By Kaci Patterson

Kaci Patterson is founder and chief architect of Social Good Solutions and of the Black Equity Collective.

When the pandemic upended daily life across California, it wasn’t state agencies or five-year strategic plans that kept many neighborhoods afloat. It was community organizations — often underfunded and overextended — that mobilized within days to fill gaps that official systems couldn’t.

The numbers tell part of the story. Food distribution through members of the California Association of Food Banks jumped 74% between 2019 and 2020, and direct distribution more than doubled as pantries scrambled to convert their operations into drive-thru and walk-up services almost overnight.

But the real measure of that response shows up in the details. In Ventura County, the Mixteco Indígena Community Organizing Project turned to Radio Indígena, a station already trusted by local farmworkers, to share COVID safety guidance in Indigenous languages that official channels had overlooked. In Fresno, groups such as Centro Binacional took complicated clinical vaccine information and translated it into terms everyday residents could actually use.

In South Los Angeles, the Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program — which had already spent more than ten years building trust with Black-owned barbershops to screen men for chronic illness — shifted almost immediately after the shutdown began to start distributing masks and hand sanitizer to seniors.

No funder drafted a strategic plan for any of that. It happened because people who knew their communities best stepped up, the way they typically do when crisis hits.

Yet that pattern points to a deeper problem. For decades, government agencies and philanthropic funders have poured money into short-term services rather than into the organizations that deliver them. Grants tend to be restrictive, project-specific and rarely cover what it actually costs an organization to operate.

The consequences of that underinvestment are now impossible to ignore. Nationally, 95% of nonprofit leaders say staff burnout is a serious concern, and nearly a quarter report losing more employees than usual over the past year, according to the Center for Effective Philanthropy. In California, a survey by the National Council of Nonprofits found that four out of five organizations are struggling with job vacancies, with tight budgets cited as the biggest obstacle to filling them.

This is what happens when community-based work is treated as an emergency measure instead of essential infrastructure — something to call on only when disaster strikes, rather than something worth building up beforehand. Lasting change requires steady funding and real decision-making power for the communities doing the work, not another temporary relief fund or a grant that expires after 12 months.

The very same organizations that ran vaccine clinics and emergency food distribution during the pandemic are the ones running after-school programs and caring for seniors year-round. Yet they continue to be viewed as short-term partners rather than a permanent part of the region’s safety net.

While the pandemic may feel like a distant memory to some, new strains are emerging, and the inequities are becoming harder to overlook — including much closer to home. When the Eaton Fire swept through Altadena in January 2025, evacuation notices for the historically Black community of West Altadena reportedly went out hours later than warnings issued elsewhere in the area. The California Department of Justice is now investigating whether race, age or disability played a role in that delayed response.

Adding to these challenges are federal funding cuts and a broader retreat from giving tied to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — cuts that are hitting organizations serving Black, Indigenous, immigrant and other historically under-resourced communities especially hard.

As California heads toward its next gubernatorial election, this issue is largely absent from the political conversation. Candidates are focused on affordability and public safety, but few are asking whether the state is prepared to fund community organizations as genuine infrastructure, rather than treating them as outside vendors delivering services on the state’s behalf.

Government and philanthropic institutions should be providing sustained, flexible funding that allows these organizations to build capacity before the next crisis arrives — with the communities they serve given a real voice in how those resources are spent.

The next governor will have to decide whether California is finally ready to treat community care as a cornerstone of public health, or whether the state will keep relying on overstretched service providers to hold things together — and mistake that survival for resilience.

Original source: CalMatters

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In a hotel ballroom in Seattle, at fancy homes in California and at stops in Illinois and Wisconsin over the past week, Biden has been betting that reminding voters about Trump’s presidency and highlighting his Republican opponent’s latest campaign statements will work to the Democrat’s advantage.

At a Seattle fundraiser Friday night, Biden brought up Trump’s recent interview with Time magazine in which Trump said states should be left to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.

