Social Justice
LDC recognizes its responsibility to address systemic/structural poverty, inequality, and the unequal distribution of resources on a local, state, and national level. LDC’s work focuses on healing the wounds of racism and historical trauma by challenging both the historical root causes and the existing framework of oppression and injustice in order to enhance the intellectual, social, and emotional functioning of the individual regardless of gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, age, religious or spiritual beliefs, sexual or affectional orientation, veteran, marital or socioeconomic status, physical ability, lifestyle, or political ideology.
Economic Equity:
LDC’s work focuses on advancing a more just and inclusive economy by expanding individuals’ opportunities to: connect to quality work with equitable and livable wages; provide paid leave for workers; participate in business ownership; receive high-quality childcare and early education; and advance a local and statewide housing agenda that builds wealth and assets for communities of color through affordable homeownership as well as secure, safe, and stable housing for renters. Its work also focuses on enabling community-led innovation driven by neighborhoods pioneering new solutions with community partners to collaborate and create safe places for people to live, learn, work, and play.
Educational Equity:
LDC works to meaningfully and measurably ensure that all students of color have the opportunity to attain an excellent education at all levels from high quality childcare, early education, and pre-school through higher education, enabling students to achieve their potential to be college and career/life ready. Teachers, faculty, staff, and administrators of color at our childcare facilities, pre-K-12 schools, universities, and colleges are critical to supporting the educational achievement of diverse student populations, as they share the racial and economic backgrounds of students most impacted by pervasive inequality. They bring an essential perspective to education policymaking that has traditionally been underrepresented. Critical to student success is the hiring and retaining of a diverse childcare workers, teachers, faculty, staff, and administrators as well as the existence of a strong ethnic studies curriculum that prepares students to enter the workforce and function effectively and critically as informed residents in a diverse multicultural society.
Environmental Justice:
LDC works to build democratic, equitable solutions to pollution, poverty and racism that do not reproduce ecologically and socially harmful systems. LDC advocates for environmental regulations and policies that provide environmental protections to all in our communities and strives to work with neighborhood leaders to identify areas of most concern in local, regional, and state neighborhoods including improving access to clean energy technologies for low-income customers and underserved communities; increasing clean energy investment in those communities; and improving community resilience to grid outages and extreme events.
Health Equity:
LDC advocates for policies and programs that will improve health, mental health, and wellness outcomes for communities of color and other disadvantaged populations and advocates for greater resources and services beyond access to health care services. LDC works to ensure that voices of communities of color, regardless of immigration status, are represented in every critical decision affecting the health and wellness of underserved communities as well as policies that significantly invest in transformative public health infrastructures which invest in community health and divest from systems of harm.
Technology Equity:
LDC advocates for practices that advance racial justice in the analysis, production, and deployment of existing and new technologies. LDC support efforts to bridge the digital divide and efforts to leverage technology to prevent, detect, and eliminate bias and misrepresentation in the workplace, education, products, and safety. LDC works to ensure that consumers have strong protections to ensure reliable, affordable, and nondiscriminatory service, with strong privacy protections to safeguard their identities and data.
Immigration Reform:
LDC advocates, defends, and fights for the rights of all American immigrants. LDC supports a comprehensive immigration plan for undocumented immigrants that that upholds the dignity of all immigrants, one that creates an: eight-year pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants; quicker pathway for citizenship for undocumented essential workers, TPS and DACA recipients; protects those fleeing persecution; ends the massive incarceration of immigrants by dismantling the detention and deportation machine; keeps families informed, empowered and together; pursues redress on behalf of immigrant groups with particular and compelling claims to justice; and restores all forms of asylum and humanitarian protection; guarantees legal assistance and counsel for those facing detention and deportation. LDC supports a demilitarized approach to the border and reinstates the right of people of who have been deported to come home. LDC supports phasing out private detention centers and ultimately, closing all detention centers. Locally, LDC supports working with immigrants, community organizations providing assistance to immigrants, rapid response networks, and the legal sector to help build a society that values the rights of all people.
Police Reform:
LDC supports a broad agenda for police reform aimed at improving use-of-force procedures; increasing accountability and transparency; increasing data collection and reporting on use of force and police misconduct; courses on implicit and unconscious bias and cultural and ethnic diversity training; and an independent investigation process. In addition, increasing the racial/ethnic/gender diversity of officers and bilingual capabilities can help strengthen community police partnerships. LDC supports policies that divest in policing and incarceration and invest in resources and infrastructure that keep all residents healthy and safe.