Equal Justice Society

Join and and demand Supreme Court accountability. Call your Senator 202-224-2152 to initiate an investigation to expose corruption.

On this nearly 250 years after the birth of the US, we are only at the beginning of repairing the harm caused by the crimes against humanity represented by slavery and the resulting systemic oppression against Black people. https://tinyurl.com/22489mya

Remember that the majority of the signers enslaved Black people. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration that "all men are created equal" but also enslaved over 600 people and described Black people as racially inferior.

We're proud to be part of the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth- ARRT an alliance committed to a long-term approach to address the harms against Black Americans centuries in the making by educating the public, amplifying the Task Force report, advancing the task force recommendations, and achieving broad multiracial support.

Visit https://alliancefor.org and subscribe to ARRT updates and https://supportreparations.org to add your organization’s endorsement of the historic task force report.

We celebrate by uplifting our alliance with many of California's leading organizations advocating for reparations! The Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth (ARRT) is committed to educating the public about reparations, amplifying the California Reparations Task Force historic report and its recommendations, and growing our support of diverse allies supporting California reparations. Stay connected with ARRT at https://alliancefor.org.

As we celebrate the liberation and emancipation from slavery this , we acknowledge the deep repair that is still needed in this country. As the racial injustices persist, so must the continued commitment to fight for the liberation of Black people in America. Show your commitment by supporting and standing with EJS: https://tinyurl.com/2chv9uky. Together, we can continue to fiercely advocate for healing, liberation, and racial justice. Donate at equaljusticesociety.org.

Please read this The New York Times Magazine exposé on hair relaxer products harming Black women and girls. EJS is co-counsel with Lieff Cabraser in a lawsuit against the manufacturers of harmful hair products, part of the multi-district litigation mentioned in the article. This , join EJS in protecting Black women and women of color => https://linktr.ee/equaljustice.

Congratulations to our dear colleague and friend Mona Tawatao, EJS Legal Director, on being honored tonight with the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California (FBANC) José Rizal Social Justice Award! Mona will receive the award at FBANC's 44th Installation Gala at the San Francisco Design Center Galleria tonight, Friday, June 14, 2024, at 6:00 pm. Learn more at https://equaljusticesociety.org.

We're excited to welcome Heather Snedeker as our new Director of Development! She brings to EJS more than 14 years of experience in development and fundraising, having served as Senior Development Manager for the American Cancer Society in Nevada, as Development Manager for the ACLU of Nevada, and in fundraising positions for the foundations of the University of Nevada Las Vegas and Florida State University. Welcome, Heather!!! https://tinyurl.com/2272dy2t

EJS is thrilled to share that Eva Paterson, our co-founder and former president, will be honored by the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice with its at a dinner celebration honoring her longtime career advancing civil rights during the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago. The award will be presented on August 3 at the Fairmont Chicago at Millennium Park. Learn more at https://equaljusticesociety.org.

Join the movement for reparations, reconciliation, and truth! Ask your organization to join the 600-plus orgs and businesses that have endorsed the historic California reparations task force report. https://supportreparations.org

All of us at EJS congratulate our Board Chair Fernando Gaytan on his award from East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (EYCEJ). EJS President Lisa Holder has the honor of introducing Fernando at the sold-out celebration tonight at Tamayo Restaurant, Art Gallery, Bar, & Lounge in Los Angeles.

"It has been said that the mother is a child’s first teacher. This was a great truth for me. Throughout my life, my mother imparted lessons that remain the cornerstones for most of my guiding principles. One such lesson was a word game she played with me, in my youth ... I did not fully understand its meaning. Later in life, I realized how critical that game was to my becoming a writer." ~ Asking For A Gender Truth, by Michael Tyler, EJS Poet-in-Residence https://equaljusticesociety.org/2024/05/10/asking-for-a-gender-truth-by-michael-tyler/

Meet Marcus - is a composer, bassist, bandleader, and educator who currently lives in San Francisco. Currently, Marcus is the Artistic Director of Healdsburg Jazz, an artist in residence with the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, and a past resident artist with the San Francisco Jazz Festival and the Healdsburg Jazz Festival. Marcus has composed several oratorios, suites, and a children’s opera. He has also composed the score and performed in Anna Deavere Smith’s Off-Broadway Play and HBO feature film “Notes from the Field” (2019). He is the voice of Ray Gardener in the 2020 Oscar-Winning Disney Pixar film “SOUL.” He has worked with Angela Y. Davis, Joanna Haigood, Margo Hall, Oakland Ballet Company, The SF Girl Choir, The Oakland Youth Chorus, and many others over the past 23 years. He has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission since 2013 and has worked with the Equal Justice Society for over 20 years. The Marcus Shelby Orchestra has released 5 CDs.

Get your FREE tickets to experience Marcus and his band perform live in “The People’s Palace” – a once-in-a-lifetime event! https://www.eventbrite.com/o/the-peoples-palace-may-9-10-amp-12-27356177105

Want to support this diverse and dynamic production? Click the following link to donate to “The People’s Palace!" https://gofund.me/8c39602d)

EJS is proud to celebrate the cultures and contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.

