At USC, Diverse Movement Leaders Come Together to Warn California's Political Crises Might Be Just Beginning
- hermespadilla5
- Apr 2
- 3 min read
LOS ANGELES — The applause hadn't finished echoing in USC's Town and Gown ballroom Tuesday night when Dallas Goldtooth broke the fourth wall.
"Clapping is colonial," the Dakota/Diné comedian cut in, pulling the evening towards humor to deliver a
message: the authoritarian tactics already devastating communities in Southern states, including Tennessee, Texas, and Alabama, are coming for California, and progressive strongholds may be less
prepared than they think.
The event, the public portion of the two-day Assembly Justice Symposium hosted by USC's Equity Research Institute, brought together environmental activists, labor rights organizers, and Indigenous activists to model cross-movement solidarity long present in the Southern United States. But beneath the celebration lay an urgent warning from Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, the Tennessee-based organizer who opened the panel.
"We actually told y'all this was coming," Henderson said, describing how Southern states have long served as laboratories for right-wing policies now being nationalized. "Stephen Miller is practicing, accelerating all of the stuff that he's put in Project 2025."
Her message was direct: progressive states watching ramping federal immigration raids, voter disenfranchisement and environmental deregulation should not expect the South to remain static while they catch up.
"If you thought what they did in L.A. was bad in the last 12 months, you ain't seen nothing yet," Henderson said.
Darryl Molina Sarmiento, executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, seconded the warning with specifics. She detailed how streamlining climate-related projects and gutting environmental reviews—particularly attacks on the California Environmental Quality Act—would allow toxic facilities to flood already burdened communities. The same communities facing environmental racism, she noted, are those now targeted by ICE raids.
But alongside the warnings, the evening centered collective power as a hopeful response. Goldtooth said collective power was the answer. Mutual aid networks and distributed communication systems emerged from decades of separate struggles—from Black Lives Matter to oil pipeline resistance—and are now being activated by new communities facing ICE raids, the activist said.
"We've laid the seeds," Goldtooth said."And as the fire is crossing, those seeds are coming to their fruit."
The panel also offered concrete evidence of unity as one answer. Sarmiento described recent victories the opposition "did not expect,” such as ending oil drilling in Los Angeles by passing a 3,200-foot buffer zone around drilling statewide, and securing a $550 million settlement from Chevron in Richmond.
"They didn't think we had the power to change the elected officials," Sarmiento said. "They didn't think we had the power to mobilize the people."
Pablo Alvarado, co-director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the Eaton Fire is a clear example. When the fire devastated Los Angeles County in January 2025, day laborers became "second responders," clearing thousands of pounds of green waste without city permission and building a volunteer relief brigade that grew to more than 1,000 people.
In the relationships forged through that mutual aid, ideology was "completely irrelevant," Alvarado said. —The relationships became critical when ICE raids began months later, he said..
"We have made a lot of friends," Alvarado said. "So when the raids hit, we could call for adoption.”
Henderson closed with a challenge to the Los Angeles audience.
"You don't need to come down south to save the endangered Southerner,” she said. “We are all right. But what you could do is believe us when we tell you it's bad, and go ahead and stop it."
Lucy Zepeda, program administrator for USC Arts Now, whose program seed paper installation anchored the evening, distilled the methodology into a simple instruction for attendees: "Write what solidarity means to you, pin it, take somebody else's," she said.
The installation provided participants with pencils with tomato plant seeds at the bottom, an intentional act allowing unity to fruit in months.
“I think the current work is connecting the story between all these struggles and understanding they share a common source,” Goldtooth said. “We’re not just fighting against something—we’re fighting for something.”
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