“I really urge you to read it,” Biden said.

Biden, who headlined another Seattle fundraiser Saturday before returning to the East Coast, has plenty of other Trump material to draw from, too.

The president highlights how Trump has promised, if elected, to be “a dictator on Day 1”, how he has suggested the United States would not necessarily defend allies from aggression and how he has pledged to “totally obliterate the deep state” in the federal bureaucracy, which he blames for blocking his first-term agenda.

“And he said a whole lot more,” Biden said during a Chicago appearance. “But the bad news is he means what he says. He means what he says. Unless you think I’m kidding, just think back to the 6th of January. This guy means what he says,” referring to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Biden wants the 2024 election to be a referendum on Trump’s record and plans, but he also wants voters to look favorably on his own policies and actions.

Biden and his allies think the country needs reminding about Trump’s tenure and his outlandish and often concerning statements, particularly because the Republican is no longer ubiquitous on X, formerly Twitter, nor is he in front of television cameras as often as he once was.

“Chaos is nothing new for Trump,” Biden said in Chicago. “His presidency was chaos. Trump is trying to make the — the country forget about the dark and unsettling things that he did when he was president. Well, we’re going to not let them forget.”

Biden frequently highlights Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and how he stood by when supporters violently stormed the Capitol as Congress met to certify his loss to Biden. He also points to Trump separating children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border, tax cuts the Republican pushed through that benefited corporations and the wealthy and his repeated efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Biden’s barbs have been getting sharper of late.

He opened his Seattle fundraiser on Friday night by telling donors, “Thank you for the warm welcome. Please keep it down, because Donald Trump is sleeping. Sleepy Don.” That was a riff off of news reports that the former president has dozed off during his criminal trial in a New York courtroom. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges in a hush money scheme to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.

Biden also talks about Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his self-described “love letters” with Kim Jong Un, the authoritarian leader of North Korea.

Biden frequently jabs at Trump for wondering aloud during the COVID-19 pandemic whether disinfectants could be injected or ingested to fight the virus. “That bleach he didn’t inject in his body; he just put it in his hair,” Biden says to laughter every time. “But, look, he’s got more hair than I do.”

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that “their records speak for themselves. President Trump created the most secure border in history and peace in the world. President Trump was the first president in modern history not to enter the U.S. in any new wars. Joe Biden’s weakness has led to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, an immigrant invasion of our border, anti-Semitic protests on our college campuses, and crime and chaos in every American city.”

Trump doesn’t hesitate to criticize Biden and his policies. Trump is spending much of his time lately sitting in court. But before and after the proceedings, he often stands in front of cameras outside the courtroom and goes after Biden.

At a recent Wisconsin rally, Trump mentioned Biden within the first 2½ minutes of his speech and referenced the president or his administration more than 60 times during his remarks.

Trump’s criticism often takes a dark turn. Last weekend, he told donors at his Florida resort that Biden was running a “Gestapo administration.”

The Gestapo was the secret police force of the Third Reich that squelched political opposition generally and, specifically, targeted Jewish people for arrest during the Holocaust. Trump’s unfounded comparison to Nazi-era tactics is part of his effort to deny and deflect the charges against him, most notably his effort to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.

Biden’s strategy is a gamble. Voters are divided in their views of both men’s presidencies.

An April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that nearly half thought Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change. But more than half of U.S. adults thought Biden’s presidency hurt the country on cost of living and immigration.

For all his criticism of Trump, Biden does get around to talking about his agenda and accomplishments. He tells supporters about his work to boost the economy and to bring the country out of the pandemic. He discusses his support for abortion rights even as he highlights how Trump has taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade in part because of his Supreme Court nominations.

“Folks, the choice is clear,” Biden told supporters recently in the nation’s capital. “Donald Trump’s vision of America is one of revenge and retribution.”

“I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s chances,” he went on. “Not because I’m president, because of the state of the moment. The world needs us.”

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