This is a purely personal endeavor: as long as I've known these trails (30 years or more?) I've wanted to do this. I simply have an inner yen for such things. And I figure, at 69, I better get out there now while I can. Hence much trotting up and down hills and somewhat less writing.
And, since I'm doing this anyway, I might as well make it a fundraiser. Twenty years ago, along with Erudite Partner and with the support of individuals and community organizations across the state, I joined with a little band of determined organizers to found Californians for Justice. Now as then, CFJ works statewide to enhance political skills and leadership from among communities at the margins, mostly of color, mostly young people.
Their work deserves support now.
California is a better place than it was twenty years ago when a predominantly white electorate tried, through racist ballot initiatives, to vote away the emerging majority of color. This horrifying 2016 presidential election dominated by a racist demagogue feels much the way the struggles of the 1990s felt in California. California is far from perfect now: racist police departments still kill with impunity, economic inequality continues to crush too many, the state and local governments favor the haves over the have-nots unless we make them do differently. But the state is better and more promising these days. Groups like CFJ have made it so. We can only hope the rest of the country will catch up.
Please support Californians for Justice in its 20th year through this Long Run for the Long Haul.
2 comments:
How ironic! I could not agree with you more about CFJ (to whom I will donate 100 pesos for every kilometro you run/walk/crawl/skip), nor less about California, which is, like the rest of the USA, getting the president it deserves. And anyway, how can California be a better place when nobody I love could move to San Fran or Oakland today???
Hi Susan: point taken about how completely unaffordable this place has become. But I do like living in a state in which the Republican Party has become vestigial because the racial order it defended became unsustainable. So now we get to fight with Democrats ... often enough of color. But it is different.
At the same time we hone our ability to see the evil structures, we have to own our small victories. They do happen.
Meanwhile, I'll go run.
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