In this episode, California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about increasing equity and job quality with the groundbreaking California Senate Bill 150.
FEATURING Lola Smallwood-Cuevas
February 20, 2024
39 MINUTES AND 21 SECONDS
In this episode, California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about increasing equity and job quality with the groundbreaking California Senate Bill 150.
About Lola Smallwood-Cuevas:
Since graduating from the California State University at Hayward, Lola Smallwood-Cuevas has had an influential career, working with the Newspaper Guild before co-founding the Los Angeles Black Worker Center. She later went on to become the Project Director for the UCLA Labor Center, where she directed the Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity (CARE) at Work, before becoming California State Senator in 2022, representing the 28th District.
Learn more about Lola Smallwood-Cuevas via https://sd28.senate.ca.gov/biography
Podcast Highlights:
“Far too many of our families are living in poverty, far too many of our families are facing homelessness, food insecurity, and the only way we can transform that is through quality work and particularly working with our union partners and our education partners.”
- California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas on the topic of the necessity of collaboration to achieve meaningful progress for working-class families.
“Our bill ensures that every project that we are building through these climate resiliency funds are built with community benefits agreements and project labor agreements... Our intention is that all of the work, including the manufacturing, will also be supported by this policy... because at the end of the day, our state only does well when all of the workers in our state are doing well."
- California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas on the topic of the relationship between the success of California workers and the success of the state as a collective.
"We have tremendous state agencies that have tremendous resources, some of the most creative minds in this state. And our job [as legislators] is to make sure that we are bringing them to the table, and we're breaking down their silos so that they can come together, share information, maximize their capacity, and do the work that the people of California needs them to do."
- California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas on the topic of the role of legislators in supporting individuals to make change.
Guest:
Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (California State Senator)
Interviewers:
Raiyan Kalam (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Chief Ambassador)
Dinara Godage (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Ambassador)
This is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.edu/
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Learn more about the series and other episodes via https://spp.ucr.edu/podcast.