject of a study by Make the Road New York, one of Liberty Hill’s Queer Youth Fund grantees. DNAINfo.com, a neighborhood news site in New York, covered the Jackson Heights press conference on the report’s findings that the law targets transgender individuals.

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THEY DID IT! OUR VOLUNTEERS

There’s been some heavy lifting done by volunteers and interns at Liberty Hill lately. Here are highlights of the contributions of individuals who’ve supported social justice by sharing their time and talents with us in recent months.

Pictured above are two of our summer interns, Melissa Montalvo and Justin Ko. Melissa, a student at USC, undertook projects including documenting Liberty Hill-sponsored policy briefings on education reform and on school discipline policies. She reported on and wrote a blog post about Liberty Hill grantee Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA)‘s innovative cell-phone moviemaking program and created a Liberty Hill “Message Map,” a helpful tool for strategic communications. Justin is now a senior at Village Christian High School preparing to apply for college. He has a strong interest to learn about the convergence of business and environmental justice philanthropy. Justin worked with the Development and Donor Services Department, researching prospective foundation partners for our programmatic work.

Jodi Epstein was an intern with the Clean Up Green Up campaign from January-May, before she graduated with her Master of Public Administration at USC. Her assignments included strategic communications, ally outreach, managing the website and database, and providing
administrative support. She signed up volunteers to our Environmental Health and Justice Campaign at a Healthy African American Families Conference on air quality and interviewed leaders from Communities for a Safe Environment, Union de Vecinos and Pacoima Beautiful for a community narrative on cumulative impacts.

Photographer Warren Hill was matched with Liberty Hill through the L.A. Fellows program. A former television production management professional, Warren has moved into photojournalism. He has not only curated photos for our social media platforms, but has undertaken photodocumentary projects around organizers from grantee groups People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER)  and Youth Justice Coalition that will be seen as photo essays in a variety of media.

William Hill is a firefighter who was studying for his Captain Exam and working on an Antioch University master’s degree in Sustainable Communities when he volunteered. His project focused on reviewing just-published research reports and compiling from them data and sources to be used by Liberty Hill ambassadors in pubilc presentations. Simone Novarr, a USC undergraduate, was our social media marketing assistant for a semester. Mollie Weiss researched conference models around the state to help inform Liberty Hill’s development of a new social justice program.

We have been lucky to have Rachel Lipton as part of the Wally Marks Leadership Institute for Change team. She has been an important player in the redesign of the Research and Development process for the Institute. Rachel also helped with research and interviews for our Workers Rights Landscape Analysis. Christofer Rodelo, currently a second-year student at Yale University, was assigned to research the education  landscape in Los Angeles. His work was helpful to us in grasping the general structure of LAUSD, the broader network of groups involved with education reform in Los Angeles, and what specific policies they are advocating for.

Ron Agarwala, an Information Technology security expert, helped Liberty HIll’s Finance and Administration staff  develop our first-ever cloud-based disaster recovery plan. He helped us analyze our IT systems to determine which were the most critical and advised on how to replicate our systems in a cloud-based environment.

As a CORO fellow, Jennifer Kamara came to L.A. specifically to work with Liberty Hill through this national leadership training program. Matched with the Communications department, she took in hand an effort that had been languishing for years — to implement Google for Nonprofits for online search ads. This valuable marketing tool, a byzantine, seemingly impenetrable system, had stymied us — but Jennifer finalized our verification process, launched our Google ads effort and assessed whether Google Earth was a platform we could and should use for documenting our work. Also in Communications has been USC graduate student Joe Edwards, a guy who said he didn’t know much about social media or websites, but can figure out absolutely
any platform in about 30 seconds flat. He’s currently focusing on the ne plus ultra of web-based challenges: to figure out the new Knight Digital Media timeline platform. In his spare time he’s learning Raiser’s Edge and interviewing other foundations about their donor communications.

Kudos for your achievements, Liberty Hill volunteers, and thanks to you all for your dedication to social justice.

