Tomorrow is Valentine's Day! As we celebrate the day of love, LA Civil Rights is spreading the love across Los Angeles.

Last week, we opened Peace & Healing Centers in nine community-based organizations from the Valley to the Harbor. These centers will offer free meditation, group counseling, youth mentorship, and other healing opportunities available to the public in underserved neighborhoods across our city.

This program helps the people who help the people. Peace & Healing Centers provide funding and partnership to trusted community organizations and nonprofits, so they can do more to serve others.

As someone who grew up with the support of community services, I know how essential these organizations are to people. Investing in a Los Angeles of love and healing builds a better city for all of us, and it is my honor to be working with so many incredible partners on bringing that Los Angeles to bear.

Keep the faith and keep the fight,

- Capri Maddox

On February 2nd, we launched our Peace & Healing Center program, opening nine Peace & Healing Centers in nine REPAIR Zones. The $2 million pilot program allows community-based organizations to create physical spaces and public programming centered on environmental, social and economic healing.

Thank you to CCNP for hosting our launch event with all of our Peace & Healing Center partners, as well as the Mayor's Fund LA, The Youth Development Department, and the Community Investment for Families Department.

On February 9th, we hosted a special live television event as part of our Black History Month programming. "Growing Justice: Stories in Black Hair" brought together Councilwoman Heather Hutt, Dr. Astrid Williams from Black Women for Wellness, and Tiah Tomlin-Harris, an advocate and expert who overcame triple-negative breast cancer. We got to the root of hair discrimination, and how beauty products marketed for Black women often contain deadly chemicals.

Did you know that Black women who use hair dye and chemical straighteners were six times more likely to develop breast cancer — and that Black women have the highest breast cancer mortality rate of any ethnic group in the U.S.?

Click here to watch the segment to uncover the truth about hair discrimination - and the dangers of hair and beauty products.

The City of Los Angeles' Human Relations Commission released a new podcast called "LA TOGETHER,"  a seven-episode series featuring real and intimate conversations between Angelenos on some of the greatest issues of our time. Commissioner Stacy Twilley hosts the series, and moderates episodes on veteran homelessness, immigrants in food service, Indigenous histories, raising a transgender child, and more. Click here to listen to the trailer!

"LA Together" follows last year's season, "Forward Together," which recognizes the 30th anniversary of the 1992 unrest. This season, we're hosting more conversations on pressing issues to increase empathy and understanding among Angelenos.

Beyoncé may not have won album of the year at the Grammys, but she was front and center at the Los Angeles LGBT Center last week for "The Future is Black: Renaissance." This Black History Month event celebrated Bey’s 2022 album with dancing, Big Freedia, and a conversation with our Executive Director Capri Maddox!

Capri sat down with the Center’s Oliver Delgado to discuss equity, discrimination enforcement, and serving the Black queer community. Thank you to the LA LGBT Center for welcoming us to this important conversation and fantastic event!