Speaker Karen Bass presented the Rainbow/Push Coalition’s Truth and Justice Award to journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee at the Coalition’s 11th Annual Awards Dinner in Beverly Hills on Friday, November 13. Ling and Lee grabbed national headlines when they were captured by North Korean police while working on a story on human trafficking along the Chinese-North Korean border. They were sentenced to 12 years hard labor for trespassing and “hostile acts.” After 140 days of imprisonment, former president Bill Clinton secured their release.The event, hosted by Rainbow/PUSH Coalition founder Reverend Jesse Jackson, also honored Sir Elton John, former Los Angeles Laker Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, television producer Shonda Rhimes, recording industry pioneer Al Bell and Bishop Henry M. Williamson.
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On October 22 Speaker Bass attended Community Coalition's 10th Annual Gala. Karen founded CoCo in 1990 to empower South LA residents to get involved in bringing about change in their community. She was proud to honor Alberto Retana with the "Keeper of the Flame" Award. Alberto is a long-time CoCo community organizer and friend Karen's, and he is now off to Washington, DC to work in the Obama Administration!
Speaker Bass was recently featured on the Greening of California special on KABC! The televised event was held at the Milken Institute, and was hosted by Eyewitness News anchor David Ono. The expert panel also included State Senator Alex Padilla, David Allgood (CLCV), economist Howard Kurtzman, Andy Lipkis (Tree People), and Jonathan Parfrey (Green LA). We will post the video when it becomes available. For now, click here to see photos!
Speaker Bass recently joined Mayor Villaraigosa and Assemblymembers Pedro Nava, Ted Lieu, and Tony Mendoza for a news conference discussing the Banking and Finance Committee's first field hearing on AB 1588. This bill would create the Monitored Mortgage Worko...ut Program, which would provide for state-appointed monitors to ensure that homeowners have a chance to work out a plan with their lenders to prevent home foreclosure. Such monitors are critical to the Obama Administration’s Making Home Affordable Modification Program, and will be an important step towards ending the foreclosure crisis and keeping Californians in their homes.
On October 2, Speaker Bass joined Governor Schwarzenegger, City Council President Eric Garcetti, California High Speed Rail Chair Jim Earm, NRDC's Joel Reynolds, Assemblymember Kathleen Galgiani, and many other leaders for a press conference in support of California's application for federal stimulus dollars.
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Los Angeles Magazine: Bullied Pulpit
A state in financial free fall. A shifty governor. A budget that bludgeons the poor. Welcome to the hard-knock world of Assembly Speaker Karen Bass
By Ed Leibowitz
Los Angeles magazine, October 2009
For the past year Assembly Speaker Karen Bass has led a political life fraught with irony. A lifelong activist, Bass won an assembly seat in 2004 representing California’s 47th District, which encompasses both a slice of South L.A. and the Hillcrest Country Club, then was sworn in as Speaker last year—just as the state sank into insolvency. In the struggle over the 2009-10 California budget, she fought to make the holes in the social safety net less gaping, only to witness Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger use line-item vetoes to cut foster care, AIDS prevention, health insurance for underprivileged children, and services for kids with special needs. This month those cuts, as well as many the Speaker did approve, will take effect. Bass is 55 and divorced but still active in the lives of her four former stepchildren. She spoke at her Mid Wilshire offices about the governor’s interpersonal skills, the human costs of California’s collapse, and what drives her.
As Speaker of the California Assembly, Karen Bass has the second most powerful job in the nation's largest state. And, much like another powerful African-American in government, she got started as a community organizer. Bass, 55, worked for years as a grassroots activist in South Central Los Angeles advocating for the poor. Since winning an Assembly seat in 2004, and being elected Speaker in 2008, she has continued to do so. While visiting Washington, D.C. for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference, Bass spoke with ESSENCE.com about how community organizing prepared her for government, the tough compromises she's had to make, and what's next for her.
Dick Price from LA Progressive recently wrote an article in California Progress Report about Karen's participation in the Urban Issues Forum town hall! Excerpt:
Speaker Bass, an early and ardent supporter of Obama’s presidential bid, took a harder line. “We’re not going to let the right-wing fringe hold back this train to reform healthcare in our country and make the United States like every other industrialized country on the planet.”
“How is it that we’re the richest country on the planet and we can’t figure out how to provide healthcare for our population?” she continued. “There are many countries around the world that don’t have nearly the wealth that our country has but somehow—because they have the will, because they have the commitment—they have decided that no one in their society will be without healthcare. I think it’s high time that we do the same thing.”
Bass’s background before becoming an elected official lent special weight to her words. Before 1990, she worked for years as a nurse in neonatal intensive care units around Los Angeles, including County General. Then, later, she became a physician’s assistant, working in County’s trauma unit where critically ill and injured patients would wait hours for care after waiting for hours at private hospital and being turned away because they lacked health insurance.
The Ventura County Star ran an editorial last weekend about the Healthy Families legislation brokered by Speaker Bass. Excerpt:
Under the category, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Assembly lawmakers decided Thursday to put aside their differences so more than 600,000 children across California could keep their health insurance.
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“Everyone stepped up to the plate — Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly and Senate, the health plans, the state First 5 Commission, and the governor and his staff in working to secure votes,” said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, author of the bill. “The families of these kids are now one signature away from finally being able to breathe a sigh of relief.”
