Assembly Select Committee on Racism, Hate, and Xenophobia

We will call the Select Committee on Hate, Racism, and Xenophobia to order. I want to thank the Members of the Committee for their Willingness to engage in this very important and persistent cancer that continues to plague our state nation.

Over the last five years, the State of California has experienced its highest rates of hate and discrimination in our state's history. This seems almost unimaginable for the Golden State, but the data is clear that, yes, it can happen here in the Golden State.

Unfortunately, this can be attributed to the dehumanization and targeting of our historically marginalized and oppressed populations for political and economic gain. Every day, we see one of our protected classes being targeted and erased. But we must make it clear that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

Therefore, when they kidnap and murder our Native American women, they are kidnapping and murdering our mothers, our sisters. Our daughters. When we see yet another year where Black Californians top the charts of our state's hate crime report, we together say, not another year. When we demonize our Muslim and Sikh brothers and sisters, they are demonizing us.

When they scapegoat our Latino and undocumented brothers and sisters, they are scapegoating us. When they attack our Asian brothers and sisters, they are attacking me.

And when they say that women are not worth equal pay, don't have the right to control their bodies, and that their value is tied to their age or physical appearance, they are saying that we are not valued either.

And when they introduce legislation to target our LGBTQ in General and our Trans siblings in particular, you are targeting me. And, yes, we will take it personally. And finally, when we put when we attack our Jewish brothers and sisters, they will find out quickly that we will have their back.

In other words, while this Administration criminalizes, targets, attacks, erases and dehumanizes our brothers and sisters, this Legislature, this state, and this Committee lifts them up so that their voices can be heard. And this is what today is all about. Uplifting the voices of protected classes and proclaiming solidarity as we face a common enemy.

So I want to thank the panelists for their participation and let them know that we see you, we hear you, and we have your back on this battlefield in this nation. And we will also hear from state departments and commissions to help us chart a path forward. We will take public comment after all the panels are complete.

And at this time, we'll like to see if there's any Members who would like to say a few words. Assemblymember Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the invitation to join this Committee and I look forward to hearing from panelists across the board. And our job as leaders is to be able to hear what's going on in the community and take appropriate actions as necessary.

So again, thank you for for the invitation and I look forward to open ears.

Thank you. Assemblymember. I want to personally thank you for your willingness to participate in this Select Committee. We come from neighboring Assembly districts, similar populations. You also claim some roots in my district and Moreno Valley. Stop trying to rep my district please. But glad to have you and look forward to our continued participation.

So let's bring up our first panel, please. We will have the California Department of Justice and the California Commission on the State of Hate and we will start with the Department of Justice and you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you and good morning. My name is Damon Brown. I serve as a Special Assistant Attorney General, serving as Attorney General Bonta's Legal and Policy Advisor on Civil Rights and Police Practices at the California Department of Justice.

And I'd like to thank Assemblymember Jackson for the invitation to speak with you all today and to talk about the Department of Justice's role in advancing our collective goal of eradicating racism, xenophobia and hate across the Golden State.

For far too long, too many black, Asian, Latino, Native American, people with disabilities, lgbtq, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh Californians have been victimized by the toxic effects of bias and hate, and the California Department of Justice remains steadfast in our commitment to continue working with law enforcement, with elected leaders and community organizations across California to keep our communities safe.

Since assuming office in 2021, Attorney General Banta has been committed to has committed the resources of the Department of Justice to fighting hate.

He created the Racial Justice Bureau to strengthen our capacity to focus on racial and social justice issues across our civil rights work, which includes taking on the insidious effects of white supremacy and hate organizations in our society and stepping up outreach with community organizations and law enforcement on hate crime prevention, information sharing and reporting.

He also appointed a Hate Crimes Coordinator to serve as a point person for internal and external partners regarding the prosecution of hate crimes and strengthening our responses to hate.

Earlier this year, Attorney General Bonta released updated guidance and resources on hate crimes for law enforcement, prosecutors and victims of these crimes in preparation for a potential increase in violence against immigrants as a result of President Trump's xenophobic rhetoric.

These resources include updated law enforcement bulletins on laws prohibiting hate crimes, hate crimes, rapid response protocol for the deployment of DOJ resources, guidance to prosecutors to help strengthen hate crimes, Prosecution Enforcement and a fact sheet in multiple languages to help Californians understand their rights and protections under hate crime laws.

California Department of Justice has collected statewide data on hate crime since 1995, which can be found on our open justice portal. And this morning our Office released the 2024 Hate Crime in California report and here are some of those findings. Reported hate crime events increased 2.7% from 1,970 in 2023 to 2023 in 2024.

Hate crime offenses increased 8.9% from 2,359 in 2023 to 2,568 in 2024. The number of hate crime victims of reporting hate crimes increased 8.2% from 2,303 in 2023 to 2,491 in 2024. Anti black bias events remain the most prevalent despite a 4.6% decrease from 518 in 2023 to 494 in 2024.

Anti Asian bias events decreased 4.8% from 125 last year to 119 this year or in 2024. Excuse me. Anti Jewish bias events rose from 289 in 2023 to 310 in 2024, which is a 7.3% increase and anti Islamic bias events fell from 40 in 2023 to 24 in 2024.

Between 2023 and 2024, hate crime events motivated by sexual orientation bias increased by 12.3% from 405 to 455. Anti transgender bias events increased a similar amount 12.3% from 65 to 73 and from 2023 to 2024, the number of hate crimes that were referred for prosecution increased from 679in 2023 to 818in 2024.

Of those 818 crime events that were referred for prosecution, 506 cases were filed by district attorneys and elected city attorneys for prosecution and of those 506 cases, 327 were filed as hate crimes.

Historically, hate crime data has been generally under reported and the California Department of Justice recognizes that the data that's presented in this report does not reflect the actual number of hate crime events, which we fear is much higher for the Members of this Committee. Some trends that you may want to note regarding this data over time.

Hate crimes had its highest peak in 2001 with 2,261 events and in 2014 that represented the lowest recorded year with 758 events between the years of 2020 and 2021, we saw the highest percent increase of hate crime events year over year at 32.6% with 2019 to 2020 right behind at 31%.

As I mentioned earlier, anti black based events have always been the highest count of hate crime events each year, which is followed by by anti Jewish and anti gay biased events.

This year data reports that in 2024 anti black events constituted 24.4% of all reported hate crimes and the average percent of yearly totals for all data years is 30.2%.

Anti Jewish events constituted 15.3% of all reported hate crimes with the average percent of you yearly totals for all years at 10.9% and anti gay events were 12% of the average percent of yearly totals we saw in 2021, anti Asian bias events were the second highest number of hate crimes with 14% and just as a General statistic, crime overall in the State is down 11.9% from last year, which is an encouraging sign I'm here to answer any questions that you may have at the appropriate time.

But again, just wanted to reaffirm our commitment to partnering with you on finding solutions to continue to combat hate. To thank you again for this opportunity, not only for the Department of Justice, but for all stakeholders who are here today to be able to contribute to the dialogue and to reaffirm our efforts.

Particularly in light of what Assemblymember Jackson mentioned earlier. With the increased rhetoric that's coming from political leadership in our country, the fear that that may exacerbate an already problematic issue as it relates to hate and xenophobia, and wanting to make sure that the resources of California are properly implemented to Ward against that. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair and Members of the Committee. I am Professor Brian Levin, Chair of the California Commission on the State of Hate. The Commission's mission is to strengthen California's efforts to monitor, prevent and and respond to hate activity. We have three strategic priority areas. 1. Provide an annual accounting of hate activity in California. 2.

Develop recommendations for enhancing resources and support for those targeted by hate. 3. Develop recommendations for preventing and reducing hate. All of our work is evidence based and community informed. We've examined hundreds of peer reviewed research studies and consulted with the nation's leading scholars on hate.

We've also partnered with numerous community organizations and heard from the public about what they're seeing on the ground and importantly, their ideas for solutions. So what have we accomplished so far? We've held nine community forums across California. We've convened scholars and policy experts and interviewed community organizations to create policy recommendations for preventing hate.

We've partnered with community organizations and the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to to develop a training for law enforcement. We've issued interim guidance for hate prevention in schools and prevention focused public messaging campaigns in our annual report and we've issued 19 interim policy recommendations here for combating hate in California. What have we Found?

Hate in California is widespread and appears to be increasing as we've just heard, hate crime data from law enforcement agencies which nationally have broken various records, capture only a small fraction of the volume of hate impacting Californians.

To specifically learn from Californians about their experiences with hate, we partnered with the Civil Rights Department and CUCLA to survey 20,000 households. The data is staggering and suggests about 2.6 million Californians experienced at least one act of hate within just one year, which includes both hate crimes and non criminal hate incidents.

About 525,000 that's over half a million Californians experienced hate that was potentially criminal in nature, including either physical violence or property damage. When we compared this to law enforcement data, we found that there are potentially well over a half a million more victims of hate, motivated violence and property damage than are recorded in law enforcement statistics.

Echoing what we've seen federally, we also saw that many groups have been historically targeted by hate continue to experience hate at disproportionate rates in the state. We saw high rates of hate against people because of their race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and disabilities. We have been developing recommendations.

I'll tell you about just a few. We need permanent data infrastructure in California to comprehensively measure how hate is impacting Californians. 2. We need to require hate crime training of law enforcement officers. Law enforcement are often the first responders to hate crimes, but there are significant gaps in how prepared law enforcement are to do this. 3.