In commemoration of , EJS salutes Mari Copeny. Mari is a 16-year-old from Flint, Michigan known globally as Little Miss Flint. She first entered the public spotlight when her letter to President Obama about the water crisis prompted him to visit the city and survey the water crisis for himself. That visit ultimately led to him approving $100 million in relief for Flint, Michigan. She's been featured in Teen Vogue, The Guardian, VICE, TIME, Refinery 29, The Washington Post, NBC News, Rewire, Buzzfeed, and more for her vocal opposition to the injustices of environmental racism. When Mari grows up she plans on running for president in 2044. https://www.maricopeny.com

Great profile of EJS Board Member Don Tamaki, who was "integral to getting redress for Japanese Americans. He says serving on a California task force transformed his view on racism in America." Read the recent profile of Don by Amy Qin in The New York Times. https://tinyurl.com/2adxdgf5

In commemoration of , EJS salutes Leah Thomas , a celebrated environmentalist based in Los Angeles. Coining the term ‘eco-communicator’ to describe her style of environmental activism, Leah uses her passion for writing and creativity to explore and advocate for the critical yet often overlooked relationship between social justice and environmentalism. Leah founded and launched the nonprofit Intersectional Environmentalist, authored the book “The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet” and founded the eco-lifestyle blog . Leah has been named to several notable lists—including TIME100 NEXT, INSIDER’s Climate Action 30, Marie Claire’s Creators to Watch, EBONY Power 100, and InStyle’s The Badass 50—and is an established public speaker who has presented at Google, 1% for the Planet’s Global Summit, Dreamforce, and more. https://leahthomas.com/about-2

There is no justice without planet justice. On this , let’s pause and reflect on how the planet that sustains us is threatened by our unsustainable practices. People of color around the world are shouldering the burden of the misuse of the planet every day, with signs of a worsening situation. In the U.S., all people will experience the harmful health and environmental impact of climate change, but not all will face that risk equally. https://tinyurl.com/2cneog78

WED AT 5PM PACIFIC: The MAGA justices overturned abortion rights, weakened voter access, blocked student loan relief & made it harder to stop gun violence. Enough is enough. We're coming together to demand Congress stop this .

RSVP at http://StopPowerGrab.com/RSVP

Equal Justice Society President Lisa Holder will be among the expected 700 participants from around the world in the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent being held April 16-19, 2024, in Geneva, Switzerland. https://tinyurl.com/2dnhn9xj

Holder is a former member of the California Reparations Task Force and one of the leaders of the Alliance for Reparations, Reconciliation, and Truth (ARRT). Dr. Cheryl Grills, a former member of the task force and a leader of ARRT, is also attending. Grills is an EJS Champion of Justice 2023 award recipient.

Holder and Grills will deliver to the United Nations Secretariat a joint statement on behalf of ARRT.

Thank you to for inviting EJS Legal Director Mona Tawatao to be part of your 25th Annual Housing Rights Summit today! We're proud to support your efforts to address the urgent housing and civil rights issues impacting Californians!

We joined together with 125+ groups in strong support of Adeel Mangi’s confirmation to the 3rd Circuit — and we condemn the anti-Muslim attacks against this tremendously qualified nominee who would be the first Muslim federal appellate judge. https://civilrights.org/resource/125-groups-urge-support-for-adeel-mangis-confirmation

Art by Sam Rodriguez via

On this César E. Chávez National Holiday and César Chávez Day in California, we honor the American labor leader and civil rights activist who helped spark and lead a movement in the 1960s and 1970s to empower farmworkers in California and throughout the country in order to end the suffering caused by racist agribusiness owners.

Chávez and the United Farm Workers employed radical acts of non-violence to raise awareness of the struggles and mistreatment of the farmworkers. Chávez himself underwent many fasts to advance the farmworkers’ rights movement. In 1988, he started an eventual 36-day fast to protest the use of pesticides in the fields.

As a common man with an uncommon vision, Cesar Chavez stood for equality, justice and dignity for all Americans. His universal principles remain as relevant and inspiring today as they were when he first began his movement.

EJS honors Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927-2002) as we celebrate .

Mink was a Congresswoman from Hawai'i, serving a total of 12 terms. She was born and raised on Maui, became the first Japanese American female attorney in Hawai'i, and served in the Hawai'i territorial and state legislatures beginning in 1956. In 1964, she became the first woman of color elected to Congress.

Mink broke down long-standing barriers to create equal access to opportunities for women and girls, and courageously defied those who told her she couldn't succeed simply because she was a woman.

Mink is best known for her work shepherding and defending Title IX, the legislation that changed the face of education in America, making it possible for girls and women to participate in school sports, and in education more broadly, at the same level as boys and men.

A vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, Mink briefly ran for president on an anti-war platform in 1972 (the same year Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman to run for president). Mink received more than 5,000 votes in the Oregon primary, and smaller numbers in Maryland and Wisconsin.

President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Mink the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. Just yesterday, March 28, 2024, U.S. Senator Mazie K. Hirono announced the official release of the Patsy T. Mink quarter, which is part of the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters Program for 2024.

