Agenda for a Just Future

The report looks at R2R’s strategies to transform the justice system and to reinvest in the health and well-being of historically excluded young people and their communities.

If someone offered you $100,000 and two years to think deeply about how to solve a big problem, what problem would you tackle? As a recipient of the 2018 Stanton Fellowship, I have just that opportunity.

"At Liberty Hill, environmental justice is a core value and one of our top priorities. Over the years we have powered landmark environmental campaigns, including today’s fight to end oil drilling near homes and schools in Los Angeles—the nation’s largest urban oil field.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health validated today what hundreds of residents living near urban oil drilling sites have already known: proximity to oil drilling is hazardous to their health. Many active oil wells in Los Angeles are next to places where people live, work and play, causing nosebleeds, nausea, respiratory illness and dizziness.

When Liberty Hill started deciding where to concentrate our efforts for the next three years, there were many factors to consider—the new administration in Washington; California’s role on the national stage; L.A.’s rapidly changing urban landscape and the challenges and opportunities that come with it.

This past April, Liberty Hill hosted a bus tour that provided an opportunity for 40 funders with the Climate and Energy Funders Group (CEFG) to explore challenges and innovations around energy and the environment in Los Angeles.

Local resident Carolina Rodriguez, who was born and raised in East L.A., became a key figure in the local battle for rent control. Despite multiple attempts by her landlord to evict her and her family after increasing their rent more than $500, Carolina remains in her home in East L.A. today due to the efforts of Unincorporated Tenants United, which Liberty Hill helped coordinate.

In 2018, the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance (MBK), an initiative of the Obama Foundation, sought out organizations working to improve the lives of boys and young men of color. As one of 10 MBK selected sites, the Liberty Hill Foundation, along with 15 cross-sector partners, is now working to transform L.A. County’s youth justice system.

As the global pandemic reshapes how we all live, youth organizers continue the fight for justice, especially after two youths in Los Angeles County’s juvenile halls tested positive for coronavirus this week.

The Liberty Hill Foundation encourages donors to make longterm commitments to a broad landscape of grassroots organizations fighting anti-Black racism and police violence. These recent Liberty Hill grantees and community partners organize for Black lives and advocate for criminal justice reforms throughout Los Angeles County.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and a longstanding housing crisis, families are fighting for their right to a safe place to live.

Liberty Hill is committed to ensuring we continue to use our financial resources to support Black-led organizing and the activists on the frontlines. We are committed to using our voice to promote anti-racist policies and amplify the voices of those screaming for justice.

Organizing takes time and building true power sometimes takes years. As the late icon John Lewis once said, “Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime.”

While we continue to support the push to make this recent national reckoning on racial justice more than just a moment in the crucial fight for Black Lives, our partners are also continuing the fight to ensure this movement makes lasting change in our society and in the lives of Black people in our country.

Last week, Culver City council members voted unanimously to phase out urban oil drilling in the city’s portion of the Inglewood Oil Field. This was the first and necessary step toward a just transition while protecting residents from a legacy of toxic emissions.

The heartbreaking and horrifying shooting of Jacob Blake—seven times in the back, at point-blank range, in front of his children—leaves us stunned. We are saddened, and we are angry, but unfortunately we are not surprised.

The movement to transform the criminal justice system in Los Angeles won a major victory in July when the Los Angeles Police Commission voted to permanently end the LAPD’s use of the CalGang database.

Mainor is a Youth Policy Advocate working to keep Brown and Black youth out of the system at The Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network (AIYN). After navigating his youth without proper guidance or mentorship, he found himself in jail as a teenager.

One of the core aspects of our Agenda for a Just Future is our commitment to fighting for a roof over every head. As part of that housing justice work, we have also supported organizations working to ensure fair treatment of tenants who face the risk of eviction during these uncertain times.

The Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation (LADF) announced a grant of $304,400 to Liberty Hill Foundation’s California Funders For Boys and Men of Color: Our Kids, Our Future Fund to support the thirteen Southern California community partners who are working with the County of Los Angeles to develop the most comprehensive approach to youth development in the nation.

For years, Liberty Hill’s donor-activists have walked with the neighborhood activists of the STAND-LA coalition as they took on drilling in their neighborhoods. We’ve made sure their testimony of respiratory illnesses, dizzying headaches and foul smells was heard widely. We’ve made sure their efforts had the support they needed.

We were excited to recently host a lively discussion called Divest, Defund, Reform, Abolish? Next Steps for Justice and Policing After the 2020 Protests. This virtual event was an important discussion on the movements to reduce reliance on policing, along with the necessary steps to ensure the safety and future of our youth and communities.

Victory! We are on our way to Ending Youth Incarceration As We Know It! On Tuesday, November 24, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to dismantle the largest youth justice system in the nation in favor of a care-first model that would emphasize emotional support, counseling, and treatment.

The 2020 election was generation-defining in many respects—from the record-breaking turnout to the critical social justice issues on the ballot for millions of Americans—a coalition of diverse voters, led by Black and Brown organizers, showed up to flex their electoral power in major ways this year.

This year brought challenges the likes of which the world hasn’t faced in a century—with a pandemic raging around the globe and ineffective leadership from the White House here at home–COVID-19 took an immeasurable toll on all of us.