It is critical to have resources and services to support impacted individuals and communities. We recommend ongoing investments in resources for communities impacted by hate, including California's nonprofit Security grant program California vs. Hate and grants for community based organizations such as Stop the Hate Grants. We've also studied how to prevent hate.

What we've learned so far is there is no one size fits all solution to preventing hate. So we have focused on specific areas of hate prevention, including preventing hate in K through 12 schools and how public messages can reduce hate. You can read more in our reports, but I'll share one important finding today.

When we looked at the research on public messages, we found that public statements from political and community leaders, when designed correctly, can potentially shift attitudes away from hate and violence. In my own study, statements by political leaders, when designed correctly, can shift these attitudes.

In my own study, we found that these statements correlated to a daily reduction in hate crime, while in another study, non violence significantly pacified support for violence among the public, even for people who were not ideologically aligned with the leader. This tells us something important, that leadership matters. So thank you for what you're doing today.

Political leaders of all stripes have the capacity to set the tone and through their words and statements have the potential to create a more peaceful and inclusive California. I encourage you to read our latest report available on our website. And once again, Dr.

Jackson, thank you so much for your time today and the rest of the Committee as well. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you so much for kicking us off to the both of you. I just want to make sure that we reiterate a few things. And so I'm going to go to some of the questions that's on the agenda.

And for the Department of Justice, can you tell us again what the high who are the populations with the highest rates of hate crimes?

So based on the most recently reported data, hate crime against black Californians constitutes the highest number of hate crimes. Our report addresses percent increases. And there have been other categories of individuals where we've seen significant increases. But despite the decrease in events against black Californians last year, that group still remains the highest number of hate crime events.

Has there ever been a year since the Department of Justice has published his a crime report? Has there ever been a year where Black Californians were not at the top of the list?

Not in the time that we've been collecting the data since 1995.

So even when other groups have a increase in hate and even when Black Californians sometimes experience a decrease in that, the gap is still pretty wide when it comes to the number of hate crimes that have always faced Black Californians. Would you agree with that? I would.

What are the next two highest groups at this time from the latest year. And what was the latest year that we have data on? This is for the 2024 data. 2024 data. Okay. And so what are the other what are the next two groups after that based upon 2024 data?

So the way that the report categorizes it, it's based on we have race, we have religion, we have different bias types.

And so if we're talking about strictly the race category behind African Americans, we have Latino Californians representing the next highest number based on racial type, as I mentioned earlier with religious type, anti Jewish Bias events top the list of last year's data at 7 with an increase of 7.3% which also remains year over year the highest number of hate crime offenses based on religious bias.

And again we also have with sexual orientation consistently year after year bias events based on sexual orientation and in particular anti transgender bias events remain at the top of the list based on the way that the data is filtered.

And for the Commission on the State of Hate, it seems to me that especially when you look at the Trans population, that according to your own research, you can see a direct correlation between political rhetoric and the Trans community. Would you what are your thoughts about that?

Absolutely. There was over $20 million in political advertising towards the end of last year that was directed negatively towards the transgender community. And what we have seen for instance in 2023, just records upon this is nationally records upon records being broken with regard to transgender, for instance with regard to African American also going up.

And one of the things, if I could just take a second here now this is national anti-Black hate crime. While the number one category from 1996 through 2019 as a proportion of that piece was shrinking, then it blasted up. And what we found during 2020 and we see protests going on now listen to this.

What we found when we disaggregate. This is my personal study here. I want to make sure, I don't want to get the Commission in trouble here, but they found about 60% involved ethnicity and race. That's what the study with UCLA and Chiss.

But what we saw in 2020, among the worst days since modern record keeping began was during the summer that we had the George Floyd protest.

And what I also found was the N word on Twitter correlated to the protests as well as an increase in anti-Black hate crime, which then burst up and now was a much greater proportion of that pie, even though it's always been number one.

Also just interesting with regard to major American cities, anti-Black hate crime has generally always been the top target until the last couple of years when anti-Jewish hate crimes just in the top 10 cities. It's not reflected nationally overtook. Why? One of the reasons is demographics.

The percentage of Jewish people In the top 21 metro areas are double the national average. So there's some demographic reasons there along with what we've seen from the Gaza war where we saw significant increases in anti-Jewish hate crime and anti and anti-Black hate crime.

In my own personal studies, what we saw was religion hate crimes, anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim in particular increasing four years in a row in major American cities. And what we saw for instance in 2023 was a 51% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in major American cities and a 48% increase in anti-Jewish.

In 2023-2024, anti-Muslim rose again 18%. Not to a record that was back in 2001. But anti-Jewish hate crime hit another record year after year. And that's reflected in FBI data, but they're lagging by a year.

So what we've been seeing, and I think it's important, if you look at anti-Latino, anti-trans, it was so interesting in 2023, we saw nearly every group having significant increases. So when we do a multi year, what we're doing now is nationally, nationally hovering around records and California similar, but not quite that 20.

I think it was 2261, something like that, around 2001. But just this year, as we've heard, hate crime events overall in the State of California over 2000.

And in our CHIST study, what I thought was so interesting that we saw 19% with regard the most common reasons targeted, 19% ancestry, national origin or language, the 15% gender, gender identity, 13% sexual orientation. So what we're seeing are groups are getting victimized, disproportionate to what their population is.

And additionally what this CHIST study, which is a landmark study, and we had the top person from Bureau of Justice Statistics previous come in and discuss these kinds of surveys. And this is staggering. Millions of people in California are suffering from either criminal or non criminal acts.

And what our experts who've come in to testify before our hearings told us was that you can't just look at crimes because these traumas, these victimizations, as the Governor himself said, wound horribly and continue.

So we're seeing the impact, these are not just numbers, but the impact on how victims and communities respond to these kinds of events is very similar even with non criminal incidents because they are so traumatizing and fear inducing. Do we have any questions?

Assemblymember Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, I have a few questions and I don't know if you have those details here, but you spoke a lot about percentages, specifically on hate crimes. What are the actual numbers like and what does that mean from an assault to a murder? You know what I mean?

Like, can we go down a little a step deeper into the details of what that looks like versus hate crimes for those who are watching and those who are listening? That's a very broad, very broad subject. Right. So if you can kind of detail the actual numbers versus percentages.

Okay. If you could maybe go to the next question. I'm going to grab the report that's.

You were talking about policy recommendations and a report. Do we, do we have that or is that something that's going to be distributed to us? Because obviously that would be a good something good to look at.

We do not have it, but we will be requesting it and getting it to all the Members. But if you would like to do you have any, would you like to highlight any of legislative recommendations?

Well, sure. We have 19. So among these, I think we have to look at community and addressing victims who will not come to governmental bodies or police. Oftentimes these community organizations and human relations commissions are very valuable in serving as a conduit for these reports.

So among the things that we have to do is have a development of comprehensive accounting of hate that is not just limited to to law enforcement data.

And we also have to have development of what.

I'm sorry, comprehensive accounting of hate beyond. I'm sorry, beyond crimes. So that's something also. And I get calls on this from numerous folks. We have now a requirement for law enforcement trading and post is working on these things.

However, because of the budgetary issues, we now have an issue where there might be folks who are trained in the academy. They're supposed to get refreshed every six years, but that's not happening as a reality.

So we have to make sure that these trainings for law enforcement are routinized because we now could technically have people who went through the academy before this was required and and haven't either had it at all or had an update. And as we know the dynamics of this change, K through 12 too many to go over.

But with respect to curricula and with respect to knowledge within the educational realm of not only how to respond but how to prevent. And I think one of the things now this is me talking out of school here, but one of the things I think we have to do is really talk about something that you all do.

And by the way, if I could just give a shout out to my IE heroes here, Cal State. Prof. For about a quarter century. Thank you so much. We see so much great work coming out both at the state level and for instance, Representative Aguilar at the federal level.

So I do want to make sure that I thank you for that. But we have a variety of things invest in evidence based school interventions and public messaging. So when we message that the dignity of all people is important, it actually makes a difference.

One of the things that I'll leave with you Today you can't really see it's a little small here. But six days after 911 then President Bush, a Republican said that people who attacked Muslim women who are wearing cover should be ashamed of themselves. And that's not the America that he knows.

He also said how the Muslim community, Muslim American community consists of business people, lawyers, doctors, teachers and how important they were to our society. Guess what? The next day nationally hate crime reported to Police dropped by 2/3 after that initial spike after 911. And it never went back up to that level after he made that statement.

And we've seen this time and time again the reverse with regard to public messaging. That's why the soccer coaches, the teachers, Assembly Members, if the Governor, the Attorney General are all consistent in this, in this state with regard to countenancing their disgust at, at hate. And it makes a difference. The other side though unfortunately works too.

Let me give you an example. November 9th, 2016 was the day after elections, was the worst day in 13 years for hate crime. FBI reported hate crime. What else? It was the worst month going back to the first anniversary of 911. Let's take another time. We talked about 2020 during the George Floyd protests.

You heard a statement when the looting starts, the shooting starts. That day was one of the worst days for African American hate crime since record keeping began. Charlottesville that month was the third worst month nationally for hate crime since for that decade.

But hate crime did not peak that month until the day of and the days after the very fine people statement made by the President. So what I'm saying is we have ample instances where we see a community that's targeted and hate spikes up.

