Activism

Advocates Pressure Gov. Newsom to Fund Health Equity, Racial Justice in Final Budget

“Our state boasts a staggering $97 billion budget surplus,” said Ron Coleman, managing director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. “If not now, when? Given the devastating impact of racism on the health and well-being of Californians of color it’s a travesty of the highest order that racial justice isn’t even mentioned in the Governor’s budget proposal,”

Published

2 years ago

June 18, 2022

Oakland Post

Attendees were encouraged to contact the governor’s office and the Legislature to keep the pressure on them to include the fund.

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

On June 8, community leaders, public health advocates and racial justice groups convened for a virtual press event to urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to support the Health Equity and Racial Justice Fund (HERJ Fund).

The initiative supports community-based organizations addressing the underlying social, environmental and economic factors that limit people’s opportunities to be healthy — such as poverty, violence and trauma, environmental hazards, and access to affordable housing and healthy food. Health advocates would also address longstanding California problems related to health equity and racial justice problems.

The fund cleared a significant hurdle last week when the state Legislature included $75 million in their joint budget proposal. This means both the Assembly and Senate support the HERJ Fund and they will go into negotiations with the governor to seek his support to approve it.

Last Wednesday’s virtual community meeting and press event capped off a series of rallies held by supporters in cities across the state calling on Newsom to make room in his budget for the HERJ Fund.

Coleman facilitated the online event featuring representatives from service organizations speaking about their support for the fund and presenting plans for how the money would be used to support their shared mission of providing services to minority and underserved communities in California.

Jenedra Sykes, a partner at Arboreta Group, spoke about inequalities that exist in funding for smaller grassroots nonprofits and how traditionally larger, white-led nonprofits use state funds to subcontract with grassroots nonprofits to provide services to communities of color at lower costs.

“The faith-based non-profits on the ground have the relationships, the access to those who are most vulnerable and marginalized among us who disproportionately have poorer health outcomes,” said Sykes. “This bill also evens the playing field a bit. Instead of going through the middleman of the established larger non-profits, funding will go directly to the people who are doing the work. The passion, the heart, the skills, the talents are there. It’s about the resources to fund these talents”

Coleman gave attendees an update on the status of the HERJ Fund’s path to inclusion in the state budget.

Now that the state Legislature has included the fund in their spending proposal for Fiscal Year 2022-23 (it was not included in Newsom’s “May Revise”), it must survive negotiations with the governor’s office before the June 15 deadline to finalize the budget.

A final budget needs to be in place by June 30, the last day for the governor to approve.

HERJ Fund supporters remain hopeful that funding for their program will be included in the final budget.

Updated mechanisms about the budget were added to the HERJ Fund’s proposal to alleviate those concerns and supporters of the fund believe that Newsom is out of excuses.

“Our best shot at getting the HERJ Fund in the budget is now. We are hoping that all of you will keep the pressure on the governor to ensure that this becomes a reality,” Coleman said. “If he does care about the intersections of health equity and racial justice then we will see funding.”

Attendees were encouraged to contact the governor’s office and the Legislature to keep the pressure on them to include the fund. You can visit herjfund.org to learn more about the proposal and the effort to include it in the state budget.

Nadia Kean-Ayub, executive director of Rainbow Spaces, shared details about the valuable events and services community-based non-profits provide. She said there is no shortage of families in need who want to participate in their organizations’ programs but, due to limited funding for transportation, many people never access services meant to help them.

“This tells me that when things are created in our communities, they are not making the impact we need in our Black, Brown and API communities,” Kean-Ayub said. “I will continue to fight. To really make this grow, we need the state to understand that the true impact comes from the community and the people who are living these issues and who know how to help them.”

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Activism

‘Respect Our Vote’ Mass Meeting Rejects Oakland, Alameda County Recalls

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda. The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Published

2 weeks ago

September 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Some of the leaders who spoke at the Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!” mass meeting were (left to right): Elaine Peng, Mariano Contreras, Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, and Stewart Chen. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

A recently organized coalition, “Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!,” held a standing-room only mass meeting on Sept. 14, urging residents to vote ‘No’ on the two East Bay recalls funded by conservative billionaires and millionaires with the help of corporate media and instead to support the campaign to protect residents’ democratic right to choose their representatives.

