2011 Leader Watch: Tammy Bang Luu Reflects

Each year, Liberty Hill recognizes members of our extended community as “Leaders to Watch.” In January 2011, we interviewed our 2011 Leaders to Watch about their goals and concerns, then checked in with them throughout the year. In late December, we caught up by phone and email for their year-end reflections.

Our 2011 Leaders to Watch were Tammy Bang Luu of Bus Riders Union/Labor Community Strategy Center (LCSC)  Ari Gutierrez and Eddie Martinez of Latino Equality Alliance, Gloria Walton of  Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE), Isella Ramirez of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and Xiomara Corpeño of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).

Here are Tammy's reflections:

 

We caught up with Tammy by phone as she took a break from leading a three-day year-end staff retreat for LCSC.  

“When we look at 2011, we have to look outside ourselves. We have to look globally at what are we part of in terms of the movement. This was a banner year! There was the unprecedented change of the Arab Spring:  governments being toppled, millions of people getting into streets. I was in Barcelona at the end of May and saw the protests of the Indignados Movement—this is where Occupy movement got its juice, between 6.5. to 8 million people—calling for political and economic change. Then there was the Pelican Bay hunger strike, and Occupy.

It’s been a year full of movements that have really shifted narratives. Whether or not they impact the real political landscape still remains to be seen. We’re always looking for hope and these moments give us real hope. This pushes us here in L.A. to build deeper and go broader.

I’m blown away by the work of the Strategy Center over the last year in three areas. Two of our mass campaigns made real history. The Community Rights Campaign won new policies from the LAPD and the L.A. School Police to help keep students in school, as well as a City Council motion to amend the daytime curfew law. The Bus Riders Union won its six-year campaign for the bus-only lanes on Wilshire Boulevard. The third area, and one that makes me most hopeful, is that our base is growing!

I’m looking back on the five years we’ve been building this campaign against the School to Prison Pipeline, taking on policies that push kids out of school, like the criminalization of truancy. Now we have directives that officers should ask students if they have a reason for being late,  should focus on getting students into class, and that being late for school is not, in itself, a justification for the use of handcuffs, physical restraints or searches.  Judge Nash’s Truancy Task Force is rethinking fines and looking at alternatives. We would really like to thank our allies in the Dignity in Schools Campaign – L.A. Chapter for helping building this movement in LA.

The Bus Riders Union has had an incredible year.  We not only won the bus-only lane, we also, with a coalition of allies just got a ruling from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), finding unprecedented levels of racially discriminatory impacts in its civil rights audit of Los Angeles Metro.  

The bus-only lane win to me is really exciting in the sense that coming out of the global fight for climate justice. Francisca Porchas [LCSC’s National Coordinator, Transit Riders for Public Transportation] was in Durban where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change just met. We’re talking about the state of the planet. The bus-only lanes are one of the first times  in public policy we’ve prioritized public transportation over the auto – which will clean up L.A.’s lethal air and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.  

On  a personal level, in my new role as associate director this year, it’s been learning about what it takes to run an organization,  thinking of my role in building the foundation of infrastructure. This year, I have also participated in the Rockwood Leadership Institute’s  "Leading from Inside Out" program, focusing on what it means to be an effective leader and what it means to lead from purpose. My biggest area of growth is thinking about what it really takes to sustain movements and institutions, to try to think about the skill, the art and the craft of it."

RETURN TO LIBERTY HILL'S HOME PAGE.