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From Frontlines to Headlines October

Liberty Hill grantee groups worked on massive voter registration and engagement drives, huge community benefits agreements with developers, and long, long-fought campaigns for immigration reforms, clean drinking water, transit justice and foreclosure prevention. And this is just a sampling.

Oct. 30

Breaking news: Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) leads community groups to a precedent-setting victory on the USC Masterplan.

Oct. 29

The Atlantic Cities published an article describing Labor Community Strategy Center’s Bus Riders Union and how it is increasingly
seen as a national model.

Oct. 29

A gratifying place in history is noted for Coalition for Economic Survival, whose significant role in the founding of West Hollywood is described in the blog post “A Short History of West Hollywood” on WeHo News.

Oct. 26- 27

As Election Day approached, grantee groups were hard at advocacy and get-out-the vote work.

Several groups including Khmer Girls in Action published voter guides, as reported on by Liberty Hill’s blog, as well as in other media.

The “massive” California Calls vote drive, with L.A. anchor groups InnerCity Struggle, Community Coalition, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) and Alliance of California for Community Empowerment (ACCE) was described by L.A. Times.

Oct. 25

One of the recipients of a multiyear grant from Liberty Hill’s Queer Youth Fund, a community group in New York called Make the Road New York received widespread coverage of the release of its report on police abuse of transgender individuals in the Queens area.

Oct. 23-30

Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE)
has been supporting homeowners being unfairly evicted since the beginning of
the Great Recession. The latest case to get media attention is that of ACCE member Ana Casas Wilson,  a wheelchair-bound woman with celebral palsy and terminal stage-four breast cancer.

Peter Dreier’s Huffington Post piece had the latest update of Wilson’s situation: she had received final eviction notice several days before, but the Sheriff’s department had not yet arrived to remove her.

The L.A. Times report Oct. 23 was comprehensive.

TV stations ABC7 and NBC4 covered the  story as well.

Oct. 20

Neon Tommy, the USC online newspaper, covered the kick-off of Community Coalition’s door-knocking campaign in support of Prop 30.

Oct. 18

Black Gives Back, a blog covering African American philanthropists noted the announcement by Grantmakers for Children, Youth, and Families (GCYF) that Liberty Hill’s Vincent Jones received the 2012 Emerging Leader Award in Philanthropy for Children, Youth, and Families.

Oct. 17

Union de Vecinos, a grassroots group that’s fought long and hard for safe drinking water from the city of Maywood, is demanding that state and local agencies comply with the new California law that goes into effect January 1, stating that access to clean affordable water is a human right. La Opinion covers the story in Spanish; here’s the Google-translated English version.

Oct. 13-16

Media reported on critics and supporters of Mayor Villaraigosa’s plan for a city i.d. card for undocumented immigrants. Liberty Hill grantee groups Coalition for Humane Immigrant Reform L.A. (CHIRLA) and Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance were among supporters commenting. Here are stories from The Wave and the L.A. Times.

Oct. 11

Last month, Frontlines to Headlines included clips about the Liberty Hill initiated and administrated fund to help LGBT undocumented immigrants pay the $470 fee for applications to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. This month we share a grant recipient’s Tumblr post speaking his happiness for the world to see.

Oct. 9

The Beverly Hills Courier describes the formation of an alliance to oppose Measure J that includes Labor Community Center Strategy Center and the Beverly Hills Board of Education.

Oct. 3

A report in the Asian Pacific Islander Newsmagazine UCLA on the Sept. 15 screening held at the Japanese American Museum of two documentaries from API Equality-LA’s “Pioneers” history project.

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Photos of Recent Grantee Actions

Why are these students activists with Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) smiling?

Because the immigration rights rally they planned for Friday June 15 turned out to coincide with President Obama's announcement of administrative relief for undocumented immigrant youth– DREAMers.

You'll find more pictures of this rally along with photos of legislative visits, demonstrations, a prayer vigil and a rooftop garden harvest — more than 20 pix in all of the best community organizers in L.A. at work.

They're all in our Facebook photo album of snapshots of the activities of some of the grassroots social justice groups working on economic justice LGBTQ justice and environmental justice issues and supported by Liberty Hill.

Check it out, tag your friends and share your faves.

