Re “Don Your Mini Skirts, Grab Your Microphones. Here Comes the Circus.”
There is another side to the story of the Black Legislative Caucus holding a crowded press conference at the lunch hour today to protest “disproportionate” budget cuts to the non-white male community, and Assemblymember Holly J. Mitchell (D-Culver City) forcefully delivered the rebuttal.
She said the state budget should be based primarily on “humanity.”
Because Gov. Brown miscalculated the budget by 99 percent last winter, five specialty caucuses (caucus-im?) are meeting with the media at 11:45 to complain that the proposed budget cuts unfairly target communities of color.
“From my perspective,” Ms. Mitchell told the newspaper this morning, “our argument is not about victimization at all.
“It is about sharing facts and clarifying that certain communities will be disproportionately impacted by what are already horrendous cuts.
One of the Worst Slashes
“The first statement is, a billion dollars cut out of a safety net program (Calworks) geared to prevent children from slipping deeper into poverty.
“I am the member of the Black Caucus who suggested to my colleagues we have the LAO and others really do kind of a race-based analysis. I was curious what the impact would be on certain ethnic groups.
“The Latino Caucus did the same. We were saddened to see the results of that analysis. For me, it is another tool, another piece of information in our arsenal to talk about the need to have a budget based on humanity, a need to be clear about the impact of these kinds of cuts.
“There are communities, African Americans and Latinos, who will be disproportionately impacted.
“Poor people across the board will be disproportionately impacted.”
But aren’t poor people always negatively affected by changes, good or bad, in society? Ms. Mitchell was asked.
“That’s right,” she said.
The Hard-Hit Poor
“Sweet Alice Harris, the founder of Mothers of Watts, told me years ago that if the California economy catches a cold, Watts gets pneumonia.
“The point is,” said Ms. Mitchell, “to leverage power, to organize ourselves around issues that impact our community.
“I am an African American woman, and proud of it. I don’t see myself as a victim. I have a responsibility to the constituents who elected me in the 47th Assembly District.
“As an active member of the Legislative Black Caucus, I have an additional responsibility, or opportunity, to look at policies from the perspective of impact on the African American community.”
If women, gays, African Americans, Latinos and Pacific Islanders are unfairly damaged by the proposed Brown cuts, what is the upside?
Who is deriving benefits?
“No one is when we are talking about cuts of this magnitude,” Ms. Mitchell said.
Then who is eluding the heft of the cuts and getting away easier?
“Probably people who have less reliance on government,” she said. “Even that is hard to say. Anyone who has a child in school – be it a traditional public school, a charter school, any that receives funding – will be affected.”
