The State of California’s Children
& Youth in the COVID Era

Friday, March 5, 2021
9 a.m. – 1 p.m. PST
This is a virtual event

Message from our executive director

The legacy of Marian Wright Edelman has committed us to stand up for children, and now is a time, like no other, when we are called to watch out for the youngest Californians with greater commitment and bolder resolve. Child Watch 2021: The State of California’s Children and Youth in the COVID Era is an important symposium that will expose and deconstruct disparities affecting our youth while bringing together some spectacular advocates, leaders and community members to discuss how to build and achieve solutions specifically for young people and their families.

Children’s Defense Fund has a long history of hosting Child Watch events, and I am proud to bring this event back to California in what will become an annual symposium focused on the state of children in our state. This year, a year after stay-at-home orders were issued, we not only want to highlight the impact of the pandemic, but focus on public policy solutions that promote child well-being with a focus on our four policy areas: education equity, health equity, juvenile justice and economic justice.

California has often led the way in national reforms and it is clear that leaders around the country will look to California in response to these extraordinary times. Children’s Defense Fund-California is upholding the needs of children as foundational to an equitable and just recovery. I hope you will join us for this important ½-day of conversation and action.

In solidarity,

Shimica Gaskins

REGISTER NOW

Keynote Speaker

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is the president & senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival; Bishop with The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries; Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary; Pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and the author of four books: We Are Called To Be A Movement; Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing; The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and The Rise of a New Justice Movement; and Forward Together: A Moral Message For The Nation.

A highly sought after, speaker, Rev. Dr. Barber has given keynote addresses at hundreds of national and state conferences, including the 2016 Democratic National Convention. He has spoken to a wide variety of audiences including national unions, fraternities and sororities, motorcycle organizations, drug dealer redemption conferences, women’s groups, economic policy groups, voting rights advocates, LGBTQ equality and justice groups, environmental and criminal justice groups, small organizing committees of domestic workers, fast food workers, and national gatherings of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other people of faith.

Rev. Dr. Barber served as president of the North Carolina NAACP, the largest state conference in the South, from 2006 – 2017 and served on the National NAACP Board of Directors. A former Mel King Fellow at MIT, he is currently Visiting Professor of Public Theology and Activism at Union Theological Seminary and is a Senior Fellow at Auburn Seminary. Rev. Dr. Barber is regularly featured in media outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, and The Nation Magazine, among others. He is the 2015 recipient of the Puffin Award and was named one of 2020’s BET 100 Entertainers and Innovators.

Keynote Speaker

Tony Thurmond

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond is responsible for the largest public school system in the nation, with more than 6.3 million students and over 10,000 schools. Since taking office earlier this year, State Superintendent Thurmond has made improving equity, access, and opportunity for California’s public school students his top priority. He has created initiatives that are focused on closing the achievement gap for our state’s most vulnerable students and is dedicated to supporting educators in delivering an equitable education to all students.

During his 4-year tenure in the Assembly, Thurmond authored legislation that successfully expanded the free lunch program, bilingual education, and the Chafee Grant college scholarship program for foster youth. Additionally, Thurmond’s legislation guaranteed preferential voting rights for student school board members improved access to families for early education and childcare, and shifted millions of dollars directly from prisons to schools. State Superintendent Thurmond is a social worker, educator, advocate, and public school parent who continues to work tirelessly on behalf of all students to ensure they reach their full academic potential.

Plenary – Child Well-Being: A Call for Radical Transformation

Moderator: Celeste Fremon
Founder/editor of WitnessLA, is an award-winning freelance journalist specializing in gangs, law enforcement, criminal justice, and education policy.

Dr. Shawn Ginwright
Author and Professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University

Shawn Ginwright, PhD is one of the nation’s leading innovators, provocateurs, and thought leaders on African American youth, youth activism, and youth development. He is Professor of Education in the Africana Studies Department and a Senior Research Associate at San Francisco State University. His research examines the ways in which youth in urban communities navigate through the constraints of poverty and struggle to create equality and justice in their schools and communities.

Dr. Ginwright is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flourish Agenda, Inc., a national nonprofit consulting firm, whose mission is to design strategies that unlock the power of healing and engage youth of color and adult allies in transforming their schools and communities.

In 2011, he was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Senior Specialist award from the State Department for his outstanding research and work with urban youth. Dr. Ginwright is the author of “Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart”, “Black in School- Afrocentric Reform, Black Youth and the Promise of Hip-Hop Culture” and co-editor of” Beyond Resistance!: Youth Resistance and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America’s Youth” and in 2010 he published “Black Youth Rising, Activism and Radical Healing in Urban America”.

Shimica Gaskins
Executive Director of the Children’s Defense Fund–California

Shimica Gaskins has worked in law and public policy specializing in legislative, regulatory and policy issues associated with criminal justice reform and children’s rights. She formerly served as the acting deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). At OLP, Shimica worked to develop and implement innovative policy initiatives of the department and administration in areas such as smart on crime, law enforcement and emerging technologies, prison reform, reentry, and issues affecting children with incarcerated parents.

Prior to joining DOJ, she was in private practice at Covington & Burling LLP where she managed complex civil litigation. She clerked for the Honorable Roger L. Gregory on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the Honorable Victoria Roberts on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Shimica currently is a board member for Impact Justice, a national research center advancing solutions for social justice, and serves as a commissioner on the LA County Commission for Children and Families. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and graduated cum laude with BA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America.

