Dateline Sacramento — Speaking at the annual California Legislative Black Caucus breakfast honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Gov. Brown told an audience of 600 that education is a civil rights issue.
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Sen. Price, second from right, presents award to Gov. Brown. New Assemblyperson Holly J. Mitchell (D-Culver City) is at right.
“We take from redevelopment and we put $1 billion into schools — that’s a good thing,” Mr. Brown said. “We’ve got to make sure whatever we do that we give a chance to those who are coming along in the next generation. And that is a civil rights issue.” He said that California residents “will have to find the collective will to invest in our kids and our environment.”
Mr. Brown was enthusiastically received at the “MLK Jr. Civil Rights Legacy and Leadership Awards” event that included hundreds of community leaders and dozens of elected officials, including Mehaul O’Leary, Chair of the Redevelopment Agency of Culver City. Among familiar faces in the crowd: new state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, first-year Assembly Speaker John Perez, Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg, and the legendary retired Speaker Willie Brown.
Gov. Brown’s remarks underscored the thrust of the Black Caucus under new Chair Sen. Curren D. Price Jr. (D-Culver City), who has assumed the leadership of several capitol youth leadership internships and scholarship programs designed to provide their first direct exposure to government.
Sen. Price presented the governor with the Black Caucus’s Leadership and Courage Award, calling him “a civil rights legend” for enacting important civil rights legislation earlier in his career.
“When Brown served as governor from1974 to 1982,” Sen. Price said, “he appointed more women, Asians, Latinos and African Americans to high government positions than any other chief executive. He also appointed more than 200 women and minority judges, including the first African American and the first Latino to the California Supreme Court. He also appointed the first openly gay judge to the bench.
“Gov. Brown also established the nation’s first anti-redlining measure. He created the first Agricultural Labor Relations Board, and he signed legislation that allowed for collective bargaining by state workers.”
As for the Black Caucus, Sen. Price told the crowd that his group was committed to continuing the work for economic and social justice that Dr. King lived and died for. “The struggle continues,” he said.
Several other awards were presented: Linda Crayton, senior regional director of government affairs for the Comcast Corp.; Areva D. Martin, founder-president of the Special Needs Network; Fredricka McGee, Esq., counsel to Speaker Perez