EJS honors Audre Lorde (1934-1992) as we celebrate .

Audre Lorde was a revolutionary poet and feminist. A native New Yorker and daughter of immigrants, Audre Lorde once described herself as a "poet, warrior, feminist, mother, pioneer, lover, survivor." Growing up legally blind and with a speech impediment, Lorde had to persevere to reach the success that she did.

After receiving her Masters in Library Science at Columbia University in 1961, Lorde released her first foray into protest poetry titled "Cables to Rage." It was also the book where she came out as a le***an. "Cables to Rage" along with her other books of poetry explored everything from racism, women's rights, le***an relationships, and homophobia. Her work established her as a force in the feminist community.

Lorde called out the feminism movement for catering exclusively to white women and argued that for feminism to be powerful, it needed to acknowledge the value of all women, not just one type. This argument was depicted in her book "Sister Outsider" and is credited for shaping a more inclusive feminist movement.

EJS honors Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010) as we celebrate .

Chief Mankiller spent her remarkable life fighting for the rights of Native peoples. The first woman to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, she is also the first woman elected as chief of a major Native tribe.

Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, the family later moved to San Francisco as part of a Bureau of Indian Affairs relocation policy. Her father became a warehouse worker and union organizer. Mankiller described the move as “my own little Trail of Tears,” a reference to the forced removal of Cherokees from the Southeast by federal troops. Her father’s ancestors had been forced to relocate to Indian Territory from Tennessee over the Trail of Tears in the 1830s.

She developed her own social activism when Native people took over the federal penitentiary in 1969 on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and laid claim to it by ‘right of discovery’ to expose the suffering of American Indians. Mankiller recalled, “. . . When Alcatraz occurred, I became aware of what needed to be done to let the rest of the world know that Indians had rights, too.”

Forever changed by Alcatraz and inspired by the women’s movement, Mankiller worked to empower the surrounding Native communities in California, serving as director of Oakland’s Native American Youth Center. Chief Mankiller and her two daughters moved back to Oklahoma after a divorce.

Chief Mankiller was elected to serve as the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985. She led for 10 years, guiding a sovereign nation whose population more than doubled, from 68,000 to 170,000, during her tenure. She revitalized the Nation’s tribal government and advocated relentlessly for improved education, healthcare, and housing services. Under her leadership, infant mortality declined, and educational achievement rose in the Cherokee Nation.

We honor Yuri Kochiyama as EJS celebrates .

Yuri Kochiyama (1921-2014) was a Japanese American human rights activist in Harlem and Oakland who worked with Malcolm X and Black Power organizations and served as a leader of the Asian American and redress movements in New York City.

After Pearl Harbor, her father was arrested by the FBI and her family was sent to a Japanese American incarceration camp in Arkansas. During this period of her life, Yuri saw parallels between the prejudice against Asian Americans and the racism against Black Americans.

Kochiyama’s activism started in Harlem in the early 1960s, where she participated in the Asian American, Black, and Third World movements for civil and human rights, ethnic studies, and against the war in Vietnam.

She was a fixture in support movements involving organizations such as the Young Lords and the Harlem Community for Self-Defense. As a founder of Asian Americans for Action, she also sought to build a more political Asian American movement that would link itself to the struggle for Black liberation.

Today, March 12, is , a crucial moment to raise awareness about the gender pay gap and advocate for pay equity. Today, we recognize the earnings disparity between men and women, highlighting the need for systemic change to ensure fair compensation for all, regardless of gender. Let's continue the fight for gender equality in the workplace!

We honor Dolores Huerta as EJS celebrates .

Dolores Huerta, the renowned American labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers union, began her career in 1955 as an activist when she co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which led voter registration drives and fought for economic improvements for Hispanics.

She also founded the Agricultural Workers Association. Through a CSO associate, Huerta met activist César Chávez, with whom she shared an interest in organizing farm workers. In 1962, Huerta and Chávez founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the predecessor of the United Farm Workers’ Union (UFW), which formed three year later. Huerta served as UFW vice president until 1999.

Despite ethnic and gender bias, Huerta helped organize the 1965 Delano strike of 5,000 grape workers and was the lead negotiator in the workers’ contract that followed. Throughout her work with the UFW, Huerta organized workers, negotiated contracts, advocated for safer working conditions including the elimination of harmful pesticides. She also fought for unemployment and healthcare benefits for agricultural workers. Huerta was the driving force behind the nationwide table grape boycotts in the late 1960s that led to a successful union contract by 1970.

In 1973, Huerta led another consumer boycott of grapes that resulted in the ground-breaking California Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which allowed farm workers to form unions and bargain for better wages and conditions. Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Huerta worked as a lobbyist to improve workers’ legislative representation. During the 1990s and 2000s, she worked to elect more Latinos and women to political office and has championed women’s issues.

The recipient of many honors, Huerta received the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award in 1998 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. As of 2015, she was a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, the Secretary-Treasurer Emeritus of the United Farm Workers of America, and the President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation.