Wellness That Matters: Black Health News & Community Care
Los Angeles, CA — On Tuesday, June 24 at 11:00 AM, Black Women for Wellness (BWW) and 27 of California’s leading human rights and social justice organizations hosted a powerful press conference in Leimert Park to deliver a unified response to the recent ICE raids and escalating military presence across Los Angeles neighborhoods. Speakers — including respected Black and Latino leaders — emphasized that the attacks on immigrant communities are an attack on all of us, and that solidarity is essential in this fight.
“This is not a press conference for feel-good; this is a press conference because we need a call to action. We have armed, masked, aggressive men coming into our community, snatching people and holding them without warrants or due process. They used to do that to Black folks,” said Janette Robinson Flint, co-founder and executive director of BWW. “We cannot rest on ‘we voted.’ We must do more. The first thing we need to do is get organized. If you are not a part of an organization, join one. We also need to trust organizations because they provide structure and strategy. We need to be inclusive because if they can isolate one group, they can isolate two. And lastly, rest is not a liberation strategy. We may believe we can opt out of this movement, but we can’t.”
Speakers also included Nana Gyamfi (Black Alliance for Just Immigration), Baba Akili (Fannie Lou Hamer Institute and Black Lives Matter Los Angeles), Torrence Brannon-Reese (FAMLI and Malcolm X Legacy Project), Elice Hennessee (CADRE), Vanessa Aramayo (Alliance for a Better Community), Angelica Salas (CHIRLA) and Kevin Cosney (California Black Power Network).
Gyamfi reminded the crowd that one in five Black people in Los Angeles is an immigrant or a child of Black immigrants. “There is no Earl’s [On Crenshaw] without the Trinidadian mama. There is no Marathon without Nipsey Hussle’s dad,” she shared. “We cannot allow anyone to terrorize 20 percent of our community and act like this isn’t also a Black issue.”
Hennessee added, “This moment demands courage to confront anti-Blackness and white supremacy at all times, to reject zero-sum thinking and to choose the hard but necessary path of repair.”
During the press conference, a small group disrupted the proceedings, challenging the coalition’s commitment to immigrant communities — all amidst Black communities’ own struggles with unemployment, housing insecurity, the need for reparations, and the racial tensions that persist between Black and Brown people in South Los Angeles.
LaKisha Camese, BWW’s interim policy director, acknowledged the tension, saying: “While we did have some disruptive attendees, their presence underscores just how high the stakes are. There’s hurt and feelings of displacement on both sides. It reminds us why we must continue to speak truth to power and stay united in this fight.” Despite the brief interruption, speakers stayed focused and resolute, making it clear that Angelenos benefit from solidarity.
“This is about white supremacy and if we feed into divide-and-conquer tactics, they win,” Cosney said. “Part of the reason we wanted to have this conference is to address the ‘92 percent’ conversation and some Black folks saying this is not our fight, right? That was an exact example of why we do what we do. This is why Black folks must take a stand in this moment, even when we’re frustrated. Black and Latino leaders are confronting and addressing the tensions between Black and Brown communities and naming that there is a common enemy that we need to fight against. At the end of the day, we can talk about the jobs that have been pushed out of Los Angeles, and that is real — but it’s not immigrants who are doing that. It’s the corporations, landlords, and developers who are pushing us out, not the people who are taking whatever jobs they can get. We have to call out the real enemy.”
The event, attended by approximately 150 community members, ended on a strong note of collective purpose. BWW and its coalition partners thanked everyone who attended, spoke, and stood firm in their commitment to solidarity.
Watch footage from the full press conference here.
MEDIA CONTACT: Myeisha Essex, Communications Director, [email protected]
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