One last case and I will give you these from Ohio from their criminal justice data agency.

In September, vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeated a lie that immigrants, Haitian immigrants were eating pets, dogs and cats that month of September when he said that before a national audience that month we saw more anti-Black and ethnic hate crimes in the City of Springfield, Ohio than the total for the whole year for everybody.

And it was all almost not quite three times the annual of the previous year for only that month of September of 2024. In other words, these statements which are now ingrained into the mainstream, whether it's White genocide or the kind of statements you're hearing.

Look, I just spoke with the folks from LAPD and what they found in their data for for this year 2025 anti-Latino, anti-immigrant type hate crimes have spiked. So when we see this terrible thing where we have socio political messaging and online invective it translates and correlates to hate on the streets.

So that's why I am so appreciative of you holding these hearings. And also I want to thank the Assembly Members for their consistent, consistent condemnation of these kinds of acts. We have research that shows that this public messaging makes a difference along with a variety of other measures which we have right here.

19, which I will make sure that everyone on the Commission gets our interim recommendations.

Which brings me to my point that I asked before. With respect to data, we were talking about percentages, and my question was, can you give me numbers? So specifically in hate crimes, what are those? What is the number?

Okay, so to go back to what Assembly Member Jackson had asked before about the second number under the race category I'd mentioned, it was anti Hispanic and Latino. The numbers for the annual for the year for anti black hate crimes was 532. I'm sorry, 578. The second highest was the anti Hispanic Latino at 255.

And let me be clear, one is too many.

One is too many.

Right. Just one is too many.

Correct.

Right. But I'm trying to get a sense as TO Is it 500 or is it 5 million? That's what I'm trying to understand here. So get some clarity.

The total number. And again, these are reported hate crimes. This is what individuals who do report hate crimes to local law enforcement then reports up to us. So there was a total of 2023 for. For the year in 2024. Of those 2023578 were committed against Black Californians, 255 against Latinos.

And how does that manifest itself with respect to assaults, kidnapping, murder. What. What is that?

So we. This is where the data is slightly off, because that data is measured in hate crime offenses. And a hate crime event can constitute more than one victim, more than one perpetrator. And so the numbers are slightly off. The total number of hate crime offenses for 2023 was 2,568. And that's broken down into violent crimes.

Of Those violent crimes, 1679 were violent crimes. That can be anything from murder to rape to robbery, aggravated assault, sodomy, sexual assault, and kidnapping.

And we're just talking about California.

Just California. Then we have property crimes. And of that same number, 796 of those were property crimes, which can constitute burglary, larceny. We saw an uptick in motor vehicle theft, arson, shoplifting, and extortion. And the last category is a multiple bias total, which could be a multi.

Any combination of these crime events and there were 93 of those.

And my last question is, you talked about biases. What are those biases? Like what does that mean? Again, very broad statement. I just want to kind of narrow it down as to what it means because without understanding the bias and just saying bias, we don't know how to then combat said bias. Right.

So the bias is what motivates the action. And so when we talk about the different bias motivations, that's how the report breaks it down. Anti white, anti black, anti Asian, all the way across, anti citizenship status. We look at all of the different types of motivations that a perpetrator would have in committing the offense of the crime.

And that's how the data is categorized based on the evidence when these are investigated. And local law enforcement will determine in their investigation what the motivation was for that particular crime.

So it's an anti-race, color, creed, gender, whatever it is. That's correct. And that is confirmed by a investigation. That's correct. Hence why you then have that information. Right. Okay, thank you.

Could I just interject one quick point that just dovetails off of what Damien said? 8% of Californians 12 or older directly experienced a hate act, criminal or non criminal. That's 2.6 million people. And then over half a million apparent possible hate crimes were self reported by the survey participants.

So we like with the federal, we've seen a huge gap between reported hate crimes and underreported hate crimes. Indeed, our friends at BYes where the numbers weren't even quite as Stark speculated that 1%, based on their data, 1% of violent crimes in the United States were hate crimes. So these numbers are incredibly important.

We look at them year to year. But the victimization surveys complement. And so we're talking about 2000 reported hate crimes in 2024 during a year period over the last couple of years, one year increments, well over half a million possible hate crimes.

And that constitutes 11% of the total numbers of hate acts that were found in the CHISS study. In other words, 11% of that huge number were crimes. And that doesn't even constitute all the possible offenses that we could look at nationally.

What we've seen the most common offenses are simple assaults, threats, they call it intimidation and property destruction.

Thank you so very much. Thank you to both of you for setting the tone. So we have an understanding what the numbers look like, what the State of hate looks like in California and looking forward to continue to working with you.

We are going to be following up with you to request additional legislative recommendations that Members of the Select Committee can begin to prepare for for the next legislative year. Thank you so very much to this panel.

Thank you. Thank you. And if there's anything our Commission can do in conjunction with any of you, it's our pleasure.

Thank you. Now we'll go to our next panel where we want to hear from the voices of those who represent protected classes. We ask that you come up here. We are go by the order of the agenda. Hopefully we have enough chairs for everybody. If not, you all know how to play hot potato.

All right, and we might need to bring one more chair up for...let's see here. We'll ask someone to rotate out so we can get you in. Okay. So first we'll start off with the National Association for the Investment of Color People. And you may begin when you're ready.

All right. Good morning, Chairman Jackson and members of the committee. Rick Callender: I'm President of the California Hawaii State Conference of the NAACP. I'm a member of the National Board of Directors and Vice Chair of the National Board of Directors Legal Committee. The California Hawaii State Conference boasts 57 branches and over 55,000 active of active members.

And I do want to thank you for addressing this important topic, especially with the times that we're currently living in. So, when you look at the issues that are concerns that are great is facing our community in California, I believe systematic racism as well as hate crimes are pervasive across multiple dimensions.

And with the current federal Administration, especially their actions, some people feel emboldened to act any old sort of way in California as well as everywhere else. As the Chairman has correctly pointed out, and as you heard through prior testimony, African Americans remain the number one targeted group for hate crimes.

This is also confirmed by both of the prior testimonies. I'm going to focus mainly on systematic racism and my testimonies. I think the prior panel really did set the table for what we're facing in the streets and in our communities.

And systematic racism is considered particularly harmful because it's not just about the individual acts of prejudice or discriminations is really embedded into the very fabric of our society, operating on large scale societal systems, practices, ideologies and programs.

So, starting with just looking at criminal justice, I'm going to focus on four main areas of my testimony as I go through the questions. The annual report released by the California Racial Identity Profiling Advisory Board, it reported that black drivers are stopped 126% more frequently than expected, with Black and Latino youth disproportionately impacted.

Black police use force, handcuffs or firearms against black youth at an alarmingly high rate, 45% for ages 12 to 14, compared to 19% for white youth. And disturbingly, police pointed firearms at 11 children under the age of 12 in 2023, most of them Black or Hispanic.

When you're looking at education, the school to prison pipeline remains completely strong. Black students face suspensions at more than three times the rates of the white peers, perpetuating harmful long-term disparities

In health care, life expectancy for Black Californians is among the lowest in the state at approximately 74.6 years, illustrating persistent health inequities under housing and economic opportunities. The communities of color continue to grapple with housing insecurity and limited economic mobility, reinforcing the racial wealth divide.

Looking at environmental justice, disproportionate pollution burdens fallen black and Latino and indigenous communities many live adjacent to freeways, industrial zones or contaminated water sources. These exposures correlate with elevated asthma and chronic illness rates, particularly in the Central Valley and South LA neighborhoods, a clear sign that environmental and racial injustice are intertwined.

What kind of help that we're looking for from allies? Well, first we looked to our allies in the California Legislature to look at police oversight and reform.

So, to enact RIPA's suggested policies, limit pretext stops and prohibit pointing firearms at our youth. Education equity, we're looking at investing in restorative justice programs to reduce racial disparities in school discipline as it relates to economic justice. Please support initiatives that close the wealth gap through targeted small business grants, workforce development and affordable housing.

Under health equity, expand Medicaid coverage and improve health care access in underserved areas and address environmental health threats and in terms of environmental justice, enact laws targeting pollution reduction in frontline communities per Cal and viral screen standards, supporting things like the Governor's Delta Conveyance Project, trailer bill and insurance. It balances water security with environmental protections and tribal involvement.

What we urge for our allies who are not in the legislature and is to seek to engage and to collaborate with other groups who are similarly situated so that there's no assumptions on what our communities are looking for.

And this approach not only will support and aid in our collective progress, rather whether it's in the legislature or in the community. Now, what can the state legislature do to increase trust and safety? I think what you just heard community driven initiatives are key.

The stop the hate efforts for example, you provided $100 million in pass to prevent the stop the hate efforts. And what you just heard from the prior panel is it's clear these efforts are still gravely needed in our community. We need these kind of hate prevention dollars to be able to address these things in our communities.

We need equitable access to services to expand health clinics, medical health support, affordable housing and quality schools in disadvantaged areas. We need to fast track cleanups in overburdened neighborhoods and reinforcements cap and trade investments through things such as SB 535.

One of the last questions you asked are there any concerns that we have with the actions of the current administration and with President Trump? The answer is absolutely. The Trump Administration policies are a direct threat to racial equity, a direct threat to democracy, a direct threat to environmental justice in California.

The NAACP, we have five current active lawsuits against this administration. And for the first time in 116 years, the NAACP uninvited a president from attending the NAACP National Convention, which will be occurring next month.

