Our colleagues at the Rosenberg Foundation recently published a series of thought-provoking essays by some of California’s leading visionary activists and thinkers. We’re so pleased and honored that our long-time friend and colleague Hugo Morales selected our 2010 Sowing Change tour as the topic of his essay. Dolores Huerta, another long-time friend, has written a stirring peace calling for justice for farm workers and Madeline Janis envisions a new kind of economic order. After you’ve read these essays, we encourage you to dip into the rest of the magazine for powerful essays by leaders who, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.”
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Sowing Change in the San Joaquin Valley
By Hugo Morales
On a recent funders’ tour of the San Joaquin Valley, a region of California that faces daunting challenges, the author finds ample cause for hope
Recently, I participated in “Sowing Change,” a three-day tour for grantmakers organized by the Women’s Foundation of California. During the tour, I saw first hand some of the daunting challenges the San Joaquin Valley faces in the continuing fight for social justice and equality. Read more on page 10 of Rosenberg Foundation’s Justice in California
Securing Justice for Farm Workers
By Dolores Huerta
The famed labor activist chronicles the historical struggles – as well as the significant present-day challenges – in the fight to secure justice for California’s most marginalized workers.
The San Joaquin Valley is the breadbasket of the United States and the world. A prosperous area, the wealthy agriculture industry that calls this area home is important to California’s economy and provides the food that nourishes so much of the country. Yet, the farm workers who labor to create this wealth and abundance have long lived in abject poverty. Read more on page 12 of Rosenberg Foundation’s Justice in California
An Economy that Works for All of Us
By Madeline Janis
How can we build a state in which economic injustice and poverty are replaced by shared prosperity?
In March 2011, right before the state’s Republican party rammed through a law intended to break the backs of labor unions, I spent 24 hours in Madison, Wisconsin. I went with a contingent of 160 leaders from Los Angeles—nurses, teachers, janitors, and hotel workers, people from every walk of life—and we came to Madison to connect with regular, everyday people who were in the middle of an epic fight for economic equality. Read more on page 14 of Rosenberg Foundation’s Justice in California