Liberty Hill Blog: News from the Frontlines

Liberty Hill Moves July 5

Byline: Susan LaTempa 

Moving an office brings multi-tasking to a whole new level!

Liberty Hill staffers are in the final week of moving from long-occupied offices in Santa Monica to our new space at 6420 Wilshire Blvd., #700, at San Vicente (map). Months ago, our relocation team-- Finance Director Preeti Kulkarni, Office Manager Vivian Jojoba,and office assistant Sean Freeark-- planned and organized several stages of reviewing, sorting, filing, packing, scanning, shredding and storing. They've done an heoric job and we've made it through the thrill of reviewing what kind of documents need to be retained for how many years, the agony of deciding what to send to storage and what to shred, and the defeat of realizing we weren't going to finish sorting through old files in one quick session.

Of course, it's not as if we have nothing else to do!

For example, May, June and July are the program department's busiest time of year, with staffers criss-crossing the city making site visits to grant applicants and reviewing application materials. The Community Funding Board, a group of community members who are our partners in the review process, gathered last Sunday for the last meeting in the hallowed Liberty Hill Conference Room. What debates that room has witnessed! What historic convenings have taken place at those Formica tables!

Early the next morning, those very tables and a whole lotta chairs were promptly loaded onto a rental truck (see above) and carted away by Trust South L.A., one of the several grantee organiztions that was happy to adopt office equipment that isn't making the move. Let's see, the refrigerator and some cubicle are going to InnerCity Struggle; Strategic Actions for a Just Economy is picking up some chairs-- you get the idea. 

We're not exactly down-sizing but even in a same-sizing situation, the new offices have the minimal storage space of the would-be paperless workplace. So we're sending archive materials like old newspaper clipping to storage after scanning them. Easier access for some bits of history like this 1977 L.A. Times "View" article: Download 1977 Dec - LA Times - Redistribution of Wealth - Liberty Hill Foundation.

You'll be hearing from us next week. Now that community organizations have gotten a windfall, you can help us hit the ground running in our new space. Look for an email! 

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We've Launched 3 New Twitter Streams

Liberty Hill has launched 3 new Twitter streams: @LibertyHillEco, @LibertyHillLGBT and @LibertyHillWork. Do you have a primary passion among the issues Liberty Hill calls its own? If so, be sure to follow our issue Twitter streams.

Liberty Hill Grant Helps Target Racial Profiling

Byline: Margarita Ramirez

An article in this morning's L.A. Times focused on incidents of racial profiling against Section 8 residents in the Antelope Valley.

In April 2011, Liberty Hill provided a small Special Opportunity Fund grant of $2,000 to Rainbow Nations, Inc. for its program―The Community Action League ―which has been organizing around this issue with legal assistance from Public Counsel.

We first learned about The Community Action League’s efforts through Gary Blasi, Professor of Law at UCLA who had been conducting an extensive investigation of how the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale have engaged in an intense campaign to keep people with Section 8 certificates from moving to the Antelope Valley, and to drive those who are there out of the area.

There appears to be  ample evidence to suggest that the central reason for the hostility is that 70% of the certificate holders are Black, and that a very racist, far right sector has captured the Lancaster City Council and is trying every possible strategy and pressure tactic.  There has also been some grassroots organizing against Section 8 tenants.  An "I Hate Section 8" Facebook page based in Lancaster has 627 "fans."  Gary also shared that there had been some protests on the other side about this, but almost nothing in the way of organizing in support of Section 8 tenants except by The Community Action League (TCAL), a group focused on racial justice in the Antelope Valley. TCAL's top current priorities are organizing to resist the attacks on Section 8 tenants and the intense profiling of youth of color by the Lancaster and Palmdale Sheriffs. 

We received a proposal for a Special Opportunity Fund grant from TCAL under the fiscal sponsorship of Rainbow Nations, a 501(c)(3) multi-service organizations with 17 years of service. Rainbow Nations was originally formed to help the homeless in South Central Los Angeles find jobs, shelter, food, clothing and basic healthcare. It claims to have helped start 300 new nonprofit organizations and businesses in Los Angeles, opening doors to new job centers, children’s day care and after-school programs, homeless shelters, and a range of services throughout the Los Angeles region. It appears heavily focused on teaching the importance of community development and sustainability. 

The Community Action League (TCAL) is a two-year-old coalition that facilitates Rainbow Nation's civil rights efforts. TCAL organizes town halls, “Know Your Rights” workshops, press conferences and other community actions. It gives voice to the issues through research and advocacy, brings together community leaders to provide solutions, and engages organizations by offering an extensive array of community resources. Convening and collaboration is TCAL’s primarily function. Specifically, it members are currently addressing the extreme attacks on Section 8 residents and against Black and Latino youth.

Liberty Hill's grant supported TCAL’s Community Justice Forum, held on May 14, 2011 as part of its ongoing strategy to address the Section 8 and racial profiling issues. I attended this forum, along with Ange-Marie Hancock, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at USC and a member of Liberty Hill's Community Funding Board who lives in Palmdale. The Forum was a “Know Your Rights” forum with a panels that included lawyers from local legal offices, police detectives, social service agencies, and law professor Gary Blasi. It was attended by around 50 people, predominantly Black, with a few Latino, White, and American Indian residents, most of whom were somehow entangled in the criminal justice system due to increased racial profiling.

