CALL TO ACTION:  support needed at the 10/15/24 Sacramento City Council meeting  at 2pm! If you’re able, please show up to this meeting...

In November of 2022, Sacramento voters approved Measure L, otherwise known as the Children and Youth Health and Safety Act. Thank you to the SacKidsFirst coalition who led the Measure L campaign! 

In our last post we discussed what defines environmental justice. This week we’re going to talk about environmental injustice and how it manifests. We’re looking into the impact of these injustices on our most marginalized community members, and more specifically, our unhoused neighbors. 

TL;DR: the Sacramento region is experiencing the impacts (and facing the increasing severity) of climate change and environmental injustice. Our most vulnerable and marginalized community members bear the brunt of these effects, and are often forgotten when it comes to policy decisions regarding the environment and climate. Read through this piece to see what plans our local government has in place to mitigate these impacts, and which organizations are fighting for environmental justice.

TL;DR: the Sacramento Police Department seems to be able to get anyway with doing anything they want, including murdering our community members, breaking the law, violating peoples' constitutional rights, and engaging in targeted racial profiling and discrimination. So, they deserve a raise, right?

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TL;DR: Sacramento City Manager - and all around disappointment - Howard Chan attempted to remove funding for the RydeFreeRT program (a program that costs the City $1M...by contrast, this budgeting cycle we gave the police a $30M raise), but thanks in large part to community mobilization, this program will remain funded for another year! Unfortunately the City only covered $250,000 of the cost, with the remaining $750,000 being split between Sac RT and the Sacramento, Natomas, Elk Grove, and Twin Rivers Unified school districts. Permanent funding for this program will continue to be fought for.

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This month, SJPC is focusing on local elections. As a reminder to our readers, SJPC is a 501c-3 and therefore cannot endorse candidates running campaigns. For this month’s newsletter we are centering two candidates whose most recent runs for office have come to a conclusion as of the March 5th primary: Sac City Councilmembers Mai Vang and Katie Valenzuela. We are striving to use this month to focus on the importance of grassroots candidates and building progressive majorities in local governing bodies. 

In January of this year, following a council meeting in which dozens of community members showed up to demand that Sacramento address the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, Councilmembers Katie Valenzuela and Mai Vang proposed a draft of a ceasefire resolution, calling for an immediate end to Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

SJPC’s focus this month is Health Equity; in our first newsletter we provided education around Sacramento County’s Community Wellness Response Team (AKA alt to 911 program), and for this piece we’re telling the story of someone working in our community to provide information and guidance on how to approach social work through a trauma-informed and intersectional lens. 

This write-up was informed by a conversation between SJPC and Dr. Corrine McIntosh Sako, Chair of the Sacramento County Mental Health Board. Direct quotes from Dr. Sako will be sprinkled throughout this write-up!

As a Black woman, I find the concept of acting out of character so interesting. Acting out of character, what a phrase. Shakespeare once said, “All the world’s a stage, all the men and women merely players.”

In August of 2023, Tamika L'Ecluse was hired as the Sacramento Community Land Trust's (SCLT) first Executive Director! Tamika is long-time community advocate who is dedicated to supporting and empowering our most disenfranchised community members.

Today, we’re reporting back on a conversation we had with Eleanor Oliver, a member of Decarcerate Sacramento, who took the time to share their story regarding the criminal legal system with us!

This week we’re taking a look at the false narratives, lies, and propaganda fed to folks in the Sacramento area (and across the country) about the “necessity” of law enforcement (LE).

This piece is centered around the #ThisClose2Unhoused Campaign, led by Public Health Advocates (PHA), which is working to promote compassion and compassionate policy solutions for our unhoused neighbors in California.

As I stand at the Buckeye school board’s meeting for the forced outing of queer children, listening to parent’s fear of their children “daring” to be queer prioritized over my community's safety, I think “I’ve been warning my friends to pay attention.”

This week we're continuing our exploration of the ways in which renter's are being disenfranchised and exploited by landlords in the Sacramento area through a conversation with SJPC's Program Manager, Andi Bianchi, and his partner Dylan Hoy-Bianchi.