As a result of Rodney King ‘s LAPD beating & the 4 acquitted LAPD officers.
Est. 1992 at UCLA & at Charles Drew University. UMMA 1st opened as a free clinic in the wake of the 1992 Riots.
Muslim medical students from UCLA work with Black political leadership from South LA to establish the UMMA Free Clinic, the first Muslim run clinic near Florence and Normandie.
With the housing crisis of the 90s, people were priced out into the Inland Empire and Antelope Valley. Mass incarceration played a role during the late 80s and 90s and deindustrialization caused many to seek work outside of South LA.
The 1992 Uprising spurs a tentative truce between several Bloods and Crips factions. A six-billion-dollar investment program called Rebuild L.A. is created, promising 74,000 new jobs in South Central. But these jobs do not materialize, and the program shuts down within a year.
Established after 1992 LA uprising
South LA leads the resistance against a sustained assault on the poor, people of color, and the disenfranchised, waged by policy and narrative shifts at the federal and state level in the 1990s. Nationwide, the Republican Party is seized by the right wing Gingrich Congress who pass a “Contract on America,” to establish extreme right wing policies, while the Democratic Party puts the Presidency in the hands of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, whose leaders reject New Deal social safety net and identification of the Democrats with Blacks and minorities. Together, they pass a massive crime bill, welfare reform, and immigration reform, gutting the social safety net and increasing deportation. The State of California follows suit, with the prison guards union becoming the #1 contributor to Legislative campaigns and steering billions of dollars to expand incarceration. California voters approve propositions to adopt 3 strikes laws and sentence minors as adults, end affirmative action and bilingual education, deny undocumented immigrants access to hospitals and schools, and ban gay marriage. In South LA, People on Welfare won major campaigns to address the failures of welfare reform and led a statewide coalition against the drug felon ban. South LA emerges as the hub of cross-racial organizing after the 1992 LA Uprising, is home to thousands of low-wage immigrant janitors who revitalize the national labor movement by winning new contracts, while forming new institutions dedicated to leadership development and civic engagement. The political center of the State of California is shifted and over the next 2 decades, pro-immigrant, pro-labor, pro-gay policies become mainstream. The foundation gets laid to begin reducing criminalization, recognize trans people and discrimination, and the need to address environmental racism — issues that persist into the new century.
While waiting on UMMA’s construction to be completed, students collected donated equipment & Councilwoman Walters, raised more than $1.3 million in funds.
SAJE, Est. 1996.
SALEF, Est. 1996.
UMMA sees its 1st patient. UMMA becomes a non-profit with its 1st Board of Directors.
UMMA Free Clinic sees its first patient and later becomes a Federally Qualified Health Center and is renamed as UMMA Community Clinic.
1998: A New Way of Life Founded
Passes restricting services to undocumented immigrants including public education to children (held unconstitutional in 1997)
CD Tech Est. 1995
Community Health Centers established after 1992 LA uprising
Rebuild LA established to coordinate post-Uprising public-private response
L.A. Alliance for a New Economy, Est. 1993.
Neighborhood Land Trust, Est., 2002.
Black and Brown’s communities are subject to structural forces that lead to displacement from their neighborhoods and their countries and South LA residents continue to bear the brunt of the lack of public and private sector investment and employment security. For African Americans, the War on Drugs and criminalization policies push thousands from homes and into prisons. Thousands of Black middle-class residents are priced out of the neighborhoods of South Los Angeles through a housing bubble while the failure to address addiction, crime, and the under-investment and quality of public schools pushes many Black families out of South LA and to far-flung parts of the region and other Counties. Meanwhile, structural adjustment policies and free trade agreements push residents from Mexico and Central America out of their neighborhoods and into forced migration streams, including thousands of indigenous migrants who speak no English or Spanish and are victims of labor exploitation and discrimination from lighter skinned, Spanish speaking immigrants. Without legal status in the US, and inserted into the low-wage labor market, many of the new waves of immigrants settle in the City’s poorest and densest neighborhoods in South Los Angeles. Together, these forces accelerate the changing demographics of South Los Angeles.
