June News from Indivisible Alta-Pasadena
Indivisible Altadena-Pasadena members participated in The Human Chain for Unity in Altadena June 13 to show solidarity with the workers, many of them immigrant day laborers, who are rebuilding the community after the 2025 fire. The multi-sponsor event brought out members of such groups as the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, the Pasadena Community Job Center, the NAACP, My Tribe Rising, Pasadenans Organizing for Progress, Dena Rise up, and other community groups for a day of networking and a festive parade led by Los Jornaleros del Norte along Woodbury Drive in Altadena. The event also helped mark the one-year anniversary of the ICE raids in Los Angeles.
This month 100+ Indivisible CA local groups including IAP opted to form a new State Network. This is an exciting new initiative which will bring together members from across the state to work together in working groups on the midterm GOTV and more. The first of these is a new Detention Center Working Group, including a focus on supporting legislation around detention centers.
Among the key measures are AB 1633 (Haney), which has passed the state Assembly but now must go through the Senate. California cannot stop every detention center from being built, especially if they are on federal land. However, there are ways to thwart them. Beginning January 1, 2027, for instance, AB 1633, the Private Detention Facility Tax Law, would impose an annual tax upon all "private detention facility operators" equal to 50% of the operator's gross receipts derived from the operation of each "private detention facility" in California. If passed, AB 1633 would make it economically unworkable for private companies to operate detention centers in California. The bill is at a crucial point. It has passed the state Assembly, but needs to get through the Senate policy committee and Appropriations panel by July 2nd. AB 1807 (Gabriel) would prevent state resources from being commandeered for federal immigration enforcement purposes. Specifically, this bill would prohibit the use of state-owned property, including, but not limited to, parking lots, vacant lots, and garages for federal immigration enforcement operations such as staging, processing, or detention activities.
Another bill we are supporting is AB 1806 (Gabriel), which would require that the California Attorney General to conduct an independent, transparent, and thorough investigation into any incident involving a fatal shooting of a civilian by federal immigration enforcement agents. You can help by contacting our representative Assemblymember Harabedian, who is a member of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, and asking him to vote YES on AB 1806 at the June 23rd committee meeting.
Leaders of IAP will be meeting with Senator Sasha Renée Pérez and Assemblymember John Harabedian's policy staff during the Legislature’s July summer recess to express support for these and several bills backed by our group and Indivisible CA State Strong coalition.
IAP members also have been supporting Pasadena Privacy’s Deflock Pasadena campaign. The campaign aims to get the Pasadena City Council to terminate the use of Flock automated license plate reader cameras, which track vehicles and store the information in a nationwide database operated by Flock Safety. Despite California’s prohibition on local law enforcement cooperating with or providing information to federal immigration authorities, ICE and CPB have been able to tap into the data and use the information to detain immigrants. Data also has been used to track women seeking abortions out of state in states, such as Texas, which have banned the practice, to identify and track protestors going to demonstrations, including here in California, and in other nefarious ways. You can sign the petition to the City Council here.
In case you missed it, members have been actively blogging on IAP’s website. Recent posts have covered the growing phenomenon of Alpha Schools, which use AI to instruct students instead of teachers, a strategy the Trump Administration is pushing. Another post gives the run down on how the Trump Administration hopes to institutionalize crypto currency corruption by getting Congress to pass The Clarity Act and why you should get active in opposing the bill. Finally, another recent post looks at how the recent military exercises in Pasadena and other Southern California cities may be a dress rehearsal for intervention in the November election under emergency powers that have existed since Dwight Eisenhower was President in the 1950s, but have never been invoked by any sitting President.
If you’re concerned about the wars and increasing militarism, which seem to be breaking out everywhere, join this webinar this Sunday, June 21, at 10 a.m. before heading out for Father’s Day. It’s titled “How to be Anti-War in a Multi-Polar World” and will be hosted by our friends at the Northeast Los Angeles Alliance for Democracy. Frieda Afary, Iranian American librarian and writer, Lisbeth Moya Gonzalez, Cuban dissident journalist, and Tanya Vyhovsky, Vermont State Senator, clinical social worker, and Ukrainian American, will discuss the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, Cuba in the crosshairs, and growing tensions over Taiwan.
Finally, please join the weekly protests at 11 a.m. every Saturday at Fair Oaks and Colorado in Old Town Pasadena that are doggedly organized by our friends at San Gabriel Foothills Indivisible. Bring your best sign, raise your voice, and help remind your fellow Pasadenans and Angelenos that the Trump Administration poses a threat to America that’s simply too grave to ignore.