Amount: $25,000 / Spring 2016
Eric Mann, Executive Director
Website: http://www.thestrategycenter.org/
Founded in 1989, the Labor/Community Strategy Center (LCSC) is a multiracial, intergenerational, community based organization based in Los Angeles County working to impact local, national and international public policy and from a regional base. Over the last 25 years, the Center has built successful campaigns and developed publications and popular education workshops on environmental justice, civil rights, public health, mass transit, workers and immigrants’ rights, climate change and the growing criminalization of communities of color. Last year, through their youth organizing work, LCSC was able to get the LAUSD to remove assault rifles, acquired through the federal 1033 program, out of LA schools and also saw an 80 percent reduction in school police citations as a result of their organizing to change school policy. This coming year, with renewal support from Hazen, LCSC will organize youth to increase monetary investment in Restorative Justice and other non-punitive alternatives and continue organizing toward the full implementation of the Equal Protection Plan and the School Climate Bill of Rights; block additional funds for school police through Local Control Funding Formula; and push for counselors and support staff to transform school climate. LCSC has also adopted a long-term vision and transformative organizing frame—Fight for the Soul of the Cities—to take on policing, polluting and privatizing corporate plans for Los Angeles.