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Training to Survive

Latrica, Ezak and Ashley at a Liberty Hill training.

Byline: Rodrigo Lehtinen

In a time of budget cuts that threaten basic services, leadership development programs like Liberty Hill’s Wally Marks Leadership Institute might sound quaint―a lovely idea, but not a high priority. But based on my experiences at Gender Justice L.A., a local transgender community organizing group, I'd like to argue that training is not a luxury―it's a necessity. 

Training is a powerful, indispensable tool for individuals and organizations in survival mode. 

Training programs allow us move from survival to sustainability. They empower us to raise our voices and give us the strategies to win the changes we have been wanting for so long. Without intentional coaching, without someone making that kind of investment in us and sharing knowledge―one of the only resources we have―people and organizations fighting for social justice remain exactly where they are. And usually that means at the bottom.  

People and organizations existing on the margins don't need training after their basic needs have been met, they need it in order to get their basic needs met.

When you're on the margins, that's when you need to advocate for yourself the most. Think of someone being harassed by a landlord who’s intent on getting someone richer and whiter in the building. Think of someone being denied her food stamps because she's transgender and her ID still says she's male. Think of someone being bullied at school for wearing the same clothes all the time. These are daily realities for folks in survival mode. Challenges like this require quick maneuvering and confidence to get around. They require a level of tenacity and strategy that must be cultivated. It's hard to win these kinds of chess games without a tutor.   

Training programs can be that tutor. Gender Justice L.A. benefitted tremendously from being trained in the Wally Marks Leadership Institute. Using the tools we got in last year's fundraising track, we tripled the amount of money we raised through individual donors, decreasing our reliance on a handful of foundation grants. We got help writing and implementing a long-term plan, resulting in a a stronger culture of fundraising within the organization and the ability to tap into fundraising networks we didn't even know we had. Now we have the resources to expand our programming and make a bigger impact on the lives of transgender people in LA.                        

Recently, Gender Justice LA teamed up with the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force to create the Transgender Leadership Academy. This six-month skills-building and community-building program was exclusively for trans folks. In our follow-up evaluation, we consistently hear how much better participants are now at telling their own story and at explaining the discrimination our community faces. This is a rich foundation from which to take political action: Our graduates are taking on projects including protesting school budget cuts, organizing an HIV drive at the gym where they work, and yes, writing a “Transgender 101” training curriculum.   

Young organizations gain empowerment from training in the same way, by developing values, practices, and habits that will sustain the group’s work over time. Without mentorship, lots of organizations never scale up to the point of making an impact. Both individuals and organizations get trapped in trying to preserve what little we have, unable to gain more because just holding on is so hard.

But that place on the margins is also the one where leaning how to advocate makes the most extraordinary difference. Training programs allow us to harness the potential of those daily, urgent opportunities to make change. Because whether your campaign is about your organization or your daily life, you need to be a strategist to win.

Guest blogger Rodrigo Lehtinen is Membership Director of Gender Justice LA.

Middle photo: Gender Justice LA training participants Kyle and Retro. Bottom photo: Gender Justice LA participant Chris speaking to the group.

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Liberty Hill makes strategic move, finds high ground in L.A.

 

Byline: Kafi D. Blumenfield

Over the next several years, Liberty Hill is embarking on a bold plan to broaden our base of supporters and become an even more effective, and more public foundation. 

As a first step, on July 1, we are deepening our commitment to being a social justice home for all Angelenos by moving into the City of Los Angeles—the 7th floor of 6420 Wilshire Boulevard (90048).

This is more than just a new address. This new home is on one of L.A.’s main arteries and it looks out in many directions toward the many neighborhoods where our grantees, allies and supporters are actively working, block by block, to organize the communities most affected by injustice.

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Kafi D. Blumenfield on Transformational Moments

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kafi D. Blumenfield, Liberty Hill's President and CEO, welcomed the donor-activists, community organizers, allies, friends and supporters who gathered tonight to honor Tim Gill, Gary Stewart and Margarita Ramirez at the Upton Sinclair Dinner. 

Here's the text of her remarks.

"Good evening!  I am thrilled that we have nearly 800 grassroots, community, and donor-activists with us here tonight! 

We’ve been doing demographic research at the office lately and some numbers jumped out at me. Does anybody here live in 90210, Beverly Hills?  Well, your life expectancy is 86 years!

Now, does anyone in 90062? In South LA? Your life expectancy is 75 years!

A 10 mile difference in Los Angeles means an 11 year difference in life expectancy.

It’s not that I didn’t know there would be a difference. Of course, I did. But there it was: Irrefutable evidence of the enormous divide between those who have and those who don’t here in a country founded on the idea of equality.

Over the year I’ve gotten to see many of you and catch up. And I’ve been hearing something new. For some it’s a kind of anxiety. For others, it’s disappointment. Even anger. Anger that the vision of change and democracy that we have been waiting and working for for so long, and felt we were promised, has not come quickly enough.

There are days when it’s hard not to wonder whose America is this? That despite our successes, we are losing ground. I think part of the reason for this frustration is that so many of us don’t see the way out.  Where can we build the foundation for our vision of America?

My answer to that is right here!

Howard Zinn, the American historian, when honored at this dinner said, "Liberty Hill brings democracy alive."

I don’t want to make the things we are able to achieve together sound bigger than they are.  Or be Pollyannaish. But let me share one story that represents hundreds of stories.

Koreatown is one of the most park-poor neighborhoods in L.A. and L.A. is one of the most park-poor big cities in the nation. For over a year, our grantee Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance — KIWA — brought its members and supporters together because they wanted a park.

Sounds like a small thing. In the vastness of our urban sprawl it will be just a postage stamp of green. But in Koreatown, a park isn’t simply a place to take your children to play. It’s afterschool and weekend recreation for teenagers. It’s a place for seniors to gather during the day. It’s a place for residents to get exercise and get healthy. With a community center, it’s a place for town hall meetings and ESL classes.

A park in Koreatown is a way of building connection, responsibility and pride in a community.

Knowing all this, KIWA educated their members and organized. They created a proposal with the Community Redevelopment Agency and applied for state funding.  The organizers even worked with the community to plant seeds in the empty park site to help realize their vision of victory. 

Together with all the local and statewide partners they engaged along the way, KIWA won its park, and funding to make it a reality.

So you may be thinking, ‘I get it.’ A park. A place to build and sustain the kind of community Margarita was talking about.

But there’s more. Each victory like this represents not just a policy win or a new park opened.  Each victory reflects transformational moments in which everyday folks turn into powerful community leaders. These are the moments, multiplied thousands of times, that build social movements.

Anyone in this room who has come out of the closet…

Anyone who has spoken for the first time at a public meeting…

Anyone who has joined with their friends to work on a campaign and actually won!

. . .Knows what a transformational moment feels like.

When community residents win practical changes and get a glimpse of what it feels like to exercise the fullest extent of their human capabilities, they can only organize for more. 

In this way, Liberty Hill brings democracy alive, by investing in transformation and leadership, strengthening organizations and movements for change.

Our work helps open the door for all people to fully participate in the life and direction of society.

This is why I often call Liberty Hill " L.A.’s House of Justice. "

It’s not a home for just us, you over here or you over there [indicating people in the room]. Liberty Hill’s House of Justice is for all of us.

From 90210 to 90062.  A house for all of us.

And in the last year or two, we have thrown open the doors to this house.

We are really proud of our new efforts to stoke and strengthen strategic social change giving among young people, Asian-Pacific Islanders, African-Americans, and Latinos, and of our ongoing work with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender donors — many of you are here tonight.

Because you are here, whether it’s your first date with us or whether you’ve been with us for three decades, no matter your zipcode,  your race, or your sexual orientation, I know you have already decided that social justice here in our city, in our communities is not only vital because we and our neighbors need and deserve our human rights but because what happens here in our city affects the world.

In the next several years, Liberty Hill is embarking on a plan to become an even more effective, powerful, public foundation.  A key part of that is our upcoming move from the coast of Los Angeles to a more central location on one of the city’s great thoroughfares,  Wilshire Boulevard. The move catapults us into greater Los Angeles and positions us to better serve our grantees and to broaden our base of support. It's another way we're working to make this L.A.'s House of Justice for all.

