Class Notes
CHANNELING OUTRAGE INTO CHANGE Angela Glover Blackwell always wanted to help elevate marginalized communities. After graduating from Howard University, she organized Harlem residents to defend their property from the encroachment of Columbia University, and guided Los Angeles’ Black community to participate in the first African Liberation Day in solidarity to end apartheid. When speaking at a rally or community meeting, “I had the ability to get people excited or angry about something unjust,” Blackwell says. But she lacked the tools to channel that outrage into significant change. When a friend invited her to tag along to Professor Jesse Choper’s Constitutional Law class at Berkeley Law, “I was blown away,” Blackwell recalls. “It was so interactive, so challenging. I went straight upstairs to get an application, and the rest is history.” That history includes a decade litigating at Public Advocates in San Francisco, founding the Urban Strategies Council—an Oakland nonprofit that combats urban poverty—and helping fund community-building policy groups as a Rockefeller Foundation vice president. At the foundation, while striving to create opportunity in underserved regions across the country, Blackwell realized that the wisdom, voice, and experience of people working for change in their own community was underutilized. In 1999, she founded PolicyLink to empower local organizations to bolster communities left behind by disinvestment—often because of desegregation. “After Brown v. Board of Education, white people left big cities for suburbs in order to get away from the newly integrated urban schools,” Blackwell says. Over time, she explains, “grocery stores and pharmacies closed, jobs and schools moved further away, and safe water, clean air, and infrastructure were deprioritized. People of color were left behind in resource deserts.” PolicyLink promotes an equitable society that depends on people being able to live near opportunity—which means affordable housing, access to clean water, fresh food, public transit, good schools, health facilities, and jobs. Blackwell’s nonprofit has partnered with hundreds of organizations to rebuild opportunity and advance equity in cities nationwide. Some collaborations were so successful that President Barack Obama adopted them into national programs, such as the Healthy Food Financing Initiative, the Promised Neighborhoods Program, and the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The winner of numerous honors, including UC Berkeley’s 2017 Peter E. Haas Public Service Award, Blackwell is troubled by recent regressions in many facets of inclusion and equity. Nevertheless, her long view remains optimistic. “There’s a powerful force building that is generous and inclusive and visionary,” Blackwell says. “That is our future.” —Rachel DeLetto 38 TRANSCRIPT SPRING 2019
UCLA, titled “Lessons Lost: The Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.” The lecture, which includes a discussion of John Henry Boalt, can be viewed on YouTube or C-Span.
1976
Therese Foley was appointed to a judgeship in California’s Kern County Superior Court. A solo practitioner since 1989, she served as a deputy county counsel at the Office of the Kern County Counsel in 2010. Nerissa Shklov Skillman was honored with the Council on Legal Education Opportunity EDGE Award for her demonstrated commitment to education, diversity, and greater equality in the legal profession.
1979
Mark LeHocky, a mediator and arbitrator, has joined ADR Services, Inc., as well as the faculty of UC Berkeley’s Haas Graduate School of Business.
1980
Maria Echaveste was elected to the board of directors of
PETER DASILVA (BLACKWELL)
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL ’77