“Our theory of change is that everyday people pooling their power and being strategic can change the trajectory of development in their community and the development of their society. And our work is to prepare people and involve people in that process. We take the position that history doesn’t happen, history is what people make happen – and we want to be those people.”

-Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Community Coalition

Twenty years after the Civil Unrest, Michele Prichard of the Liberty Hill Foundation interviewed social justice leaders in Los Angeles to discover lessons that could be learned regarding the 1992 Civil Unrest in Los Angeles and how these leaders went on to connect community organizing, leadership development, coalition - building, and electoral engagement into a powerful force for social change - using the civil unrest as a departure point.

The results, LA RISING: The 1992 Civil Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today’s Movement Building  was issued in a report and published by Liberty Hill, and the USC Equity Research Institute, headed by Manuel Pastor.  

We are proud to post this important collection of interviews on the Activist Video Archive in hopes they will be watched, analyzed and used by journalists, filmmakers and activists to further enhance and deepen the story of progressive Los Angeles.  

Michele does a wonderful job touching all the political bases in conducting these interviews and we thank her for working with us to make them available. And finally, we thank the activists themselves who continue to provide the progressive political sub-structure of our city. 

Michele focuses on five areas exploring building social justice movements in Los Angeles before and after L.A. Rising.

• Strategic Alliances and how groups worked together across sectors.

• How organizers built and developed the leadership of their organizations.

• How groups worked or were in alliance with labor, and in the electoral arena to enhance their programs.

• How organizers developed their program initiatives and infrastructure.

• The role of funding in building the organization.