$100,000 / 2020 – 2021

https://www.innercitystruggle.org/

Los Angeles, CA

InnerCity Struggle’s (ICS) youth and families on the Eastside of Los Angeles to promote healthy, safe, and nonviolent communities. They believe that organizing for quality public school education is key to transforming the poverty, violence and social injustice impacting their neighborhoods and their families’opportunities.ICS programs involve youth and parent leaders in the process of research, analysis, and development of campaign initiatives that influence target decision-makers to approve and implement policy reforms beneficial to the empowerment, growth, and success of Eastside families. The ICS youth group, United Students has 750 members that gather weekly on high school campuses and at ICS headquarters for campaigns and skill-building activities. The parent organizing equivalent has 450 members and is known as Familias Unidas (FaU). In 2019, ICS successfully passed a Rent Stabilization Ordinance for over 400,000 tenant units in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County that includes a cap on annual rent increases tied to the Consumer Price Index. They also won a Successful School Climate: Safe, Respectful, and Learning for All resolution that ends the practice of “random searches” disproportionately used to criminalize youth of color. A renewal grant for ICS would support their ongoing efforts to escalate their campaign and coalition efforts to ensure fully funded and equitable cradle to college and career pathways in Los Angeles’Eastside.