$25,000 / 2018
https://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 form a regional base. Over the last 29 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. Over the last grant period, LCSC has been organizing for free public transportation, the removal of police and military-grade weapons from public schools and establishing the Strategy and Soul center as an outreach, political education and organizing training hub. This coming year, with renewal support from Hazen, LCSC will continue to organize to stop the School-to-Prison-Pipeline at two member schools and across the Los Angeles Unified School District; to divest in LA School police while alternatively investing in restorative justice; and to build momentum to move the LA Metro to decriminalize fare evasion. Through its long-term vision and transformative organizing frame—Fight for the Soul of the Cities — Strategy Center is organizing to end the racist mass incarceration and criminalization complex of the past 40 years and replace it with newly won human rights, community resources, restorative and reparatory justice.