Happy Spring Holidays!

Last week, we saw celebrations for Easter and Passover, as well as the second week of Ramadan. This week, the Sikh community will celebrate Vaisakhi. This is a time of renewal, rebirth, and growing closer with our spirit and our community.

We are growing as well: Launching the city's first-ever participatory budgeting program in three LA communities, opening more spaces for peace & healing, and lifting up the stories of women facing grave inequities in childbirth.

While we celebrate holidays and the coming of spring, let us feel renewed and refreshed in doing good work. There are so many buds of hope in our communities - let's make sure they blossom into new hope for Los Angeles.

- Capri Maddox

This week, we are bringing light to inequities in healthcare during Black Maternal Health Week.

You're invited to a free screening & panel discussion of "Birthing Justice" this Wednesday at 6:00 PM at Regal LA LIVE. Get your tickets now.

This documentary film from Women in the Room Productions discusses the crisis in Black maternal healthcare and infant mortality in the U.S. followed by a panel discussion featuring filmmakers, Black Women for Wellness, doulas, people with lived experience, and more. Can't make the screening? The film will also be airing tonight on PBS.

Right now in the U.S., Black women are 3 to 4 times more likely to die during childbirth than white women. It's time to address this crisis. It's time to birth justice.

The L.A. REPAIR Participatory Budgeting vote has launched. Anyone over the age of 15 who lives, works, or studies in the REPAIR Zones of Southeast LA, Boyle Heights, and Mission Hills-Panorama City-North Hills can vote online or at in-person pop-up voting events before April 30, 2023. Click here to find out if you are in a REPAIR Zone.

We hosted a "Get Out The Vote" event at the Children's Institute in Watts with Councilmember Tim McOsker, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, Participatory Budget Project, our Advisory Committees, and dozens of community leaders. Similar events were held in local libraries in Boyle Heights and North Hills as we continue to share the news about this opportunity for community-led budgeting.

Later this year, we will role out the program in six more zones: Arleta-Pacoima, Leimert Park-West Adams-Baldwin Village, Skid Row, South LA, Westlake, and Wilmington + Harbor Gateway. Click here to learn more.

LA Civil Right's Reparations Advisory Commission will host its first in-person public meeting on Saturday, April 22, 2023 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM at California African American Museum (CAAM).

This public hearing will allow the community to hear directly from city commissioners about the work being done to develop a reparations pilot program for Black residents in the City of Los Angeles and provide their experiences with institutional racism that will help guide the Commission's research and development. We are so grateful to CAAM for hosting us.

Listen to the City's plans to conduct an in-depth study of harms experienced by Black Angelenos, ask questions, and share comments or your experiences with the commissioners at this Spring community event. We hope to see you there!