February Newsletter
CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY BLOG
Long on interest but short on time? See below for a summary of this newsletter:
In Case You Missed It: We’re not done reminding everyone that we published a 2022 Annual Report. Click here to read more.
Superstar Alert: Click here for an intro to our newest intern, Jaida Daniel!
Legislative Priorities: Click here to read about the bills we support (thus far).
CCB staff opines on…What we love about our work as well as the most important song to listen to on Valentine’s Day. Click here to read more.
Freedom is a practice.
Happy February! We didn’t get a chance to send this out on Valentine’s Day [1], but we do want to say that we love that you are taking time out of your day to read this newsletter! This month we have a few updates to share, including our new superstar intern, Jaida Daniel, a quick update on legislation we’re supporting, and the answer to the question everyone is asking: What was on the CCB Valentine’s Day playlist? Lastly, if you were wondering whether we’d stop plugging our 2022 Annual Report, the answer is no, we’re still plugging it.
Lorraine Hansberry: Celebrating a leader who makes us think harder
Before we get to all that though, we also want to wish everyone a happy Black History Month! While CCB’s work is about the dollars and cents of wealth building,[2] it’s also important to acknowledge those folks who help us think through the complexities – and contradictions – inherent in our work.
As a part of this, we’re highlighting and honoring a Black leader and writer from New York via Chicago, Lorraine Hansberry. The famous writer and activist lived a short 34 years, but left her community and the country better than she found it.[3] Born in Chicago to well-off parents, the headline about her life is that she wrote “Raisin in the Sun,” a play that won accolades and made her a “first” in many categories, including the first play by a Black woman to be on Broadway and the first Black recipient of a Drama Critics’ Circle award for best play.
But beyond the short bio we all read in high school, Lorraine Hansberry was a lesbian woman married to a man for most of her life [4]; who struggled to sync up her own radical ideals with the realities of the civil rights movement; and who came from a privileged background but grappled with what economic success meant for Black Americans in the context of the wider injustices even she and her wealthy family had faced growing up. In short, her life and experience were unique, but many of the broad themes that defined her work and advocacy are still very much present and unsolved today.
Aside from her very, very apparent contributions, we decided to celebrate Lorraine this month because of her approach to liberation for her communitie(s): not as a fate fixed in the future, but as something that we will all have to work for continually. The New York Times described it best as, “Hansberry could not think in terms of joy or despair but in terms of freedom. And she could not think of freedom as a destination but as a practice, full of intervals, regressions.” When I start to think about the possibly large differential between the difference I hope to make (quite large) in the world versus the difference I’m likely to make (potentially quite modest), this is a very helpful framework for me to come back to.
So, to celebrate Black history month and an incredible Black leader and thinker [5], CCB is using this as an opportunity to think about our work as a continuing practice that’s less about counting wins and losses any given month, but fundamentally about sticking with the work until it’s done.
Adam Briones
CEO, California Community Builders
PS - You can read the full newsletter that was sent out to our subscribers here!
NOTES
[1] We got too distracted making amazing Valentine’s Day themed Spotify playlists.
[2] We quite literally focus on putting money in the pockets of people of color.
[3] As an aside, one of my favorite tasks in writing these newsletters is spending an hour or two reading about whatever civil rights leader we happen to be profiling that month. It’s an excuse to put off doing the work I’m actually supposed to be doing, but every month the process leaves me with a better understanding of the important leaders whose work directly and indirectly paved the way for what we’re attempting to accomplish at CCB.
[4] From the New Yorker, “Hansberry said that, as a Black lesbian Communist, she had been forced to decide “which of the closets was most important to her.””
[4] If you have time, do yourself a favor and listen to this great interview between Lorraine and Studs Terkel. Big thank you to my good friend Ben Palmquist for sharing it with me!