Donald Trump is not only attacking our democracy and our civil rights, his actions demonstrate a radical unconstitutional playbook, largely targeting voters, dismantling civil rights protections, and using the military to intimidate our communities. We don't consider this leadership. We consider it authoritarianism.

So, what we've seen is we're opposed to the direct attacks on DEI, where we're opposed to the direct attacks on civil rights and try to roll us back before Jim Crow. We're opposed to the aggressive environmental deregulations that are coming from the Trump Administration.

And the one thing I can tell you is the NAACP, we're going to stand strong.

We'll continue to not only work on the halls, the halls of the legislatures, the halls of Congress, the halls of public relations, but we're going to be working with every - in every single court system that we can to make sure that we're providing protections not for only California, but throughout the nation. Mr. Chairman, I will stand open to any other questions that you may have of me or turn over to the next panelist.

Thank you so much for that. Next, we will have LULAC, if someone can...LULAC is in the house? All right.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens. And thank you for all the assembly members who are present here today and the members of the community.

It's an honor and privilege to be standing in community with all the panelists in this critically important topic, especially given the circumstances that we're facing in California, given the current attacks on our Latino communities and our immigrant communities.

I'm here representing LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation's oldest, largest Latino civil rights organization in the country, with over 350,000 members across the nation and over 525 councils. One of the biggest things that we have experienced is an increase in hate crimes given the xenophobic rhetoric that we have coming from this current administration.

Due to that, we are facing a lot of repercussions.

And I'm sure other panelists are going to be talking about this, especially in LA County and the surrounding areas where there has been ICE raids targeting mostly profiling hardworking individuals, whether or not there's any proof or due process. We've seen an uptick in a lot of attacks and rhetoric against the Latino community.

Understanding that more than half of Californians - understanding that Latinos are the largest minority group in California. We've seen attacks in the fields, hospitality workers, and we've seen them even attacked hospitals. Hate crimes in California have increased and xenophobic rhetoric has increased. And this is affecting the Latino community.

Understanding that more than half of California's living property - more than half of the California living property are Latinos. And Latino households often earn less than their white counterparts. With household income for Hispanics, Latinos being lower than non-Hispanic white households. Latinos are overrepresented in lower paying jobs and underrepresented in higher paying positions.

With the rising cost of living being a major concern for Latino families. We've also seen a lot of barriers to education where Latinos face academic performance gaps, particularly access to quality health care from pre-k programs. In terms of health access, Latinos have the highest uninsured rate of any racial or ethnic group in the United States.

Seeing cuts to Medicaid and proposed legislation will only disproportionately affect our demographics even more. Latinos also face higher rates of certain health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure which exacerbate the social and economic factors.

Another portion is in voting rights and voter registration for Latinos have consistently lagged in other groups due to ID laws and barriers consistent with language barriers and understanding.

And all this I bring up because in this past election that we just faced Latinos who are registered to vote, have been discriminated against and have faced continuous barriers that have prevented them from expressing their civic duty to this country.

We've seen our communities consistently under attack and increase fear due to xenophobic racist rhetoric has, is only going to increase.

So, what we're asking for and what the state legislature can do and what we can have from our allies is to publicly condemn hate crimes, stand up when we see ICE raids and express our support for our immigrant community and put an emphasis on human rights and dignity.

We can also have monitor ICE raids movements when they're happening, ensure that we are asking for proper documentation and for law enforcement officers to properly identify themselves during these critical times in the Legislature. What can the Legislature do to increase trust and safety?

You know, we, we asked for investigations into some of these tactics that we are seeing and some of the federal overreach that's happening within our state. We want and we ask to fund and further public size programs like California vs Hate Hotline that allows anonymous reporting of hate crimes without police contact.

We express support for funding school counselors and mental health program hotlines that help students deal with trauma and disruption caused by raids, caused by xenophobic comments, and caused by profiling from law enforcement and strengthen policies like SB 54 in California that have and should pave the way to protect our communities and our immigrant communities from having local law enforcement working with federal agents.

I look forward to furthering the discussion and answering any questions.

Thank you very much. Next, we will hear from the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California.

Thank you, Chair Jackson, for convening this really critical conversation. I'm David Bocarsly. I'm the Executive Director of JPAC, the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California. We're a coalition of 40 leading Jewish organizations across the state, and we serve as the collective voice of California's Jewish community.

In this moment of rising division, it feels like all of our communities are vulnerable all at once. And it can be hard to step outside our own narratives. But that's why these conversations are essential, because the only way we move forward is together. Allyship, coalition building, deep listening. These aren't just ideals. These are survival tools.

These values also run deep in Jewish tradition. Supporting our neighbors is the most common commandment in the Torah. Half of JPAC's member organizations focus on social services and civil rights, serving majority non-Jewish populations under a Jewish banner, led by Jewish staff, volunteers and donors.

It's why we fought for health and food for all, why we've condemned the rise in racist and Islamophobic hate and threats to diversity programs, why we advocate for LGBTQ rights, work to counter mass incarceration, fight poverty, and defend religious freedom for all. Our story and our community's diversity remind us what it means to be vulnerable.

Nearly one in five Jews in this country are Jews of color. Many of us are immigrants. Many struggle with poverty. So, when vulnerable communities are targeted, the Jewish community feels it too. And alongside that reality, antisemitism is also rising at unprecedented levels. And our community is deeply, deeply shaken.

It's important for us to show up for ourselves and ask our allies to do the same. Over the last decade, we've seen white supremacist terror targeting Jews move from the shadows to the headlines.

From Charlottesville to Coleyville, from synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and here in Poway, to attacks right in my Los Angeles neighborhood where two visibly Jewish men who wear a keeper like me were shot at on consecutive days while walking down the street.

Each of these attacks was fueled by the same conspiracy, the false belief that Jews secretly control society, seeking to replace white Americans with people of color.

And in the aftermath of Hamas's horrific terror attack on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war, antisemitic violence has escalated again, this time with a different motive, but the same conspiracy at its core. In recent months, Pennsylvania's Jewish Governor has had his home set on fire during Passover.

Two young adults were murdered leaving a Jewish Heritage month event in D.C. Jewish demonstrators were firebombed in Boulder. And here in California, we've seen assaults, vandalism and death threats targeting Jewish leaders and community spaces. These incidents have come in the name of opposing Israel. But do you see the pattern?

This hate is rooted in the same false belief in Jewish control. This time that every Jew, no matter their views, is responsible for the actions of a foreign military power. They are strikingly similar forms of hate. Yet far too many people justify or ignore one if it suits their politics.

In California alone, antisemitic incidents have more than doubled over the past five years, according to the new state DOJ data. And Jews are now the second most targeted group in the state, despite being just 3% of the population. Our schools, the incubators for California's futures, are also moving in the wrong direction here.

California schools have seen a 623% increase in antisemitic incidents over the last decade. That includes harmful content in curricula, antisemitic rhetoric from school and district leaders, and bullying of Jewish students. And very little taught about the Jewish American experience or of contemporary antisemitism all the while.

Part of the challenge, as I see it, is the misunderstanding of who Jews are. State and federal law, many leaders, and even DOJ data refer to us as a religion. But that flattens the lived experience of many Jews. Yes, Judaism is a religion, but we're also a peoplehood, an ethnicity.

In fact, more than half of American Jews say that religion is not central to their lives. For many, the primary connection to Jewish identity is through history, language, food, culture, culture, shared characteristics and or a deep connection to the land of Israel.

On that last point, 8 in 10 American Jews say caring about Israel is part of their Jewish identity. That doesn't mean we all agree with Israeli policy. Far from it. We are a politically diverse community with a proud tradition of dissent, and others have every right to criticize Israel too.

But far too many are unwilling to do the hard work of learning how to do so with without harming Jews. And when we push back, we're often met with accusations of censorship or even racism. That response leaves our community already carrying generations of trauma, feeling deeply alone.

For those of us who have devoted our lives to the fight for racial and economic justice, it has been heartbreaking to see how October 7th made it politically toxic for some to stand up to antisemitism and in some cases even justify it. Trust, admittedly has been broken and this critical inter community work feels that much harder.

So, I know that every community here carries its own stories of pain and struggle. And I'm grateful to be here to share our lived experience and really hear all of yours. As one small step toward rebuilding that trust, I ask that you all join me on that journey.

Learn about Jewish culture and antisemitism and condemn it clearly and unequivocally, even when it's uncomfortable. Because fighting hate cannot be selective. And share your stories with us and expect the same from us in return. And to the legislature, we are grateful for your sustained partnership, but there is still a lot more work we can do.

We need to track antisemitism as the complex identity-based hate that it is. We need to pass protections like AB 715 to safeguard Jewish and all students. We need to invest in education and security and in programs that build understanding and not division. Let me be clear as I ask for your partnership.

I reaffirm our commitment to standing with every community represented here. Our liberation is connected. As activist Emma Lazarus and Dr. King, both reminded us, none of us are free until all of us are free. These waves of hate are designed to exhaust us, to pit us against one another, to make us retreat into silence.

But that's not who we are. The only way we build a future that is safe, just and whole is together. Thank you all.

Thank you very much. Next, we will have the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

Thank you. My name is Jeannette Zanipatin. I'm the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. I am honored to be here to speak to you today. You know CIRLA works to create a just society that is fully inclusive of all of our nation's immigrants.

