People who speak truth to power
The last couple of days has left me feeling completely exhausted and shut down. I’m sure you all may be sharing the same sentiment. So, I have been digging deep within myself to appreciate the people with power I most admire in my life. They are people who speak truth to power, even if it makes others uncomfortable. They genuinely care and stand in solidarity with social movements and working-class people locally and globally. I wanted to share these here with you today. There are of course many more, including each one of you who takes time to protest, donate, and help others wherever you can. If you have any others you would admire, please leave a comment with them below. I’d love to have more gratitude and inspiration in my life right now.
Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Cullors is a Los Angeles native, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, Founder of grassroots Los Angeles-based organization Dignity and Power Now. For the last 20 years, Patrisse has been on the frontlines of criminal justice reform and led Reform LA Jails’ “Yes on R” campaign, a ballot initiative that passed by a 73% landslide victory in March 2020.
She spoke to us over zoom during the pandemic, thanks to one of my team managers, Kim Tabari, who is part of the Long Beach BLM Chapter convincing her. Patrisse was so humble and kind in walking us through the work – it was profound to be in her presence and to get to meet an originator behind the movement.
Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta is perhaps best known for her work with Cesar Chavez in leading the unionizing efforts of farm workers in California in the 1960s, but her impact on American life stretches far beyond that. Dolores serves as a corrective to a half-century of history that had until now relegated her impact to the margins. Huerta has been a constant and vocal advocate for the rights of women, immigrants, and people living in poverty. And her lobbying work has resulted in programs and legislation in support of all these groups.
I had the privilege of watching her documentary at the USC Cinema School and listening to her speak to a crowded room about a year ago. As a prior community organizer, I am in awe of her energy and dedication, given the challenges required to create social change.
Dr. Ananya Roy
Dr. Ananya Roy is Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, which promotes research and scholarship concerned with displacement and dispossession in Los Angeles and seeks to build power to make social change.
Ananya’s research and scholarship has a determined focus on poverty and inequality. She looks at:
- How the urban poor in cities from Kolkata to Chicago face and fight eviction, foreclosure, and displacement;
- how global financialization, working in varied realms from microfinance to real-estate speculation, creates new markets in debt and risk;
- how the efforts to manage and govern the problem of poverty reveal the contradictions and limits of liberal democracy;
- how economic prosperity and aspiration in the global South is creating new potentialities for programs of human development and social welfare.
She was my professor in a class for the Global Poverty and Practice Minor at UC Berkeley. Packed in a crowded 800 person classroom, she was my first role model of a South Asian woman who thought critically about poverty and was actively working to address it through her work in both a local and global context. Here urban planning approach was also something I had never thought about before – and it lit up something in me – which I ended up exploring more during graduate school.
Robert Reich
Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the UC Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and he has written 17 other books, He is a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, founder of Inequality Media, and co-creator of the award-winning documentaries Inequality For All and Saving Capitalism.
He was my also my professor in a course called Wealth and Inequality while I was at UC Berkeley. As I sat in another crowded 800 person lecture hall listening to him speak – I was awed that a person like him could exist in the world. Someone who cared about class and actively called out the widening inequality in the United States, an experience I knew all too well. His framework and approach to policy and economics has profoundly shaped my life. He also co-founded Inequality Media, a style of informative filmmaking that I hope to one day emulate in my own work.
Dr. Manuel Pastor
Last, but not least, Dr. Manuel Pastor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His research focused on issues of the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities. His current research culminates in his latest book, State of Resistance: What California’s Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America’s Future.
He is also the Executive Director of the USC Equity Research Institute – my big boss. I am inspired to work with him and the wonderful team I call my home. I have grown so much under this team and feel really lucky to get to contribute to work that is trying to build more solidarity and strength for racial equity, social movements, and immigrants that we can.
