Building Healthy Communities from the Ground up

Community Town Halls Across California

Coming into this year, we knew we would not only need to protect the ground-breaking environmental justice policies we fought to pass, but we needed to be bolder in our leadership to protect our most vulnerable communities. We answered the call to unite with other sectors – from immigrant rights to housing rights – to engage in critical movement-building to uphold the rights of communities of color.

By hosting a series of in-district community town halls with our members and allied organizations like Causa Justa Just Cause, Tenants Together, and UFW Foundation, we created a space to educate elected officials on environmental justice, immigrant rights, and housing rights, engage community residents and their elected officials in dialogue on the issues that impact and matter to them, in order to create the resistance needed from our decision-makers in the face of a reactionary federal administration.

CEJA hosted 4 town halls this year in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Fresno and Delano. It served as a way to animate our Environmental Justice Scorecard and ensure local communities had a space to discuss with their state legislators how they were voting on important policies. Community members were able to benefit from hearing how policies were playing out in real time, ask questions directly to their legislators, help move their decision-makers closer to championing our policies, enjoy cultural performances and bridge our movements.