The testimonies of many residents that we heard from or spoke to clearly attested to what we had been learning. They are strong but isolated voices in the Antelope Valley―voices that we hope will be lifted through TCAL’s organizing work.

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Time To Up The Ante, Says Congresswoman Bass

Byline: Vincent Jones

Karen Bass, now a member of the House of Representatives, formerly Speaker of the California State Assembly, once the Executive Director of the Community Coalition, and always an effective advocate for justice, shared her unique perspective on the important role donors play in stabilizing communities in times of economic crisis at Liberty Hill's Uplifting Change reception last Friday.

Economic downturns take a toll on our communities.  The impact to families is easier to see.  Layoffs increase, forcing families to find creative ways to make ends meet.  Poverty levels spike.  More children experience hunger. 

The story that often goes untold is how community-based organizations are impacted.  When the economy takes a turn for the worse, neighborhood institutions step in to service increased short term needs and to organize to advance longer term change.  Yet the non-profit business model doesn’t generally provide for more financial resources in return for greater output and productivity.  Quite the contrary; organizations often have to find ways to do more with less.

Congresswoman Bass knows this story well, as she led the Community Coalition when the California Legislature began the yearly process of making drastic cuts due to falling tax revenues in a bad economy.  Those cuts threatened the very programs and policies won by the Community Coalition’s organizing efforts.  Those cuts also strained the ability of some donors to continue supporting the organization at the same level and sometimes altogether. But individual donors harnessed their power, realized the strategic importance of the Community Coalition to the health and vitality of South Los Angeles, and upped the ante.

Given the bleak picture painted by Congresswoman Bass of the budget cuts coming from the Federal and State budgets, the message is clear: organizations need strategic donors now more than ever.

Attendees at the reception hosted by Uplifting Change Leadership Circle members Nii-Quartelai Quartey and Darryn Harris of the Sankofa Group for Civic Engagement heeded the call.  One attendee took the first steps to starting a giving circle.  Another expressed a burning desire to put in service as a member of the Board of Directors of an appropriate organization.  And a business leader mulled ways to leverage the power of the Black business community.

Each of us can do something.  Many of us are already doing something.  Liberty Hill wants to hear about it.  Please share your stories about how you will or already are heeding Congresswoman Bass’ call to up the ante with your giving to support community-based organizations that are working hard at the frontlines.

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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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Minding the Mitigation Money

Byline: Michele Prichard

 

Sometimes a meeting is more than a meeting.

When those of us making up the Board of the new Harbor Community Benefit Foundation met for the first time last Tuesday, there was a sense of accomplishment and of a new beginning in the room. As Liberty Hill's Director of Common Agenda, I was honored to be appointed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to this board, in recognition of Liberty Hill's longtime and ongoing commitment to environmental justice work in Los Angeles. (If you're new to Liberty Hill's environmental justice work, here's some background.)

This meeting was a first step in allocating "money for projects that will protect, improve and assess public health and quality of life by offsetting past, present and future off-port impacts from Port operations." The money comes from certain fees on Port container traffic that are paid into a trust fund, and if port traffic grows, the fund grows. We don't know how much money will be available, but it has been estimated that it could be up to $50 million over five years, depending on port growth.

As described by the L.A. Times, $5.4 million has already been commited to install air filtration systems in more than 40 Wilmington area schools. Another $300,000 is earmarked for a study, such has never been done before, of the off-port impacts on health, land use and other aspects of residents' lives, of Port operations.

The creation of the trust fund was part of an agreement brokered by L.A. City councilwoman Janice Hahn in April 2008 between the Port of Los Angeles and a coalition of concerned environmental, public health, homeowner and union groups and individual residents. The coalition was headed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and includes the Coalition for Clean Air and Liberty Hill grantee groups Coalition for a Safe Environment, Communities for a Better Environment, Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles and Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.

 

My colleagues on the Board include representatives of some of these groups as well as experts in a number of fields. I was impressed with the many different skills and backgrounds we bring to the task of distributing the funds. My fellow Board members are Sean Hecht, Executive Director of the UCLA Environmental Law Center; James Sadd, Occidental College Professor of Environmental Science; Dr. Silvia Prieto, L.A. County Health Dept. Health Officer for the region including the Port communities; Jesse Marquez, Wilmington resident, appellant, and Executive Director Communities for a Safe Environment; Kathleen Woodfield, San Pedro resident, appellant and long-time advocate for Port communities; and Peter Peyton, President, ILWU Local 63.

Clearly we're still in the learning and listening stage. At this first meeting, we heard informative and context-setting remarks from Adrian Martinez of NRDC who provided skillful legal counsel and negotiation assistance throughout the settlement process. He explained that the new HCBF is unique in its ability to address the historic “legacy” problems in the Port communities resulting from decades of Port operations—something that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) cannot do.

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