But I would be remiss if I didn't address the biggest challenge today and speak out against the ICE enforcement that is happening right now in LA County and other jurisdictions in California who are in the middle of a political and public safety firestorm.

We are seeing warrantless arrest and detentions and lack of due process being doled out by this federal Administration. Today is day 20 of the full-fledged assault on Los Angeles County. Just to give you a glimpse, Los Angeles County is composed of 88 incorporated cities including LA, Long Beach, Pasadena and Beverly Hills. 100 unincorporated communities.

Its population is over 9,600,000 individuals. 33.4% of Los Angeles County is foreign born and it encompasses about a little over 4,700 square miles. But I want to give context to the raids and the warrantless arrest and detentions and the lack of due process that we are seeing on the ground.

Simply put, these raids are militarized enforcement actions waged against all civilians in Los Angeles County by ATF, DHS, the FBI, DEA, HSI and, CBP, all fortified by the National Guard and the Marines.

Again, this is day 20 of masked men and women making arrests without identifying themselves, without presenting judicial warrants and arresting individuals of all immigration statuses, including US Citizens. Just sitting here in this hearing, I got two texts from my colleagues in my LA office to help them find attorneys for two additional U.S. citizens that have now been arrested by ICE.

This is happening to all of us. Let's be clear, there are no checks and balances or any oversight of these activities. We also have immigration judges dismissing cases by order of this President. Attorneys are not being allowed access to their detained clients.

We are not and are not being informed of the arrest grounds or nor where their clients are being transported. Individuals who have pending immigration cases or applications are being arrested at courthouses, USCIS offices. There's an office right here on Capitol Mall around 8th and L. And, sorry, and offices and routine appointments and at ICE check-ins.

This latter one, ICE check-ins, is particularly affecting many immigrants, particularly those from the API community for which the US does not have diplomatic relations. And we do allow these individuals to stay in our country because we can't deport them to their home countries.

But now, under the Trump Administration, folks who have been here for over 20, 30 years no longer speak the language of their home country or have ties to anyone in their home country, are being deported to either their home country or to a third-party country so that this administration can meet their 3,000 daily arrest quota.

This is what's happening in our communities. They are going after low hanging fruit and arresting anybody who is Black, brown or just doesn't fit their idea of what America should look like. We also have ICE enforcement agents driving around in cars with license plates that do not match the vehicles that they are driving.

We have videos of law enforcement switching out license plates in plain view. We also have ICE enforcement agents blocking roadways with their vehicles or staging car crashes to physically trap individuals who they suspect are undocumented. This is pure racial profiling as we know it. Remember the old adage, driving while Black and brown? That's still happening today.

I also want to be clear that this is not a Latino issue. We are seeing targeted enforcement efforts of our Afro, Latino immigrants, African immigrants, API, Middle Eastern and many others. Similarly, CHIRLA, along with other members of Congress, have tried to enter detention facilities with our attorneys and denied entry.

Congress has unfettered access, actually oversight of our detention systems. Yet for around 10 to 12 days after the raids first started. Sorry, nine days after the raids first started, we were denied access to all of these detention centers.

I was finally able to enter Adelanto, which is a detention center about two hours from LA County, sorry, from Los Angeles, where we had five members of Congress with us and we were finally allowed to enter the detention center.

I, as an immigration attorney with over 30 years of experience, have never seen anything like this within our immigration system. While this administration wants to distract and go the American public about the violence taking place in LA, they are trampling on the rights of immigrants and their families.

We will not stand by and allow this abuse of power from taking place, nor condone the unlawful, illegal and unconstitutional acts taken on the ground over the last 20 days. What kind of help are we seeking from our allies? I will start by addressing the elephant in the room.

Many immigrant rights and civil society organizations are being targeted by this administration. We are being targeted by members of Congress and their committees, and we are working to fight and protect immigrants during these extremely challenging times.

So not only are we fighting a physical war on the ground in Los Angeles, but we're also fighting this other war that is being waged by this administration that is aimed to do one thing: to suppress us, to scare us, and to not speak out about the human rights abuses that we are seeing.

We are not going to stand down. I have been an advocate for over 30 years. I am not going to be silenced and not speak about what we are seeing. This is a horrendous moment in our history, and I just have no other words, any other words to describe it.

But it does feel like, again, we're in the middle of a firestorm. Our allies have been amazing in terms of lending support, in terms of lending mutual aid. We have individuals who are afraid to take their children to school, to go shopping and get groceries, to go to their medical appointments. We have organizations that are reaching out.

What can they do? How can they support? How can we provide legal support to the folks that you are speaking to, documenting their cases of and so we are seeing that support come in. We're also seeing folks just reaching out to us. How is your organization doing? How's your staff? How are you doing?

I've been touched by so many of my friends and advocates that have reached out to just ask me how I'm doing. Because since the raid started, I'll honestly say I haven't stopped working. 12,14,16 hours a day. I wake up every day to new reports.

And just to give you a glimpse, on just one day, I'll give you a glimpse of what the reports we have. We have - we run the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network for the entire county at CHIRLA. In one single day, just a glimpse, we got 90 total reports. We were able to respond to 50 of these reports.

We were able to confirm that they were eight enforcement operations. They were targeting South LA, Boyle Heights, San Gabriel Valley, Downey, and Downey Memorial Church. They even pointed a gun and a rifle at the pastor of that church. That pastor actually spoke at our May Day rally in downtown Los Angeles.

A peaceful rally that I will underscore as well. So, what we are seeing is unprecedented. Again, no checks and balances. We are also really concerned about the suppression that is also happening in addition to not only the organizations, but to individuals on the ground.

We are now getting reports that people who are recording ICE activities are now being recorded themselves. We had a young woman who was recording an activity, and you see five ICE agents putting on gloves and walk towards her to intimidate her. Imagine if the young woman who did not record George Floyd was suppressed.

We wouldn't have that video evidence. That's what this administration is doing. That is what law enforcement is doing. And that is completely eroding trust amongst immigrants and amongst law enforcement. I'm really concerned that this erosion of trust is going to take years, if not a generation to fix.

Lastly, I will just state really briefly, what can the legislature do? We call upon you to continue to shed a spotlight on the illegal ways that this administration is operating without oversight.

We need to send a strong, clear message to our immigrant community that we are centering you, your families and your safety and urge the federal administration from compromising all of our public safety and seek an end to the violent, militarized enforcement against all residents of LA County and the state.

California, we need additional protections at this moment to protect and safeguard our daily, our data and privacy. We also need to require law enforcement to identify themselves and ensure that they are not impersonating other law enforcement entities.

And that we continue to ensure that we are ensuring that we're protecting First Amendment rights for all of our state's residents, especially in places where these enforcement actions are being taken. And really quickly, we do have obvious concerns with this Administration.

To date, the Administration has waged over has made over 240 different policy actions targeting immigrants alone because they have promised one of the largest deportation efforts in history. Right now, we have over 57,000 individuals in detention with plans to expand capacity in places like Korea, Kern County and Adelanto.

And then lastly, we must use every lever in our power that we have to defend immigrants because in doing so, we defend everyone in California. Violent raids have already occurred in churches, hospitals, near school sites and nursing homes. Let that sink in. We have a lot of work to do.

But I'm ready to roll up my sleeves, not retreat, and actually lean in and work with all the individuals that are here and organizations around the table and with our Legislature and our leaders in the state. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next we will have the Asian Americans advancing Justice Southern California.

Thank you so much. Actually, just want to applaud our partners at CHIRLA.

Make sure you get your mic on.

I just want to applaud our partners at Chirla. This is definitely a very challenging time and I appreciate uplifting what's happening in in our API communities as well. Good morning, Chair Jackson and the Members of the Select Committee. My name is Eileen Louie and I am the Chief of Staff at Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

And in about a week, I will actually be serving as its interim CEO. Aj socal, as we refer to ourselves, in short, is a legal advocacy organization that serves over 11,000 people annually in Los Angeles and Orange counties, with a particular focus on the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Our Asian Language intake program staff 8 different Asian language lines to provide legal assistance to many who are not able to access help in the languages that they speak.

Throughout the years, we've represented the Almonte Thai Garment Workers, distributed aid through the Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Fund during COVID and anchored the Monterey Park Lunar New Year Victims Fund, which collected and distributed cash assistance to those who are physically harmed in the mass shooting that occurred two years ago.

The organization was founded in 1983 in the wake of the murder of Vincent Chin, a case that galvanized the Asian American community nationally when two men who beat Vincent to death with a baseball bat were acquitted and ultimately served no prison time. Combating racism, hate and xenophobia is at the center of what we do.

Our work is often complicated by stereotypes and perceptions about our community that, in truth, are often internalized and perpetuated by our own community Members. I'm hoping this won't come to a shock to you, but not all of us in the AAPI community graduate from prestigious universities and then go on to become doctors and engineers.

While there are many who are able to find success in the United States, the ongoing narrative around the model minority myth masks very real challenges and concerns within our community and serves as a divisive wedge that pits communities of color against one another as we label different communities either good or bad.

In reality, we know that no matter how deep our roots are here, we are still often seen as other the perpetual foreigners, people who are less than and don't truly belong here. And it is this truth that connects all of us that are around this table.

At Aj SoCal, we work to protect the legal rights of individuals who do not have the resources to hire attorneys, particularly those in the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. However, for many in our community, harassment, exploitation, victimization is simply the price they feel they must pay to be able to live in the United States.