I thank you for being here tonight. Our leaders and our organizers on the frontlines also thank you."

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Uplifting Change Summit

Byline: Susan LaTempa

On February 18, Liberty Hill hosts the second annual Uplifting Change Summit, an invitational gathering of African American and ally philanthropists, to focus on practical tools and strategies to promote social justice in Los Angeles.

We spoke with Kafi D. Blumenfield, President and CEO of Liberty Hill.

What is the inspiration for the Uplifting Change Summits?

KB: Liberty Hill was inspired by the long African American tradition of giving to the community through churches, bridge clubs, fraternal organizations and individual efforts. Sometimes this is a hidden history and we don’t always realize how central philanthropy has been to our community’s achievements. We have been inspired by how often the Black community connects philanthropy with social justice activism.

Here in L.A., there are many examples. Bridget “Biddy” Mason, arrived in California as a slave, but in 1856 successfully won freedom through the courts for herself and her extended family, then invested her earnings as a midwife to buy real estate and become the city’s most noted philanthropist. Another example is the Los Angeles Forum, a discussion and action group started here in 1903 by J.E. Edwards, Jefferson Lewis Edmunds and Frederick Roberts. Its political agenda was entwined with raising money for charities, relief programs and scholarships.

One of the forum’s scholarship recipients was Ruth Janetta Temple, a 1920s-era physician who with her husband funded the Temple Health Institute, a nonprofit community clinic health and education program that became a model for work by the Los Angeles Health Department. And it may be hard to believe that a Hollywood celebrity’s philanthropic work has gone uncelebrated, but did  you know Hattie McDaniel, thanked by Mo’ Nique last year in her Academy Award speech, was a Sigma Gamma Rho member who started her own group dedicated to raising money for charitable causes called Les Femmes Aujour d'hui (Women of Today)?

Or think of attorney Crispus Attucks Wright, son of a former slave, who, in 1997 made a $2 million donation to USC, his alma mater. At the time, it was the largest donation the university had received from an African-American and, in funding scholarships for law students who would practice in underserved communities, it was clearly a part of his life’s work in civil rights.

Is there a reason that Liberty Hill is focusing on Uplifting Change at this particular time?

Although we’re hearing about signs of an economic turnaround, it’s clear that it will take longer in California, and particularly in the African American community there are few signs of improvement. Unemployment, especially among young Black men, continues at extremely high levels and people are not seeing opportunities for financial growth.

Given the deep cuts in government programs that benefit the community, the burden on nonprofits and on nonprofit leaders is intense. This is a time when they are needed. The leaders know their organizations have the talent, strategies and will to address these tough issues—but they need the resources. So it’s up to us in the communities to give and to give more.

Liberty Hill makes grants to grassroots community organizations and it offers training and technical support to community leaders. How does having a conversation about philanthropy fit into promoting “Change. Not Charity.” in Los Angeles?

Liberty Hill is a public foundation. We only exist because individual community members roll up their sleeves and get involved by giving in support of community leaders working in the neighborhoods most affected by injustice and disparities. One in every four African Americans lives below poverty level. One in every three African American children in L.A. lives in poverty. Our economic justice work is critical to the African American community and the community at large.

Liberty Hill has sponsored or been part of many conversations about philanthropy over the years but we have seen how women and people of color and lesbian and gay people have often been left out of traditional philanthropic discussions. There are a growing number of institutions such as the 21st Century Foundation in New York and Gill Foundation in Colorado that are trying to turn this around, and we are joining them with our efforts here in L.A.

On February 18, we’re bringing together African Americans and allies to talk about how we all can give more of our time and money to bring social justice and economic justice opportunities to L.A. and especially to the African American community. In coming months, we will be sponsoring additional conversations through house parties and other programs to discuss particular philanthropic strategies and specific needs of the Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander and LGBT communities.

We are opening the door to donor-activists throughout Los Angeles who want to learn more about how philanthropy, and funding community organizing in particular, can bring real change.

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