Let’s Help HEAL California Together! Virtual Conversation with Advocates

The California Endowment and Heising-Simons Foundation invite you to participate in a conversation about HEAL (Healing Economies Adapting to Last), a landmark state investment in communities that divest from detention and into community-based solutions.

Despite a year marked by budget cuts, advocates from the California Dignity Not Detention Coalition passed the groundbreaking HEAL bill in June 2023—launching a first-of-its-kind budgetary initiative, which dedicates $5 million from the California Workforce Development Board to communities that take substantial steps to divest from detention. Grants will be used by local partners to develop high-roads sustainable jobs and job training programs not based on incarceration––serving as a model for localities across the country seeking to reimagine communities without incarceration and deportation, where everyone can thrive in healthy, sustainable jobs.

Advocates from the labor, environmental justice, immigration justice, and criminal justice movements are beginning to plan the next step for HEAL. During our conversation, you will hear from advocates who contributed to HEAL about what’s next in their implementation plans throughout California, and why this is a promising model for efforts across the country.

Speakers include:

• Jehan Laner, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
• Grisel Ruiz, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
• Eddie Torres, Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice
• Reverend Deborah Lee, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity
• Michaé de la Cuadra, Budget to Save Lives Super Collective
• Zach Lou, Coalition Director, California Green New Deal Coalition
• Curtis Notsinneh, Chief Deputy Director, California Workforce Development Board
• Sandy Chiang, Program Manager, The California Endowment
• Rose Cahn, Program Officer, Heising-Simons Foundation