Bettina Love
Author, Professor in education at the University of Georgia,
and Pioneer in establishing Abolitionist Teaching in Schools

Dr. Bettina L. Love is an award-winning author and the Athletic Association Endowed Professor at the University of Georgia. She is one of the field’s most esteemed educational researchers. Her writing, research, teaching, and activism meet at the intersection of race, education, abolition, and Black joy. Dr. Love is concerned with how educators working with parents and communities can build communal, civically engaged schools rooted in Abolitionist Teaching with the goal of intersectional social justice for equitable classrooms that love and affirm Black and Brown children. In 2020, Dr. Love co-founded the Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN). ATN’s mission is simple: develop and support teachers and parents to fight injustice within their schools and communities. In 2020, Dr. Love was also named a member of the Old 4th Ward Economic Security Task Force with the Atlanta City Council.

Dr. Love is a sought-after public speaker on a range of topics, including: Abolitionist Teaching, anti-racism, Hip Hop education, Black girlhood, queer youth, Hip Hop feminism, art-based education to foster youth civic engagement, and issues of diversity and inclusion. She is the creator of the Hip Hop civics curriculum GET FREE.

She is the author of the books We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom and Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South. Her work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including the English Journal, Urban Education, The Urban Review, and the Journal of LGBT Youth.

Michael Tubbs
Former Mayor
Stockton, California

Michael Tubbs was elected mayor of Stockton in 2016 at 26 years old. He was Stockton’s first African-American mayor, and the youngest mayor of any major city in American history. As mayor, Tubbs was lauded for his leadership and innovation. He raised over $20 million dollars to create the Stockton Scholars, a scholarship and mentorship program for Stockton students. Additionally, he piloted the first mayor-led guaranteed income pilot in the country and founded Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

Under his leadership, Stockton was named an “All-America City” in 2017 and 2018, saw a 40% drop in homicides in 2018 and 2019, led the state of California in the decline of officer involved shootings in 2019, was named the second most fiscally healthy city in California and was featured in an HBO documentary film entitled “Stockton on My Mind.”

Tubbs has been named a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics and The MIT Media Lab, a member of Fortune’s Top 40 under 40, a Forbes 30 under 30 All star Alumni, the “Most Valuable Mayor” by The Nation, the 2021 Civic Leadership Award winner from The King Center, and 2019 New Frontier Award Winner from the JFK Library. Previous to being mayor, Tubbs served as a Councilmember for the City of Stockton District 6, a high school educator, and a fellow for the Stanford Design School and the Emerson Collective.

Policy Sessions

SESSION 1
Back to School: Healing, Anti-Racism and Equity After COVID-19 sponsored by The Carol and James Collins Foundation, Institute for Child Success and Stuart Foundation

Christina Altmayer
Senior Vice President, First 5 Los Angeles’s Center for Child and Family Impact
Kanwarpal Dhaliwal
Co-founder of RYSE and Advocate for Policies, Investments, Practices and Research that Enliven Healing, Justice and Liberation
Dr. Sylvia Rousseau
Retired Professor of Clinical Education, University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education
Angelica Salazar
Director of Education Equity for Children’s Defense Fund-California

SESSION 2
Transformative Justice: Dismantling Destructive Models of Economic Stability and Public Safety sponsored by The Angell Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Casey Family Programs and Liberty Hill Foundation

Alfredo Gama
President, Central Alameda Neighborhood Council
Kimmy Maniquis
Executive Director, Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA)
Jyoti Nanda
Associate Professor of Law, Golden Gate University
Dominique Nong
Director of Youth Justice, Children’s Defense Fund-California
Ronaldo Villeda
Youth Advocate, Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC)

Special Remarks

Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson

The Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson is the president and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund. Dr. Wilson is a pastor, philanthropist and activist pursuing God’s vision of community marked by justice, peace and love. He is board chair for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) and vice chair of the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE).

Previously, Dr. Wilson served as president & CEO of Deaconess Foundation, a faith-based grant making organization supporting a movement for child well-being in St. Louis through philanthropy, advocacy and organizing for racial equity and public policy change. Under Dr. Wilson’s leadership, Deaconess constructed and established the Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being which engages with more than 15,000 citizens a year to build power for children and families.

From 2008 through 2018, Dr. Wilson pastored Saint John’s Church (The Beloved Community), an inter-racial, inner-city congregation related to the United Church of Christ. There he led activism on myriad issues while more than quadrupling worship attendance and annual giving. To expand the church’s witness, he established The Beloved Community Conference resourcing social justice ministries and Sojourner’s Truth: Celebration of Preaching Women.

After the police killing of Michael Brown, Jr., with Dr. Wilson’s leadership, the church hosted the #BlackLivesMatter Freedom Ride to Ferguson and served as the welcome center for the #FergusonOctober. In service of community healing, he co-chaired the Ferguson Commission. In 2015, they released the ‘Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity’ Report, calling for sweeping changes in policing, the courts, child well-being and economic mobility. In addition to NCRP and FTE, Starsky serves boards for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Sojourners, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and St. Louis Children’s Hospital. He is an advisor to the Democracy Fund.