By Dianne Anderson

As the Big Election ramps up unhinged, hate surges across the state and nation, requiring more talk, and especially more action.

Going into the November elections, Dr. Regina Patton Stell hopes anti-hate events like the one coming up will expand awareness and increase the political energy to make a difference where it counts the most.

On Saturday, June 1, the Civil Rights Institute of Inland Southern California invites the community out for discussions and to hear panelists address issues of safe hate crime reporting, personal testimonies, and community resources. The event, sponsored by LULAC, the NAACP, and CHIRLA, will be held at 3933 Mission Inn Avenue, Ste 102., runs from 1:30 – 6:00 p.m. Refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Stell said the NAACP as a whole, and its many local branches, have not slowed down in dealing with growing hate and discrimination complaints, something happening so frequently that she can hardly keep pace.

“It’s huge, it’s sad to say it’s worse than in a long time, it’s so prevalent now,” she said. “I probably have four open cases of racial offenses that have happened. We have so many cases we can’t close them out before another comes in,” said Dr. Stell, president of the Riverside Branch NAACP.

Her branch has received some anti-hate funding from the state to advocate and reach out in the months ahead. Other groups, such as Center Against Racism and Trauma (CART) started by Assemblymember Dr. Corey Jackson, and also Antiracist Riverside, which she co-founded along with Janice Rooths, and Leah Stuart, are all pressing to strengthen community impact ahead of the elections.

She said the insurrection has increased dangerous rhetoric and is working against civil rights, requiring everyone interested in Democratic action to step up.

Votes will be critical, not only for the Presidential seat, but local elections are needed to push back against some great losses of late, including the loss of voting rights and other civil liberties under the fallout of the Trump Administration.

“We’ve already started, we’ve had several town halls, I’m working with the Democratic Party as well as the NAACP branch. My biggest effort is that I’m working with Divine 9 once a month. We have members tracking [a voter database] of how many voters we need in Riverside County and where we need them,” she said.

NAACP is a nonpartisan effort focused on voter education, but it’s no secret that she is a member and involved with the Democratic Central Committee. She works with all nonprofits, recruits candidates, develops them on that committee, where the group assists them if they want to run for office.

“That’s the change lever,” she said. “You have to get involved in politics, in matters of who sits on school council, on boards, it’s the only way we’re going to change things.”

Her commitment is also generational. Her parents worked the elections, she worked elections in Washington DC, and her grandparents worked the polls.

Supporting good representation on school boards is the next battlefield, she said. The far right is making a big showing in school systems and hate is manifesting in other ways across the political spectrum, including women’s rights.

“People are comatose, almost. If we don’t wake up and do what we need to do and shake it up, there’s a razor-thin margin, we haven’t seen paralysis or stagnant [yet]. Women in the country never thought they would not be able to have abortions. They are going to come out and vote,” she said.

University of Colorado Boulder 2022 research estimates that if abortion bans continue and go nationwide, it would result in more women dying. They project that maternal deaths overall will rise by 24%, but for African Americans, it would be even higher at 39%.

Sharon Green, CEO/President and founder of Victor Valley Family Resource Center, said the upcoming anti-hate event is urgent to open dialogue to shed new light and spur action.

Pastor Green, also a board member of the Civil Rights Institute, said her own agency had a prolonged fight against the City of Hesperia over a crime-free ordinance that was used to target Black and Brown residents with housing discrimination. Along with the American Civil Liberties Union, they fought against the ordinance in VVFRC vs. The City of Hesperia, and they won.

As a result, those same types of housing discrimination ordinances are now banned statewide.

Her agency, which provides supportive reentry services and housing for formerly incarcerated, has seen success. However, when she moved one of her five homes into an almost all-white area, she was hit with $1,000 a day fines.

Altogether, she faced $60,000 per house because she refused to close their homes, which is when the ACLU came in.

The hate was also thick at council meetings where she endured racist slurs and, and there were references from city council members that they didn’t want “those criminals and cockroaches” in their neighborhood.

“You can’t tell someone that you’re housing that they can’t have a place to live. They’ve paid their debt to society. They’re getting back on track, [without it] almost guarantees they’re going to recidivate,” said Green, also a board member of the San Bernardino County Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness.

Her program success rate is high at about 85% for their reentry clients, who are getting and keeping jobs, and transitioning into permanent housing.

For the upcoming event, her excitement is on the strong focus of inclusion and diversity, but also on educating the community that racism and race hatred still exist, now more blatant than in many decades.

“If we don’t come together in this country and handle that, we’re going to end up back where this country started,” she said.

For the Riverside NAACP, see https://naacpriversidebranch.org/

For AntiracistRiverside https://www.antiracistriverside.com/

For the Civil Rights Institute, see https://www.inlandcivilrights.org/

For more information, see https://vvfrc.org/