This year’s Black History Month theme, African Americans and Labor, reflects on the significant role that the hard work of Black Americans has had in building the foundations of the country and its infrastructure and in shaping the America we know today.
The theme also highlights the diverse ways labor intersects with the collective experience of Black people.
On this week’s “In Focus SoCal,” host Tanya McRae looks at how one nonprofit organization is empowering Black business owners and entrepreneurs to thrive and succeed.
Meisha Carter and her husband started their cleaning service company in the 1990s, but it got put on the back burner for about a decade while they bought and flipped homes. With the help of the Southern California Black Chamber of Commerce, the couple received encouragement to restart it.
“With the resources that we were given by the Black Chamber, they just showed us how to do our website, make sure everything was in order, our banking, our name, our logo,” said Carter.
The Southern California Black Chamber of Commerce has 15 chapters, with over 300,000 members. It has supported over 5,000 businesses and offers networking opportunities, workshops, seminars and business development programs.
Sharifah Hardie is the president of the Long Beach chapter and has had a successful career in business, marketing and technology.
“I’m passionate about helping Black businesses because when you look at any list that matters, from home ownership to business ownership to land ownership, even to marriage and generational wealth, Black people come at the bottom of that list,” said Hardie. “So it’s my goal to connect business owners to the resources that they need to change their lives and their lives of generations to come.”
Also on this week’s show is Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, vice chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. After the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out in January, Bryan introduced two new bills.
One bill proposes a one-year rent freeze across Los Angeles County, and another aims to raise the hourly wage for incarcerated firefighters to match the lowest wage for non-incarcerated firefighters in the state.
Bryan spoke about how the wildfires were not a partisan issue.
President Donald Trump in January threatened to withhold federal disaster aid for LA unless California leaders changed the state’s approach to its management of water.
“California taxpayers, red, blue and independent, pay $83 billion more in federal taxes than we get back. We subsidize many places around the country and we have always stepped up when there’s a hurricane in Florida or a hurricane that rocks Louisiana or a tornado ravages through Texas and surrounding states. We are there for you,” said Bryan. “And when California experiences a crisis like we’ve never seen, what has occurred here in the Los Angeles region, all we are asking for is the same kind of disaster support than we have been given to others.”
Brandon Lamar, president of the Pasadena chapter of the NAACP, also joined McRae for Black History Month.
He discusses ongoing efforts to help families displaced by the Eaton Fire and the need to make sure those families can rebuild back in Altadena.
“It’s important that we stay here because, especially in that community of Altadena that has burned up, predominantly African American families’ homes are actually gone. And this was generational homes that were passed down through generations, in a time, in a place where Altadena was a space where only African Americans could buy homes,” said Lamar. “We’re trying to keep that momentum going so that families can actually rebuild inside of their communities.”
Send us your thoughts to InFocusSoCal@charter.com and watch at 11 a.m. on Saturdays and 9 a.m. on Sundays.
