CAHRO News interviewed
Henry Ramos, National Manager of Project Change for Levi Strauss and Shirley Strong, Levi's Manager of Community Affairs about the Foundation's strategy for addressing human rights issues.The Levi Straus Foundation is using two
parallel strategies to attack institutional racism, promote interethnic and interracial cooperation, and further the cause of social justice.
Social Justice Initiative
The Levi Strauss Foundation funds
projects in the areas of economic empowerment, AIDS prevention and care, youth empowerment and social justice in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo. However, the Foundation
expanded on its work in social justice and is trying to find ways to encourage intergroup collaborations that will have broad impact.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the Foundation provided individual grants to Equal
Rights Advocates (ERA), the Coalition of Immigration Rights and Refugee Services(CIRRS), the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) with the goal of encouraging their collaboration on a
range of social justice issues. The organizations were selected for their commitment to working across racial and ethnic lines to achieve common objectives. ERA will assess the changing political, social and economic
environment after the passage of Proposition 209 (See the article Affirmative Action… for an update on its implementation) and the judicial process on women and people of color. CIRRS is assessing the impact of the changes in
welfare programs on documented and undocumented immigrants, and CTWO is examining how the California budget is impacting people of color. The Lawyers' Committee has agreed to re-establish the Coalition of Civil Rights; a
network of human rights advocacy groups, labor, and community groups that met regularly to plan actions to promote the protection of civil rights. The work of the Coalition was swallowed up by the all-out effort to
defeat Proposition 209 and it has yet to recover.
Levi Strauss is encouraging the groups to share information with each other and collaborate to develop a five year plan for promoting social justice in the Bay Area.
In
somewhat of a departure from its usual policy of restricting its efforts to the areas where it has business operations, Levi Strauss launched a national project to mirror that of the Bay Area social justice initiative. It
selected the Center for Democratic Renewal (CDR), the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Council of Churches, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, and the National Conference (formerly the National Conference of
Christians and Jews) to move the cause of social justice forward nationally.
Again, each organization was given an individual task; for example CDR is seeking to identify the underlying causes for racially motivated church
burnings then design and implement a strategy to prevent them in South Carolina. The organizations were also tasked with the responsibility to collaborate on the development of a five year plan to advance the cause of social
justice nationally.
Project Change
Project Change was launched in 1991 to find ways to help communities address institutional racism and racial and ethnic polarization. The Project was
initiated in cities where Levi Strauss & Co. had plants in the Southwest and South. The areas selected were Albuquerque, El Paso and Vladosta, Georgia. Knoxville, Tennessee was added later.
Local task forces
comprised of a cross-section of people drawn from local government, education, housing, business, religious institutions and charitable and community organizations were established in each city. Members of the task force were
given training in how to overcome racism to promote honest interaction and the feeling of being part of a team. The Project conducted research in each city to assess the impact of racism on education, housing, criminal
justice, and business development and provided the information to the task force. The task force was then asked to assume responsibility for designing and implementing strategies to overcome the effects of racism on one or
more of the areas that were assessed.
Short-term planning grants were awarded to each task force to support the initial efforts on team building, research on the impact of racism, and action planning. The planning
grants were to be followed with three years of support to implement the action plans.
There was wide variation in the level of achievement by the task forces in the various locations where the Project was
initiated. Fortunately, the Foundation contracted for evaluations that provide important information for anyone involved in the field of human relations. CAHRO News
will review the lessons learned from the ongoing initiative in the next issue.
With the help of Levi Straus perhaps we can move towards a society that provides all people the opportunity to achieve their highest potential.
