The Importance of Méndez v. Westminster School District of Orange County

In celebration of Latino/Hispanic Heritage Month, I would like to share the historic case Méndez v. Westminster School District of Orange County, instrumental in the American Civil Rights Movement.

This year we have experienced more intense and forceful discrimination against all people of color. The Black Lives Matter movement and the outcry for justice reform have come as a result of this. It’s unconscionable and painful to watch that we still must protest for racial justice. I know we can do better. I have experienced positive changes to our public school’s system to educate youth and adults as a result of the many years of civil rights work before and after the 1960s. These protest efforts helped create ethnic degree programs such as Chicano/Latino, African American and Asian Studies. These programs offered a whole new opportunity to allow people of color to become the educators of their race/culture to preserve our history of the Civil Rights Movement and more, emphasizing the importance of unity and cultural acceptance in a multicultural society. Oppression is not the solution. America is the land of opportunity. To breathe, work, eat, vote and live is why we are proud to be an American. 

Méndez v. Westminster School District of Orange County, a federal court case, set a precedent in breaking down school segregation as unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, preserving diversity and inclusion. This case took place seven years before Brown v. Board of Education.

As a Latina of Mexican-American ancestry, and fourth-generation Angelino, I know firsthand our community has endured many challenges to create a level playing field to better our economic and educational opportunities. Affirmative action was a catalyst in making a dent toward education equity. This month we come together to celebrate our cultures and the contributions we bring to help build a better society. We are collectively one voice who wants to live the American dream, as proven throughout past generations. 

To learn more, visit https://tinyurl.com/yxp6hddu.

Desiree Portillo Rabinov

Glendale Community College, Board of Trustee, Dist. 1

Crescenta Valley Town Councilmember

Supports A Landlord/Tenant Commission

I have to begin by mentioning two people who I met in my tenants’ advocacy. I once spoke to an angry landlord at a Glendale Tenants Union rally to try to humanize the “other side” and his response was, “Put your baby down and fight me like a man.”

Another landlord once said, “If you can’t afford your rent, then you should have kept it zipped up because you don’t deserve a family.”

Before I hear anything about “both sides,” consider that the “ideologically extreme” landlords have all the tools of violence and dehumanization at their disposal, whereas the “ideologically extreme” tenants just want to stay in their homes.

Despite this severe imbalance in power relations, the [Glendale City] Council has always tried to help both sides of the landlord/tenant divide. So, inevitably, “helping” some landlords harms tenants. A landlord’s interest is in profit alone and a tenant’s interest is in their home and community, to which they provide the social capital that gives a city its identity.

A landlord/tenant commission, built right, could help. First, I’ve spent six months waiting for my unemployment payment; I was one of the lucky 97% of applicants who did not receive rental aid from the city. The board must understand – not sympathize with – my anger, my shame and my anxiety. If it is intended to address the disproportionate affordability harm working-class tenants are experiencing then it must be composed of a majority of renters (as Glendale is 65% renters) with the lived experience of recent struggle. Namely, activists from the Glendale Tenants Union, who may not all agree on solutions, are well versed in the problem.

Furthermore the board needs real adjudicative power, or we risk merely patting on the head tenants in crisis before booting them out of town.

We have inherited a housing ecology based on incumbent wealth with deeply rooted structural racism at its core (never forget that this was a Sundown Town). We can’t undo a hundred years of exclusion, but this board is a chance for real economic diversity in our city leadership. We should take it.

Mike Van Gorder

Glendale