We accomplished extraordinary things this year
in our work with The Defenders of Justice.
 

Holly Hancock was the first Black public defender elected to office in the history of the Los Angeles Superior Court. As a community, we literally made history this year. The indomitable spirit and persistence that Holly, Anna, Elizabeth, and Jiyoung brought to the campaign trail humanized this work and shone a light on the obstacles and inequities in the campaign process, as well as the challenges we face to practice harm reduction in an institution that has never represented vulnerable communities, nor acted in our best interests. Now that we have elected the first-ever public defender to the LA County Superior Court, we look forward to ongoing partnership with Holly on our Board, and to pushing for structural change to end the harm the judiciary has on our communities.

The campaign started conversations that are already beginning to change the ways judicial candidates are vetted, endorsed, and viewed by the public, and how we view the judiciary, in general. Our favorite new holiday tradition (we’re making it a thing) is tearing open the establishment.

We look forward to continuing this work in partnership with Holly Hancock, Elizabeth Lashley-Haynes, Anna Slotky Reitano, and Carolyn Jiyoung Park.

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Big love and congratulations to our teammate, GABI VÁZQUEZ (Deputy Director), who lead all campaign strategy from a bird’s eye view and learned all aspects of creating and running a PAC to bring our team to victory. More kudos to LEAH PEREZ (Campaign Coordinator), who executed the day-to-day nitty gritty of the campaign – including planning numerous fundraising events and arts and culture events, as well as leading text banks and voter engagement work with finesse. 
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And massive shoutouts to BRYANNA SIGUENZA (Judicial Accountability Coordinator), who led canvasses for the Defenders many weekends, and plugged in to many digital efforts to get Angelenos to the polls. And of course, we applaud charismatic TITILAYỌ RASAKI (Policy and Campaigns Strategist) for their deep collaboration with Comms this year in producing (and starring in!) much of the 🔥poli-ed content we used throughout the election season.
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We’re ever so grateful for our partners at Ground Game LA (Anthony, Bill, and Brittani, we’re looking at you), campaign consultants Mary Lizardi, Ruby Western, Scott Mann, Ericka Persson, and Victor Valle at Siempre Agency, for all your work, guidance, and creativity in running this campaign. What a beautiful team effort it was.