Economic Justice
HOPE: Helping Others Prosper Economically
In 2018, former CLUE Chair Rev. Norman Copeland (AME pastor based in San Bernardino, CA) invited me to help found HOPE for All. Based primarily in the Inland Empire, HOPE combines the worker-centered CLUE efforts with a commitment to the plight of each individual. As its founding Secretary, volunteer Director, and grant writer, we will improve the lives of struggling Southern California community members. Our mission: “HOPE for All will provide education, financial literacy services, business training, and community/economic development strategies to build the capacity and strengthen the structure of the surrounding communities, working with small businesses, nonprofits, unions, church leadership, and the neighborhoods that we serve.”
Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE)
At CLUE, I helped them achieve their mission to educate, organize, and mobilize the faith community to accompany workers and their families in their struggle for good jobs, dignity, and justice. CLUE brings together clergy and lay leaders of all faiths with workers, immigrants and low-income families in the cause of a just economy that works for all and protects those most vulnerable.
Immigrant Rights
As the grandson of four Ukrainian emigres to the US at the turn of the 20th Century, as a Jew knowledgeable of the USS St. Louis, denied a port of entry and sent back to Europe where most of its passengers were murdered in the Shoah, and as a neighbor to predominantly Latino Angelenos, I know that we must “Love the stranger, for [we] were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:19). I am grateful for the many Latino friends and colleagues in my life, whose story is sacred.
Civil Disobedience
Risking arrest to fix broken societal structures is easy to do. The hard part is to do it with humility, for all the right reasons, not bound with one’s ego. It’s not an ends, but rather a means to a noble conclusion to societal injustices, requiring us to make sacrifices if we ever plan to fix societal ills. Here’s my history, not including those I declined:
1989 to demand an end to military aid to El Salvador (as a UCLA student)
1999 to protest NYPD’s 41 bullets in unarmed Amadou Diallo
2010 to demand Comprehensive Immigration Reform (Costa Mesa) 2013 to demand Walmart worker rights (Chinatown, for UFCW)
2017 to secure a fair contract for Los Angeles security officers
2018 to end over-policed Immigrant Detention (Los Angeles)
2018 to protect port truck drivers and TPS recipients (Long Beach)