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda.

The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Speaking at the meeting, prominent East Bay leader Stewart Chen said that local leaders, like Alameda County D.A. Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, worked hard to get elected, and our system says they get four years to carry out their policies and campaign promises. But rich people have “broken” that system.

Within two months after they took office, they were facing recalls paid for by billionaires, he said. “(Billionaires’) candidate did not get elected, so they want to change the system.”

“(Our elected leaders) were elected through the process, and the people spoke,” said Chen. “It’s the entire system that the billionaires are trying to (overturn).”

“If a candidate does something wrong or enacts a policy that we do not like, we let it play out, and in four years, we do not have to vote for them.

“The democratic system that we have had in place for a couple of hundred years, it needs our help,” said Chen.

Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, a leader of the coalition, emphasized the diversity and solidarity needed to defend democracy. “We need each other’s wisdom to make our nation great, to make it safe. We are deliberately African American, English-speaking, Latino American, Spanish-speaking, and all the wonderful dialects in the Asian communities. We want to be together, grow together, and have a good world together.”

Mariano Contreras of the Latino Task Force said that people need to understand what is at stake now.

The recall leaders are connected to conservative forces that will undermine public education, and bilingual education, he said. “The people behind (the recalls) are being used by outside dark money,” he said. The spokespeople of these recalls are themselves conservatives “who are wearing a mask that says they are progressives.”

In 2017, Oakland passed an ordinance that gave teeth to its “Sanctuary City” policy, which was brought to the City Council and passed because it was supported by progressive members on the council.

“That would not be possible anymore if the progressive alliance – Sheng Thao, Nikki Fortunato Bas, and Carroll Fife – if they are pushed out,” he said.

Elaine Peng, president of Asian Americans for Progressive America, said, “I strongly oppose the recalls of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.”

Citing statistics, she said Alameda County’s murder rate was higher when Alameda County D.A. Nancy O’Malley was in office, before Pamela Price was elected to that position.

“The recall campaign has been misleading the public,” said Peng.

She said Oakland is making progress under Thao. “Crime rates are falling in Oakland,” and the City is building more affordable housing than ever before and is creating more jobs.

Attorney Victor Ochoa said, this recall is “not by accident in Oakland – it is a political strategy.”

“There is a strategy that has been launched nationwide. What we’re seeing is oligarchs, (such as Phillip Dreyfuss from Piedmont), right wingers, conservatives, who can write a check for $400,000 like some of us can write a check for $10.”

“They aligned themselves with so-called moderate forces, but they’re not moderates. They align themselves with the money, and that’s what we have seen in Oakland.”

Ochoa continued, “You got to put up signs, you’ve got to talk to your neighbors, volunteer whatever hours you can, have a house meeting. That’s the way progressives win.”

Pecolia Manigo of Oakland Rising Action spoke about what it will take to defeat the recalls. “This is the time when you are not only deputized to go out and do outreach, we need to make sure that people actually vote.

“We need everyone to vote not just for the president, but all the way down the ballot to where these questions will be. Remind people to fill out their ballot, and mail it back.”

Former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who had herself faced a recall attempt, said, “In this recall, they used a lot of money, had paid signature gatherers, and they moved very fast. I talked to many of the people gathering signatures. They didn’t know what was going on. Many of them didn’t live in Oakland. It was just money for them.”

“Sam Singer, the guy who is their spokesperson, is a paid PR guy. He has media ties, so they’ve swamped the media against Sheng,” Quan said.

‘Oakland is… a city that implemented some of the first rent control protections in the country. So, developers and big apartment owners would love to get rid of rent control,” said Quan.

“We also established ranked-choice voting, which allows people with less money to coalesce and win elections,” she said. “That’s too democratic for people with big money. They would rather have elections the way they were.”