Congratulations to PERE/CSII Project Manager, Rhonda Ortiz for being awarded with the Rockwood Fellowship for a New California: Developing Leaders of Immigrant Communities
The Rockwood Leadership Institute, a leading national organization that provides transformative, powerful training in leadership and collaboration, is proud to announce its newest program, the Fellowship for a New California. This new program cultivates a community of leaders engaged in advocacy for justice, opportunity and fairness for California’s newest residents.
“I’m looking forward to building new, and strengthening existing, relationships,” says Rhonda Ortiz. “The program provides a space for CSII to strategize and think about new ways that research can impact California’s immigrant rights network in the future.”
The fellowship is designed to support leaders who are working to make California’ s communities more welcoming and inclusive for newcomers to our state who are here to make a better life for their families through their contributions to our economy and culture.
“For generations, California has attracted people seeking the opportunities that only the golden state can offer,” says Akaya Windwood, President of the Rockwood Leadership Institute. “This program supports the leaders who are making sure that California is welcoming, inclusive and fair to newcomers, who make incalculable contributions to our economy and culture when they come here to make a better life for their families.”
The program provides leadership development to foster collaboration and cultivate the leaders who are ensuring that California’s policies and practices are keeping pace with the changing demographics of our state. The inaugural cohort of 24 members work for 24 organizations in 16 cities and counties throughout the state. The group includes organizers, advocates, faith leaders and more. They speak 14 languages and represent people who came from all over the world with shared hopes to make their California dream a reality.
“No place is the American Dream more vivid than in California,” explains Maria Rodriguez, Statewide Youth Organizer from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (CHIRLA). “My family came here to make a better life, but also to build a better community. I am committing to this fellowship because I want to continue paving the way to a future California where there are more opportunities and justice for immigrants, who contribute to this state in fundamental ways every day.”
The Center for American Progress held a forum on economic growth and equality. After opening remarks from Vanessa Cárdenas and Angela Glover Blackwell, members of the first panel (including Emmanuel Saez and PERE Director Manuel Pastor) talked about the link between economic growth and equality. In the second discussion, panelists talked about the policies needed to help foster equality in the economic realm and its important to overall national prosperity.
Race and Our Metropolitan Future
In an article that stems from his recently co-authored book, Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future, PERE director Manuel Pastor considers the role of metropolitan areas in successfully ushering America into 2042. This article for Citiwire – a web journal with the mission to reflect a new narrative for 21st century cities and regions – notes that metropolitan areas are ahead of most of the country; they’re already grappling with what it means to be “majority minority.” The most successful places are putting racial equity upfront on issues like education, criminalization, immigrant integration, and climate change. Pastor and colleagues Angela Blackwell Glover and Stewart Kwoh hope their book can offer metros a solid foundation for advancing regional and racial equity and “offer a new model of conversation and clear-headed analysis that can help heal the wounds of the past and set a firmer agenda for a more inclusive America.”
Recently Released Report: February 2009 Immigrant Integration in Los Angeles: Strategic Directions for Funders By Manuel Pastor and Rhonda Ortiz
January 2009
To learn more and download the report visit our publications.
News about the report:
Foundation aims to help L.A. immigrants
The California Community Foundation plans a campaign to help L.A. immigrants become more active citizens by helping them learn English, improve job skills and increase civic participation.
By Teresa Watanabe
Los Angeles Times
February 10, 2009
New Center for Study of Immigrant Integration Announced News delivered during a recent conference that drew 350 — including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. By Pamela J. Johnson
USC College News
April 2008
USC College and the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development (SPPD) have created a new center addressing the urgent need for knowledge about the successful integration of immigrants.
College Dean Howard Gillman and SPPD Dean Jack Knott made the announcement during a recent conference, “Immigrant Integration and the American Future: Lessons from and for California.”
Gillman said of the new Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration: “This effort was driven by USC’s long-standing commitment to promote research and scholarship on important urban questions, and the desire to find a particular issue that would be of great significance to L.A., to the nation, and to the world.”
New Center for Study of Immigrant Integration Announced News delivered during a recent conference that drew 350 — including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
By Pamela J. Johnson
USC College News
April 2008
USC College and the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development (SPPD) have created a new center addressing the urgent need for knowledge about the successful integration of immigrants.
College Dean Howard Gillman and SPPD Dean Jack Knott made the announcement during a recent conference, “Immigrant Integration and the American Future: Lessons from and for California.”
Gillman said of the new Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration: “This effort was driven by USC’s long-standing commitment to promote research and scholarship on important urban questions, and the desire to find a particular issue that would be of great significance to L.A., to the nation, and to the world.”
Don't forget immigration reform Reality about immigrants differs from perception. Let's change the narrative.
By Dowell Myers and Manuel Pastor
March 22, 2008
Los Angeles Times
Barack Obama has done the country a service by trying to launch a serious discussion about the complexities of race, even in the midst of an electoral season that puts a premium on sound bites rather than sound analysis. We hope that such a tone can be brought to another topic that has been getting short and shallow shrift: immigration.
Environmental Justice For All How to save our cities, revive the economy, and green the planet—all at the same time
By Leyla Kokmen
Mar.-Apr. 2008
Utne Reader
Manuel Pastor ran bus tours of Los Angeles a few years back. These weren’t the typical sojourns to Disneyland or the MGM studios, though; they were expeditions to some of the city’s most environmentally blighted neighborhoods—where railways, truck traffic, and refineries converge, and where people live 200 feet from the freeway.
Manuel Pastor brings his brand of social (con)science to USC College.
By Pamela J. Johnson
October 2007
USC College News
It’s a little bit hard to pigeonhole Manuel Pastor, who joined the USC College faculty this fall.
The professor of geography and of American studies and ethnicity is an economist by training, but his work ranges across the social sciences. He’s held appointments in UCLA’s architecture and urban planning school, the international relations program at UC San Diego and Occidental College’s economics department.
He’s published on pollution near schools and in minority neighborhoods, globalization’s effect on local markets, race and immigration, and Latin American economies in transition, among a host of other topics.
If we help kids learn a trade, they'll be able to cash in on a construction boom.
By Manuel Pastor
August 22, 2007
Los Angeles Times
The debate about the densification of Los Angeles is in full swing. In one corner, Valley homeowners and Westside residents resent the loss of a suburban lifestyle and worry about increasing traffic. In the other, developers and smart-growth advocates, not the most natural of allies, have joined forces to argue that up-zoning and upbuilding, particularly around transit corridors, will eventually reduce congestion and improve air quality.