American democracy has always been complicated. It was built on the enslavement of Black people, who won liberation for half a generation before Reconstruction was replaced with Jim Crow.

The night before he spoke with Barack Obama at the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance Leadership Forum, Jacob “Blacc” Jackson was harassed by police. Again.

The Stay Housed L.A. program was featured by the White House as a national model for eviction prevention. Check out our Executive Vice President Jenny Delwood as she shares lessons learned and best practices from Stay Housed L.A.

At Morningside High, Dylan learned about “all the barriers that boys and men of color face in communities like Inglewood,” but in the Black Male Youth Academy on campus, he worked on college-prep projects and was invited to participate in the Brothers, Sons Selves Coalition, which is managed by Liberty Hill. With enthusiasm and hard work, Dylan advocated with school board members and state legislators for changes in school discipline policies that disproportionately impact young men of color and have been shown to increase dropout rates.

Esthefanie was born in Guadalajara and was brought to the U.S. when she was six years old. She’s now a community college student and a youth organizer at InnerCity Struggle, a community based education-focused organization that Liberty Hill has supported for many years. Esthefanie transformed her frustration and shame into a sense of pride and determination, standing up against injustices.

Glen Dake seems to work on a vision of Los Angeles the way he works on a vision of a particular community garden or landscape—with lots of practical, hands-on effort. He supports nonprofit organizations, not only through Liberty Hill’s grantmaking, but also, with his sister Renee Dake Wilson and her husband Brian Wilson, through a donor advised fund housed at Liberty Hill. He has also served on Liberty Hill’s Environmental Justice Community Funding Board.

Patrisse spoke at Liberty Hill’s Uplifting Change luncheon earlier this year, bringing the voice of a new generation to donor-activists focused on strengthening Black Los Angeles through philanthropic investment in grassroots community organizing. She led the group in a moving refrain by Assata Shakur: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

After years of activism and organizing including huge wins and painful setbacks—the Environmental Justice movement to end toxic neighborhood oil drilling in L.A. County secured a huge landmark victory yesterday!

Currently, California is the only oil-producing state in the country without a minimum distance requirement between oil wells and the people who live and work in the frontline communities in the immediate vicinity. But this past week, the state of California took bold action to increase environmental protections for vulnerable communities.

This was truly a banner year for activism and progress! We have much work to do on the road ahead, but we couldn’t be prouder to take this journey with you—our Beloved Community.

Advocacy groups that provide educational and legal support to renters across the county have seen an uptick in tenant harassment complaints, such as landlords conducting construction at all hours of the night or refusing to turn on the water or address roach infestations. Reports of harassment like this have almost doubled in the last few months via the Stay Housed L.A. program.

The Care First vision for Los Angeles is based on the tenets of the Measure J initiative and is rooted in stopping jail expansion, closing existing jails and shifting resources to support the needs of Black, Brown and Indigenous communities. The coalition—in partnership with county staff and others—has recommended a Care First budget as the first step in the implementation process.

Liberty Hill Foundation believes that we can end the incarceration of girls and young women by building stronger, safer, and more equitable communities where the distinct experience of girls —particularly youth of color — are no longer criminalized for the violence and discrimination they face.

Four years ago, we set out to end youth incarceration as we know it. And four years later, arrest rates for youth under the age of 18 have declined by 53%; incarceration rates have declined by 66%; more than 50% of youth jails have been closed; and there’s been a reinvestment of more than $200 million from punishment to care.   There are now fewer youth in juvenile halls or courtrooms and far smaller probation caseloads. Yet, the implementation work continues to develop the nation’s largest Department of Youth Development.

Our Vice President of Strategic Partnerships Julio Marcial has authored a chapter about transforming the nation’s youth justice system for Latine Future’s new book, “If We Want to Win: A Latine Vision for a New American Democracy” published by The New Press. The book has been described as an urgent, provocative collection of essays from Latinx thought leaders heralding a more inclusive vision of America’s future.

​​Healing Justice is a movement that aims to address widespread generational trauma by responding with traditional holistic healing practices and building new, more inclusive ones. The peer convenings allow organizations to come together, build community, share their growing expertise, and support the healing and well-being of organizational leaders and their teams as they commit to long-term power-building and organizing work.

Thank you for helping Liberty Hill and our partners call attention to the urgent need to phase-out oil drilling in Los Angeles. Now, we have a chance to amplify that message statewide by telling Governor Newsom and state leaders to adopt strong public health and safety rules. Sign the petition to tell Governor Newsom to adopt the strongest possible statewide regulations.

This week—after years of patient and steadfast organizing by community organizations supported by Liberty Hill—the L.A. City Council put an end to the practice of poisoning our communities with toxic oil and gas drilling operations! They voted unanimously to draft an ordinance to prohibit all new oil and gas drilling and to phase-out existing drilling operations throughout all areas of the City of Los Angeles!

More than 150 attendees joined Liberty Hill, our evaluation team from Imoyase Community Support Services and Destiny Consulting, and our partners at California Community Foundation for a virtual Town Hall to share the results of this multi-year $38 million public private partnership and provide support to our Ready to Rise partners offering culturally responsive community-based services to young people.