So they don't step forward to report crime. They don't make claims, they don't push back. This is a notion that is deeply embedded in many of our community, our family cultures, and it can take many generations to get past.

Yet can we blame our community Members for feeling this way when the systems and structures they interact with treat them like they aren't here or that they don't belong?

Every day, language barriers hinder the ability of our community Members to access essential support services, and these barriers are especially acute with within Asian American communities, which comprise of 50 different ethnicities and over 100 distinct languages and dialects.

Our organization staffs 8 different language lines and we are only scratching the surface since nearly one third of Asian American adults face challenges communicating in English, and this underscores a critical need for language assistance in democratic participation, health care access, and the use of social services.

When crafting policies, we ask that the Legislature not leave behind Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who are in need of language services. At Aj SoCal, we totally appreciate the difficulty of this task, but we can do better.

For example, we can establish language equity benchmarks during budget allocations to ensure more language groups can be covered with service funding which could then translate to things like mental health support funding that could serve larger language groups as APIs have the lowest help seeking rate of any racial ethnic group group.

I'm going to forgive me now because I'm going to go off script here because we can't be here today without uplifting the latest iteration of hate against our communities, which is anti immigrant hate. Over the past six months, the attacks on our immigrant communities has been head spinning.

Everything from questioning or challenging birthright citizenship, stripping away language, accessibility to government services, threats to access to health coverage, and ongoing rhetoric that paints immigrants as criminals and people who are not deserving of being here. We also are especially worried about the increase of aggressive Ayes actions across the state.

And while many might see this as a primarily Latinx issue, and the horrendous attacks on our Latinx brothers and sisters cannot be denied or accepted, this is also an AAPI community issue as well.

Although half of immigrants Although almost half of the immigrants in California are from Latin America, a higher share of recent arrivals are from Asia and it is estimated that one of every seven Asian immigrants in this country is undocumented.

Over the past few weeks we have seen reports of up to 10 Ayes raids happening each day in Little Saigon, Irvine and Anaheim.

At the same time, we have regular reports that Ayes agents who are often present at local courthouses where they detain individuals who are reporting for regular check ins with immigration justice, immigration judges or even to do other kinds of business.

Historic API enclaves are reporting slowdowns in businesses as people are afraid to come out of their homes and employees, whether they are undocumented or not, are scared to go to work or to school and fear for their safety.

Just yesterday our Vice President who leads our Orange County office shared that a local official had called him in tears because they are getting reports that hundreds of Vietnamese community Members are disappearing. They are not going to work, they are not going to their medical appointments, they are not going to school.

It's unclear if they are self deporting, if they are being detained or if they are just in hiding. Members of the faith based communities cannot find them, their friends cannot find them and other family Members don't know where they are.

So we are now, we are now recognizing that we have hundreds if not thousands of people that are just disappearing or from our communities and we cannot stand for that. We asked the Legislator to ensure that our state courts continue to be Ayes free.

People should not be afraid to go to court to seek justice just because of their immigration status. And in addition, we continue to ask the Legislature to Fund language, accessible legal assistance to ensure that funding can go to some of the smaller API language groups that that are the most vulnerable in this moment.

We, as our partners at cirla, have already stated we are in the midst of a crisis right now and I think the opportunity to be here to talk to you all and to think about how we work together to protect our communities.

This opportunity is especially important and I am so grateful to be invited to be able to have this conversation with you here today.

Thank you very much. Next up, we will have the Council on American Islamic Relations, California.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, Assemblymember Lowenthal and fellow panelists. My name is Usama Muqaddam and I serve as the Legislative and Government Affairs Director for the California chapter on the Council on American Islamic Relations, which is our nation's largest Muslim civil rights organization.

Now, I want to begin by expressing my gratitude for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the over 1 million Muslims in California. We're in a critical moment, a crisis. As my colleagues have said before me, Islamophobia, Xenophobia and anti Arab racism are escalating and with it, so are attacks on free speech and basic civil rights.

Now take that and layer it on top of the severe attacks we're currently seeing on our immigrant population across the nation and even here in California. And we're seeing dystopian accounts of unidentifiable agents picking people up across the state out of mere suspicion that they're an other.

Now, 2024 marked the highest number of civil rights complaints received by care, and this is the largest in our organization's entire history. But it wasn't just the quantity that was interesting. It was the chilling pattern that we saw.

Students targeted for calling for a ceasefire to wars, employees fired for expressing solidarity with innocent Palestinians, protesters disciplined for opposing genocide. And CAIR's recent civil rights report found that Muslims were increasingly targeted not for just their faith, but further anti genocide, pro human rights viewpoints.

In an America where criticism of government is supposed to be protected speech, this marks a troubling shift. Now, college campuses have historically been at the forefront of human and civil rights efforts and movements. On California campuses, we're witnessing the most brazen clampdown on free speech since the post 911 era.

And according to our 2024 campus climate report, nearly half of the surveyed Muslim students experienced harassment or discrimination, most of it after October 72023. Many were penalized by faculty or University administrators simply for participating in protests or expressing concern for Palestinian lives.

And despite the hostile climate, over 65% of students reported that their institutions provided no statement, no support and no accommodations.

So the erosion of free speech is particularly dangerous, especially in this moment where we're seeing a Federal Government that is directly attacking the very foundations of free speech because it intersects with other longstanding injustices, namely the Islamophobic policing of dissent, the use of federal surveillance tools against Muslims, and the decades long pattern of treating Muslim pain as invisible or illegitimate, which was heightened by the post 911 era.

Now, this is not theoretical. It's happening right now. In 2024, CARE documented a 71.5% increase in law enforcement encounters, much of them tied to campus protests. And as the Honorable Chair mentioned in his opening statement, an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

This increasingly violent response on the part of law enforcement matters on matters of free speech, plus the corresponding rise in hate, has extended to our friends and allies in the Jewish community, in the black community, in the indigenous community, the Latino community, the Lgbt, the AAPI communities, and disabled communities.

This comes at the cross section of a renewed Muslim ban, as well at the hands of the federal Administration and an overreach on the part of federal law enforcement to be able to enforce these draconian policies.

We're seeing this in real time with the rounding up, detention and deportation of international and resident students who participate in peaceful Assembly on college campuses. And it's no surprise that one by one, the courts are finding that these innocent students breached no laws and are releasing them.

Most recently, Mahmoud Khalil, who's a Columbia graduate student and lawful resident of the US who was ripped away from his pregnant wife, who happened to be a U.S. citizen during the holy month of Ramadan and was made to miss the birth of his firstborn child.

And in Southern California, we're seeing the same playbook being used to rip apart families who are on this land to seek opportunity and prosperity, who immigrate to this land to seek prosperity and positively contribute to our vibrant communities.

Ayes continues to conduct these raids, even arresting individuals at immigration hearings, despite those individuals attempting to follow the legal process. So what do we need? We need more moral clarity and policy courage.

We need principled stances that lean on the strength and lived truths of our beautiful California communities, despite how much that might invite the opposition of powerful foreign lobbies. We asked this Legislature to publicly affirm that speaking up against genocide is constitutionally protected speech.

We ask you to prohibit law enforcement from targeting communities, immigrant communities, in their homes, at legal proceedings at grocery stores, at markets. And we ask you to protect DEI programming in the face of federal rollbacks.

We also ask you to ensure that all public institutions, especially schools and colleges, remain places where freedom of conscience is protected, not policed. Now, for us, this is more than just about Muslims.

This is about what kind of state we do we believe in civil liberties when they're popular, or do we protect them precisely when it's the hardest, when the pressure to remain silent is the strongest? Now, I want to thank you for allowing me to present today and for standing with our communities in this pivotal moment.

And I'm happy to answer any questions from the Committee. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next we will have Equality California.

Good afternoon, Chair Jackson and Members of the Committee. My name is Tony Hoang and I'm the Executive Director of Equality California, the nation's largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. And for 25 years, we've partnered with this Legislature to advance full lived equality for LGBTQ Californians. I'm here because we've made progress together, and that is under unprecedented threats.

Across the country and even here in California. Over the past several years, we've witnessed a nationwide coordinated campaign targeting the rights, safety and dignity of LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender and gender non conforming people. States across the country have introduced a record number of bills targeting our community.

Just this year, President Trump is now bringing this hateful agenda to Washington, directing federal agencies to block access to health care for transgender youth, criminalize health care providers, open civil rights investigations into states like California with Trans inclusive policies, and censor LGBTQ content from classrooms.

These actions, coupled with rhetoric including political ads, aim to dismantle long standing legal protections for LGBTQ people and erase Trans people from public life entirely. The Trump Administration is also slashing HIV funding, defunding LGBTQ suicide prevention, and targeting the very organizations our communities depend on.

Earlier this year, Equality California lost a $250,000 grant from the Federal Department of Justice that was intended specifically to combat hate crimes against Trans people. These actions are already having real and devastating consequences on the safety and well being of our community.

From May 2024 to May 2025, GLAAD recorded 932 anti LGBTQ incidences across the country, more than two every day, over half of which targeted transgender and gender non conforming people. And in California, through the DOJ report, year after year, increased hate crimes and incidences against our community.

The Williams Institute's reports that LGBTQ people are nine times more likely to experience violent hate crimes than their non LGBTQ pe. With Black LGBTQ individuals facing the highest victimization rates, Trans women in particular Black Trans women in particular continue to experience disproportionately high rates of fatal violence for LGBTQ immigrants.

