Forward Together Rally, Rally for a Fair Budget, Select Committee on Poverty Strengthen Coalition Advocacy

The 2024-25 state budget agreement prioritizes proven safety net programs that provide cash, child care, food, health care, and other supportive services, even in the face of a budget shortfall. Our support for the state budget is bolstered by the hard work and advocacy of our End Child Poverty California Coalition. Our IMAGINE Forward Together Rally and SEIU’s Rally for A Secure California Safety Net allowed our communities to come together and push back against cuts that will hurt families and children in California. Our budget success comes down to our collaboration and joint efforts! When families are under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back!

On May 15th, End Child Poverty California and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California co-hosted the 2024 IMAGINE Rally at the State Capitol. Coalition members, community members, advocates, and families gathered to stop the CalWORKs double cut, fulfill promised child care slots and rate reform, ensure foster youth are stable and secure, and protect the workers who provide vital public services.

“We can’t balance our budget on the backs of struggling families and then criminalize the new poverty we have created.

We have to push back and center the people & communities who need us most.”

Assemblymember Issac G Bryan

Community came together and brought the power. Jasmine Chantell from California Youth Connection shared the life-changing effect of the Supervised Independent Living Program (SILP) for foster youth who age out of foster care and need a bridge to independent, safe living. Assemblymember Corey Jackson stressed the need for a budget that considers the implications of cuts among our most marginalized populations. Senator Susan Rubio urged that we should be expanding, not cutting, the safety net programs and support families need.

This budget must be rooted in justice.

Assemblymember Corey Jackson

Thank you to our wonderful community leaders in action, from the Dolores Huerta Foundation, Project SPARC, California Youth Connection, Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA), Hayward Promise, Lideres Campesinas, and SEIU CA along with Assemblymembers Corey Jackson & Issac Bryan.

Thank you to our wonderful speakers!

• Pricila Cenobio, Dolores Huerta Foundation
• Assemblymember Corey Jackson
• Lina Cano Flores, SPARC
• Jasmine Chantell, California Youth Connection
• Nancy Respaldiza, Hayward Promise Neighborhoods
• Mirian Rivera, MEDA
• Assemblymember Issac Bryan
• Ziria Lomeli, Lideras Campesinas
• Simboa Wright, SEIU
• Lisa Garcia-Duque, SEIU

Our advocacy continued into June as we joined SEIU for their Rally for a Fair Budget. Advocates gathered to fight for a fair and balanced budget for our children, families, and workers, ensure that big corporations pay their fair share, and that budget cuts do not gut essential programs that serve our communities, especially children. We were proud to come together and show that we can balance the budget without disastrous cuts to the programs that support our children and families. Both rallies served as a call to action for our coalition to defend our vision of a secure California where every family can afford to thrive.

Following the rally, a hearing of the California Assembly’s Select Committee on Poverty and Economic Inclusion was being held in the State Capitol. Shoutouts and thank yous to all of the panelists:

1. Devon Gray from EPIC, who provided an overview on the state of poverty in California and weaved in stories heard directly from community during a statewide listening tour.
2. Kayla Kitson from the California Budget & Policy Center focused on the inequity of our current tax system and the opportunity California has to equitably raise revenues that will support ending poverty and wealth inequality.
3. Keely O’Brien from the Western Center on Law and Poverty highlighted anti-poverty interventions including SSI/SSP, cash assistance including guaranteed income, full pass through of child support.
4. Pricila Cenobio from the Dolores Huerta Foundation shared the impact of CalWORKs and WIC on farmworker families like her own and emphasized the conditions that farmworkers face each day.
5. Andree Petron, Santa Clara County Social Worker Supervisor and SEIU 521 member, spoke about the impact that the safety net has on alleviating poverty and mitigating abuse, neglect, and other emergencies for our children.
6. Kellie Longo Flores from the California Association of Food Banks talked about hunger and the proven stabilizing and stimulating impact of CalFresh on families, business, and the economy.

And our own Yesenia Jimenez emphasized the significance of human dignity as the foundation to liberation and highlighted two key opportunities California has to undertake economic inclusion and dignity in establishing unemployment benefits for undocumented workers (Safety Net for All) and ensuring that undocumented students have equal access to jobs and opportunities on campus.

The Select Committee hearing was a powerful testimonial on the value of the social safety net and the ways California can better support its communities. Thank yous also go out to Select Committee Chair Isaac Bryan and his team for their preparation of the event as well as to Assemblymembers Gomez Reyes, Juan Carrillo, Kalra, and Jones-Sawyer for their participation during the day.