All of Us or None Founded to organize formerly incarcerated and convicted people
Muslims community saved UMMA from closure, donating $400,000 in one evening.
L.A. Community Action Network, Est. 1999
Prop 22 Bans Gay Marriage in CA (’00); 9/11 (’01), Patriot Act (’01-’02);
USC / South Park / LA Live Projects bring disproportionate investment. L.A.
Gender and Sexualities Alliance Network, Est. 2001
LA Voice Est., 2000.
LAUSD, Division of Student Health & Human Services, Est. 2000
Advancement Project Est. 1999
A New Way of Life Est. 1998
Investors & speculators begin buying up land, property values start to rise.
Center for Powerful Public Schools Est. 2005
South L.A. has the largest number of prison releases in the city. Even though the area contains 10 percent of the city’s population, it is home to one out of four of its prison parolees. (KCET)
The L.A. police department responds by putting an injunction against the Bounty Hunter Bloods in 2004 and the Grape Street Crips in 2006, forbidding gang members from gathering. While homicide rates eventually drop, residents criticize police for making countless wrongful arrests. (KCET)
One in four African-American men are found to be sent to prison in their lifetime; California also has the largest number of female prisoners in the U.S.—the majority of whom are mothers of young children.
Ban the Box campaigns launched by All of Us or None
South LA Farm Closes; HB 4437 (Sensenbrenner Bill) seeks to criminalize undocumented immigrants); Massive Immigration Moblizations (2006); 500,000 to 1 million people oppose immigration law and support immigrants
PERE – USC, Est. 2007.
Worksite Wellness L.A. Justice Coalition, Est. 2007.
T.R.U.S.T South L.A., Est. 2005.
L.A.’s Promise Est., 2003
Coalition of Community Health Centers, Est. 2003.
The largest economic collapse since the Great Depression wipes away community wealth and leads to massive extraction of assets from poor people in communities like South LA. Hundreds of thousands of people nationwide lose their homes in foreclosures or the equity in their homes, but these are disproportionately Black, Brown, and poor people, many of whom had been targeted by banks and speculators with predatory loans. A slow recovery of private sector jobs fails to dent double-digit unemployment in communities like South LA and public sector employment levels are kept low, as a result of the Great Recession. Immigration from Mexico reaches a net of zero.
Trump Administration approves final permit for Dakota Access Pipeline; Trump Administration issues new immigration enforcement policies; Trump Administration proposes $18 billion in domestic spending cuts
UMMA is recognized by President Obama at a White House reception. UMMA was also invited to testify before the U.S. congress on healthcare reform
UMMA is the 1st Muslim American org. designated as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), a special status awarded by the U.S. government.
Dignity & Power Now, Est. 2011
UMMA expands its facility, doubling its capacity to serve the community
Social Justice Learning Institute, Est. 2008
Black Worker’s Center Est. 2012
Obama signs Ban the Box executive order for federal jobs
The two-term Presidency of the country’s first African American President leads to a sustained campaign by conservatives to undermine the legitimacy of his Presidency and harbor white nationalists, who eventually ride a wave of racist nationalism to elect Donald Trump President. In the first 3 months of his Presidency, Trump rolls back climate protections, authorizes oil pipeline projects that threaten the Native sovereignty and the environment, proposes $18 billion in domestic spending cuts, and attempts to institute a travel ban against refugees and entry by immigrants from Muslim-majority countries. With control of both houses of Congress, the ruling Republican Party attempts to pass legislation to strip more than 20 million Americans of health coverage secured through health care reform legislation signed by former President Obama.
CA and LA County drastically reduce the use of solitary confinement in youth detention
UMMA receives a federal grant to expand their behavioral health services to the South L.A. community.
2014: UMMA is certified as a Patient Centered Medical Home).
UMMA opened its school-based Wellness Center & Community at Fremont H.S.