These threats are magnified by the constant fear of detention or deportation, causing many to avoid seeking resources altogether. Escalating doxxing bomb threats and harassments have forced clinics, LGBTQ centers and other nonprofits to diverse, scarce resources to security, often at the expense of core services.

California has long been a beacon for those seeking safety, dignity and freedom to live authentically. But symbolic leadership is not the same as material protection. A welcoming reputation does not safeguard a Trans young person being bullied at school, a queer person facing harassment and doxing online, or provider who is being targeted by the FBI.

To meet this moment, we need more than symbolic gestures. We need decisive and sustained action. This year, Equality California is advancing a package of bills protecting the privacy and safety of LGBTQ people, especially transgender Californians, and ensuring that our state remains a safe haven for LGBTQ people across the country.

These measures will safeguard sensitive health care data and expand legal protections for patients and providers so every Californian can seek care without Fearing for their safety.

They also include legislation to ensure transgender people can obtain accurate, affirming IDs and to protect the confidentiality of court records so that no Californian has to choose between living authentically and living safely.

We're also closely monitoring these escalating attacks in real time and in the months ahead, we'll need the Legislature to take further action, particularly to protect access to health care for transgender young people.

At the same time, we urge the Legislature to continue to sustain and expand funding for programs designed to combat rising hate and violence targeting LGBTQ people and other groups. Like the Stop the Hate program. The Nonprofit Security Grant program provides critical funding so that clinics and nonprofits can afford these safety measures they now require.

But the program must be expanded to support professional security at off site events, especially Pride celebrations, where our community is at greatest risk of being targeted. The Legislature must also continue funding for direct legal assistance and Know youw Rights educational resources so that our community can understand their rights and know how to seek recourse when targeted.

Perhaps most critically, it is important to recognize the power of your voice because policy alone cannot stop the normalization of hate. When extremists flood school Board Meetings with hateful rhetoric or your colleagues introduce legislation targeting LGBTQ kids, silence from elected officials sounds like consent.

The Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, the Attorney General, and others have demonstrated what leadership looks like advancing legislation issuing Legal guidance, filing amicus briefs, and speaking loudly against those who seek to harm our community. Each of you holds a similar megaphone, and we urge you to use it.

We know that this Legislature has long stood with LGBTQ Californians, but in this moment, we need more than quiet support. We need your continued leadership to protect the safety and dignity of our community, to ensure resources reach those on the front lines, and to speak clearly against hate in all its forms. Your voice, your actions matter deeply.

Thank you for your commitment and the opportunity to be here with you today. And I want to thank my fellow panelists. We are a unique community in that we are representing every single other community represented here. And so I just appreciate being community with all of you. Thank you.

Thank you all so very much for telling the story and experiences of your communities. I want to yield the floor to my dear colleague, Assemblymember Lowenthal, for any questions or remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for convening the Select Committee as a whole. Entire Legislature should be in this room. It is so powerful to hear from such leaders and expressing the vulnerability and the very, very challenging situations you find yourselves in in 2025. And I want to compliment you as individuals, because it's hard being leaders.

People want improvement of their quality of life. Now, I just want to say a couple things.

There's one thing I didn't hear today, which I encourage us to have discussion on something that I work on here, which is about the Internet and social media and what it's doing to all of our communities, and really what it's doing to pit us against each other and the force of those things.

And I really encourage, on that topic and on other topics, if there is a way for this leadership group here to spend time together and spitball, come up with solutions collectively on legislation that's not just about your individual community, because you are all not just respected around here, but feared in a lot of ways.

And your collective voice is greater than the sum of its parts. It truly is. And I hear about the pain and the challenges, some of which are unique to 2025, that's for certain. Or 2024 in some cases.

But in the end, these shared experiences are just so much more powerful when they're validated by people who are seeing through a different lens and have the ability to. To gain that validation or expand that validation through those communities. And so you shoulder that responsibility.

And I really think that there are things that we could all do together, legislatively that would really move the needle. And I encourage you to Think about the confluence of these things that I'm talking about.

Maybe together, collectively, we figure out ways to hold platforms more accountable to without inhibiting free speech, which I think is a very critical point being made. But how can we find that secret sauce that engenders more understanding, that enables us to progress that's better for our economy, that's just better for human rights.

It's just a better way to live without inhibiting any of those things. And I hope that we have more opportunity to talk about that in this Committee. And I also ask for your ideas, not just expressing the challenges, but the ideas that we can run with and work on together collaboratively. So, thank you so much.

Thank you very much, assemblymember. And certainly it's the intent of the Select Committee to try to find ways to make sure that these opportunities, when we're all together, need to be less rare. And understanding that attack on one of our communities has ripple effects.

And in many cases, when they attack one community, they're just perfecting the tactics so that they can go on to the next community to be able to use. And I think that at the end of the day, we have to make sure that at no point should we ever accept the dehumanization of any community.

What's even more complicated is the ability to be able to look within our own communities, who sometimes are having rhetoric that is dehumanizing another community. And how do we make sure that we are calling out and denouncing hateful rhetoric that's coming from our own communities on another? That's the challenging work as well. Right.

But also understanding that this is one of those years when we're all on the menu at the same time. Which. Poses a challenge when it comes to resources, when it comes to trying to hone a strong narrative against those things when it's happening in multiple directions.

And how do you help protect another group when your group is under attack at the same time? Right.

But also provides a unique opportunity to learn how to truly be in solidarity with one another and how we can create new opportunities to leverage each other's resources to denounce and fight back against the collective dehumanization against other human beings. How do we do that? I think it's going to be one of our greatest challenges.

And then lastly, I would just say say this, that, number one, we need to begin to come together at the table like this more often. And it's my hope that the Select Committee can help foster that, because it is not enough to just have each other's back on a superficial level.

It's time to start doing some empathy building in a greater way to really understand each other's struggles, to really understand each other's histories, which are messy and complicated. And because our ancestors come from all over the world, makes it even more messy and even more complicated.

But the beauty of being in a place like California is that we also have a shared dream. A shared dream of humanity, a shared dream of what we hope for the next generations.

And I think that if we can find ways to unite around some of those principles, that no matter what's happening in the diasporas of all of our people, that we can say that we have found a way to protect the humanity of one another.

So I want to thank you, thank this panel so very much for answering the short call to come to Sacramento to be able to make sure that your voices are lifted.

It is my hope that you will continue to find ways to utilize this Select Committee, whether it's doing field hearings or roundtables throughout the state, no matter what. Whenever we see hateful rhetoric, please send it our way so that we can make sure that the Legislature is on record of denouncing that rhetoric, denouncing those actions as well.

And let's make sure the public knows when we disagree. Say it peacefully. But once you start promoting violence and once you start dehumanizing people, you are on the wrong side of history. You are on the wrong side of history.

And over the last five years, I've even had to tell some of my own friends, you counsel each other out when you are trying to fight against an injustice that you see, but. Yes, but yet you are using the tactics of the oppressor to do it. We are becoming the devils we're trying to fight against.

There is no value of fighting for someone's humanity. But you're losing your own soul at the same time, you're losing your own humanity as you claim to fight for others humanity. We have to be careful in this moment because moments like these bring out the best of us or the worst of us.

And so I look forward to our journey together over these next two years while the Select Committee is going on. And let's make sure that we do what John Lewis tells us to do, which is speak up and get in the way. Thank you so much for this panel. Thank you.

And then our last panel is going to be from the Racial Equity Commission.

And you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you, Chair, Dr. Jackson and the Members of the Select Committee on Race, Hate and Xenophobia. Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Larissa Estes and I serve as the Executive Director of the Racial Equity Commission.

As a descendant of survivors of the Middle Passage and colonization and the proud daughter of an immigrant, it is my honor to bring remarks to you today. The Racial Equity Commission, which is comprised of 11 appointed Members, has been charged with developing a racial equity framework for the state no later than December 1st of this year.

The framework that we are developing will be accessible, actionable, impactful. Upon completion of the framework, the Commission is actively working to build tools and approaches that can be embedded into existing policies and processes, strengthen agency and Department community engagement efforts, support state and local governments with advancing racial equity through technical assistance, and incorporate community voices.

This is all while centering race, but also being mindful of the intersectionality that we heard from today in our previous two panels. Beginning in 2026, the Commission will produce an annual report that tracks data trends, adds to strategies and tools for the framework, and continues to reflect the voices of communities throughout California.

The Commission believes in a California for all where every resident can live and thrive to their fullest potential. The work of the Commission is a journey though, it does not stop or start with a framework or report, but must ebb and flow as we learn together and work to change systems Collectively.

Though the Commission cannot endorse legislation or comment on concepts moving through the Legislature, the Commission is committed to continued engagement with the Legislature, Administration and others as we continue to work on the framework and more.

We encourage ongoing engagement through our one on one briefings, invitations to present our work, and attending our public meetings and community events as we move through this process and plan for our next phase as the Framework is complete. Since January 2024, the Commission has engaged in over 40 hours of public meetings.

We've heard from subject matter experts like Dolores Huerta, the Honorable Holly Mitchell and Angela Glover Blackwell. We have hosted community and Commission meetings throughout the state, spending over 150 hours directly engaging in meeting with community advocates and allies and this does not account for the miles on the road, the nights not spent at home.

