IN THE PRESS: Wealthy L.A. Philanthropists Loosen Grip on Donations, Shifting Money Toward Social Justice
By: Corie Brown, Los Angeles Times
Fernando Torres got his first gang tattoo when he was 15, a rite of passage among some members of his family. “I thought it was an honor to die for your gang,” he says.
Acknowledging that he was quick to throw a punch, he says that he was soon expelled from high school. But two years later, Torres, then 17, was enrolled at FREE L.A. High, a charter school affiliated with decarceration activists at the Los Angeles-based Youth Justice Coalition.
It wasn’t a smooth transition. It took an arrest for carrying a loaded handgun and the threat of prison time, he says, before he finally started to listen to FREE L.A. teachers and staff — several of whom had been incarcerated — and extracted himself from gang life.
“They see themselves in us,” says Torres, who is now 22 and works in construction, “and want us to have a better outcome.”
For 20 years, young people like Torres have had their lives turned around by the Youth Justice Coalition — an organization that relies on support from California philanthropies. The key to that success has been no-strings-attached grants, says Emilio Zapién, the coalition’s director of communications.
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In addition to the Youth Justice Coalition, which has received $200,000, other nonprofit beneficiaries of the Black Freedom Fund include the Afrikan Black Coalition ($100,000), the Los Angeles Black Worker Center ($500,000) and the Los Angeles Community Action Network ($350,000).
Howard, of the Irvine Foundation, says California has a long history of erecting legal and structural barriers that block Black people and members of other marginalized groups from jobs, healthcare and housing, and each community faces different barriers.
“We need to understand how to dismantle those barriers,” he says. “If we’re going to transform society, everyone has to have a seat at the table.”
“There’s a sea shift in who has power in California,” says John Kim, president and CEO of Catalyst California, which advocates for racial justice and whose revenue has doubled in recent years. “Money is power, and the foundations are giving it directly to people of color.”
Community groups have used that power to make “real gains” in L.A. County and city budget allocations, Kim says.
But “after 170 years of exclusion and extraction, it’s just one decade of progress,” he adds. “L.A. has a long way to go.”