LGBTQ & Gender Justice

At our recent Liberation Fund Funder Briefing, Liberty Hill invited individual donors, funders, and advisors to learn about the progress of our Liberation Fund and the potential pathway the initiative is creating for LA County to become the largest jurisdiction in the nation to end the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth. Read on to learn more and watch the full recording.

Over the past year, the Liberty Hill community has helped create lasting change and progress that has impacted the lives of community members throughout Los Angeles. From fighting for a roof over every head, to working to end youth incarceration as we know it, and eliminating toxic neighborhood oil drilling, our work has reached communities in every corner of L.A.

The Young Women’s Freedom Center celebrates its 30-year anniversary this month, marking a major milestone in their work to inspire and empower systems-impacted women, girls, and trans people of all genders. Read on to learn more about their policy, advocacy, and organizing work and the lasting impact it has on the lives of young people throughout California.

At our recent 2023 Leadership Appreciation Brunch, Liberty Hill Donor Activists gathered to learn about community-led solutions aimed at ending the involvement of girls and gender-expansive youth in the incarceration system and gained insight into the local efforts of Liberty Hill grantee partners through our newly launched Liberation Fund.

Liberty Hill is excited to announce our grantee partners for the Liberation Fund– a groundbreaking initiative to end the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth in Los Angeles County!

In honor of National Latinx/e Heritage Month, Liberty Hill co-sponsored the PBS SoCal | KCET screening of UNIDAD: Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos at LA Plaza de Cultura y Arte in Downtown L.A.

Liberty Hill is proud to support the work of social justice organizations and their efforts to create a more just and equitable Los Angeles for all. From advocating for Racial Justice to advancing LGBTQ & Gender Justice, Liberty Hill grantees are making an impact!

Since 2018, Indigenous Pride L.A. has provided several education programs and resources for community members throughout Los Angeles. They’ve created and hosted local events to celebrate Two Spirit, Indigiqueer, and LGBTQPAI+ communities including creating L.A.’s first and only Indigenous Pride Event!

Queer and gender non-conforming youth face alarming rates of bullying, loneliness, and isolation putting them at increased risk for depression and other mental health conditions. Local LGBTQ-led nonprofit, Rainbow Labs, is working to change that.

This month, and every month, Liberty Hill honors and commemorates the trailblazing work of our community partners, grantees, and donor activists who have fought tirelessly for LGBTQ+ and Gender Justice in L.A.

Progress is messy and inconstant, and it doesn’t happen without difficult moments and tough conversations. The work of justice goes on, through advances and setbacks. Our partners will never desist from it, and neither will we.

This past January, Liberty Hill announced its solicitation for applications for the new Liberation Fund Planning Grants—a new initiative that aims to end the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth in the Los Angeles County criminal legal system and build liberatory pathways for these young people.

Don’t miss the social justice event of the year! Join the Liberty Hill community for the 40th Annual Upton Sinclair Celebration: Uniting Power & Purpose at the Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday, April 19!

Liberty Hill launched the Liberation Fund last month to ensure that girls and GE youth have access to programs and services targeted toward their unique needs that will prioritize their autonomy and safety.

As a special wrap-up to our first season of "Conversations From The Frontlines: Real Talk, Real Change" we hosted a special bonus episode called Defending the Future: America Post Roe featuring guests Laura Jimenez, the Executive Director of CA Latinas for Reproductive Justice and Janette Robinson Flint, Executive Director of Black Women for Wellness.

Liberty Hill’s new podcast—"Conversations From The Frontlines: Real Talk, Real Change" hosted by our President and CEO Shane Murphy Goldsmith has established itself as one of the Top 100 Nonprofit Podcasts on Apple Podcasts!

Liberty Hill Community, is there a burning topic, issue, grassroots leader or local power player you’d like to hear from? Send us your ideas!

This morning’s attack on human rights is shocking and infuriating, if not surprising. We ask you to join us in supporting organizations that serve the reproductive health and other needs of women and nonbinary people. Today, their work is more urgent than ever.

This Pride Month, we acknowledge the fights for LGBTQ rights happening at the intersections of many social justice struggles and salute the organizers and activists working to build a more just and inclusive world.

This May, Liberty Hill honors the many contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AA and NHPIs) and stands in solidarity with AA and NHPI organizers demanding an end to racial violence and fighting for systemic change.

Get ready to dive into some challenging conversations about how to make the real change we are fighting for possible! Liberty Hill is launching a new podcast called "Conversations From The Frontlines: Real Talk, Real Change" hosted by Liberty Hill President and CEO Shane Murphy Goldsmith.

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.

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.

Santa Monica’s iconic Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows will show its support for the LGBTQ community through various PRIDE-centric programming and partnerships throughout the year, including a special PRIDE promotion this month benefitting Liberty Hill!

We are excited and eager to share this opinion editorial, authored by one of our participants in this summer’s Wally Marks Leadership Institute Op-ed Training. The training was hosted by Liberty Hill in conjunction with our partners at Fostering Media Connections.

As we pause to highlight PRIDE month amidst the continued uprisings for racial justice and police accountability across the country, it’s important to remember that while much progress has been made, equality has not expanded equally across all communities.

Liberty Hill has also helped Gabriel on a very personal level through his work with the Brother Sons Selves Coalition, a Liberty Hill led campaign. "My personal experience being trans, entering BSS was a little bit of a nervous and scary place," Gabriel explains. Up until that point in his life he had never really been welcomed into masculine or even cis male spaces. "And so to have this kind of access through my job and through the social justice work has really helped to heal."

My name is Diana Feliz Oliva and I am a transgender, first-generation Mexican American. I was raised in a single-parent household in a small, rural town just outside Fresno, California. For a shy, feminine, awkward little kid like me, growing up in a small, rural town was not easy.

Liberty Hill is pleased to announce that our 2018 Fund for Change grants will invest $975,800 in 39 grassroots organizations throughout Los Angeles County. Thanks to the generosity of our donor-activists and foundation partners, we have been able to increase our Fund for Change grantmaking by $256,800 since 2016.

June is Pride month, and a great time to recognize the contributions of LGBTQ individuals in music. As part of our Agenda for a Just Future, we are addressing the impact of housing instability and youth incarceration in queer communities, and fighting for LGBTQ rights.

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.

In February 2018, Liberty Hill partnered with the Genders and Sexualities Alliance (GSA) Network of Southern California—one of our grantees fighting to empower and train young LGBTQ leaders—to call on Los Angeles County elected officials to address issues of disproportionate criminalization and abusive treatment of LGBTQ youth of color.

With June being Pride Month, it's the perfect time to shine a light on the progressive work being birthed out of a continued fight for equity and liberation in this space.

You can’t help but think in garden metaphors when talking to Glen Dake, a landscape architect,  prominent advocate for “green agenda” issues in Los Angeles, and one of Liberty Hill’s most active donor- activists.