We are committed to this work. The Commission is actually in Salinas today and tomorrow engaging with the community down there to really understand the impacts of racism and discrimination, particularly with the farm worker and Spanish speaking communities.

Our community meet and greet will actually be centered in Spanish where Commission staff and commissioners will be listening on translation devices. You don't see that very often in our public advisory systems. Later this year we'll be traveling to Kalamath to host a community and Commission meeting in partnership with the Yurok Tribe.

We've been asked to go far between i5 and i10, the 405, the 101. We've been asked to go beyond that, and we are truly committed to doing that. We've traveled to some places that may be considered far reaching like Lithium Valley, Antelope Valley, Delano.

We've leveraged trusted community organizations to host meetings as well in creating spaces so communities feel safe and are able to share their lived experience. Upwards of 700 community residents and this is in person have been in dialogue with us through our community centered gatherings. This past Saturday we hosted an Indigenous Mom Centered Community listening session in Oakland.

My favorite quote from this weekend was I'm happy to hear information in my language. Experiences like this challenge us to work with community to develop tailored approaches to outreach and engagement, and we are revisiting many of these communities over the next eight weeks to provide an update on the framework and share how community has influenced its development.

Assemblymember Jackson we will be in your area as well. I believe in August, so stay tuned for that information. We've established a community partnership with a foundation to support engagement of community organizations and residents, raising almost $170,000 for engagement grants. The Commission was recently awarded a $200,000 grant to support the evaluation of the implementation of our framework.

Through this journey, we have engaged state agencies and departments as well as local jurisdictions and other equity leaders across the country to learn about their efforts to advance equity.

The Commission completed a survey of state agencies and departments to learn about their equity journey, what they would like to see in the framework, and the challenges that they have experienced with developing and advancing racial equity work.

Some of the emerging key themes that we've learned in conversation with communities includes access to basic needs, economic and education, equity, language and information access, civic engagement and representation, racism and systemic discrimination, youth voice empowerment and culture and storytelling.

Equity leaders throughout the government are interested in strengthening their community engagement efforts but often run into barriers such as compensating community residents for sharing their expertise and wisdom. Government entities are unable to implement best practices for community engagement like providing refreshments or providing stipends to participants.

As we heard earlier today, language access is necessary, but it is costly and requires a high level of intention. The Commission has made our meetings available in multiple languages. The other side of this is plain language. You got to make it interpretable.

It's important that we are clear on the work of racial equity and how it benefits all Californians.

It will take time to undo the generations of harm that have already been done, but with a commitment to the journey and a willingness to learn from our mistakes, our state is very well on its way to the vision I outlined earlier, a California for all, where every resident can live and thrive to their fullest potential.

As you shared in your remarks a moment ago, the present moment that we are in is about all of us. It is about our humanity. The harmful narratives and heinous acts we are seeing and experiencing are not new. The playbook is old.

But many of us and our ancestors have already lived in this fear, have experienced this fear and the hate across the spectrum. But we are resilient and that's what the Racial Equity Commission help hopes to bring forward in its recommendations around system change opportunities within our government and beyond.

In closing and building this framework and the strategies to systemically address and prevent historical wrongs as well as create safe spaces each of us are granted in humanity and making sure that we are fulfilling our roles as civic and servant leaders to ensure that we are all doing racial equity work, The Racial Equity Commission framework, as I shared, will be delivered to the Legislature, the Administration, as well as made publicly available no later than December 1st.

We all know that xenophobia and hate are taught. We know that race is a social construct and while this is embedded within white supremacy, grounded in hate, money, land and power, we know that we can undo the way that hate, racism and discrimination have been embedded within and institutionalized within our structures.

It drives our behaviors that we see and the behaviors that you talked about in terms of competing against each other or expressing hate towards each other. We are at a unique time in California and this is our chance.

So in closing, thank you for your time and attention today and I'm happy to take any questions or comments from the Committee.

Thank you very much. Dr - Again, the Commission's work is as timely as ever and we weight and suspense on the recommendations of the Commission.

As you have gone throughout the state to talk to various communities, are there any key qualitative or quantitative data points that you you believe it should be something that we keep on our minds as we think about our work.

I will say there are two that come to mind. One is that the floor is pretty low about what they expect from government. The trust is flailing and the importance of being present in person means a tremendous amount to the communities that we visited and served. I hear Routinely nobody comes to see us.

People don't even know we exist. And through different avenues of engaging trusted organizations, we've been able to start to build those relationships with community. We are looking for ways to partner with other public advisory bodies or other organizations to make sure people feel seen and heard.

The other one that comes to mind, and this is something that came up really for the first time, but we know about it in more academic and data focused areas, is data erasure. Data erasure is for the most part when people start to aggregate populations because they think they're alike.

In the community that we were meeting with last Saturday, a resident in their native language said, they're lumping me in with the Latino community. I am not Latino. I do not speak Spanish. I am mom, I am indigenous. Why are they doing that to me. And it was that - why are they doing that to me.

And so part of what the Commission is charged with is looking at data and how do you disaggregate data in a way so in tease out some of the nuances that communities that often get aggregated into groups because they're quote, unquote, like what they really do experience.

And so bridging data, bridging that qualitative experience and of lived experience and bringing that together is really, really important in telling the full story about the experiences of the Californians we all serve, whether it be through the Legislature or through the Administration.

Well, thank you so much.

This is a unique opportunity for a state like California that's multi ethnic, multilingual, multifaith communities and in which continues to diversify every year and certainly as we are trying to find ways to ensure that we correctly collect the data in a way that is not only useful but also lifts up the humanity of various groups instead of the Americanized trying to lump people together, make it easier to understand people, which erases so much of the texture and richness that Californians bring to society.

So we look forward very much to hear your recommendations, look forward to participating in some of your field work as well. And please send as much information you would like us to share with Select Committee Members also.

Absolutely.

So thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Assemblymember.

Absolutely. This is going to be the time for public comment. Is there anyone here that would like to have a public comment. Please come up and just state your name and affiliation.

Good morning, My name is Marcos Alvarez. Taxpayer, live in LA County, also part of Antelope Valley, Lulac, Antelope Valley's Palmdale Lancaster area, just north of LA. Thank you for taking the time for allowing me to speak.

It is unfortunate there's only two of you left because in my opinion, this is a critical Committee that speaks the voices of those who can't speak for themselves. I'll circle back to what's happening in LA County.

When you see a man walk up into a City Council in Spokane, Washington, and say to the body that I was hired. I'm a bounty hunter. I was deputized by ICE. They pay me 1000-1500 to get these people that are allegedly illegal aliens. That's the driving force of what's happening throughout America. Money bounty hunters.

ICE deputizing bounty hunters hired by the current Administration. So when you ask the question of what can we do. The word I speak in, seek in mind is accountability. Resources that go after these bounty hunters who laugh at the end of the day.

To my brothers and sisters who have just been separated from their abuelita, from their grandchildren, from their fathers and from their sons, and they ask each other, how much did you make today. How many people did you just destroy, until the very next day. So these are critical times that we are facing.

I work for Los Angeles County Department of Social Services. One of my offices was just raided last Friday. Today, I should be at work, but I'm taking my vacation time because that is the critical value of what's going on here today. My daughter's on vacation. She's sitting right there.

And the message needs to be sent to our youth that are witnessing, regardless of where you're from, that it's going to be up to them to carry the baton on social justice, not just for Latinos, but from people for all races and backgrounds living in America to seek that very dream.

Thank you again for the opportunity for allowing me to speak. Have a great day.

Thank you very much. Are there anyone else who would like to engage in public comment. Seeing none. I want to give Members an opportunity for any remarks they would like to make before we close.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to apologize for stepping in now. I actually had another Select Committee that I'm sharing. I would probably should have done a better job of coordinating.

But as is always the case of the Select Committees, especially when they're on during session, we get pulled in a lot of different directions. But I don't want that to. To be misconstrued as us, any one of us, not caring about the issues that are before us on these committees.

I am at my leisure going to go back and watch all the testimony and public comment today, and look forward to continuing in the important work being led by our chair.

And as we know at this moment, more so than any other I can remember, at least in recent memory, the importance of this Select Committee is extraordinary and so I look forward to continuing the dialogue.

Like I said, I'll catch up on my homework and be sure that I get an opportunity to hear from all the incredible panel that was put forth today and look forward to future meetings. Thank you so much Mr. Chair, for your dedication to this issue.

Thank you so much. Assemblymember Karlra, you have certainly led the way in terms of a moral voice in our Legislature. So happy for you to be able to join the Select Committee. I want to thank Staff Latifah for putting this together.

I want to thank again all the panelists who participated, all the state departments and commissions who've participated. And again, this is only the first step to continue to promote solidarity, continue to push back against the dehumanizing rhetoric and political actions that are only meant to expand power and expand wealth. And we will certainly continue to speak up.

I just want to end with the words of John Lewis and the last letter he left to us when he passed.

And if you have not read the letter, I urge you to read the letter in its entirety when you are looking for ways to get involved, when you are looking for ways to stand up in this moment. And I'll just read just part of his letter.

He says study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul wrenching existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes through decades and centuries before you.

The truth does not change and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

The though I may not be with you here, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and non violence is the more excellent way.

Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate. And last the peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war.

I'll say that again when historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century. Let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last. And that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters.

And let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide. We are adjourned.