Sky Allen is the Special Projects Manager for Inland Empowerment in the San Bernardino and Riverside counties of Southern California. Born, raised and educated in the region, she strives to empower communities to fight for what they need by challenging institutional systems and chipping away at structural issues at the local level to change policy. In her current role, Sky fosters relationships with local government officials, partner organizations, and institutions to bolster civic engagement. She leads Inland Empowerment’s redistricting work and coordinated their 2020 Census outreach effort. Sky first began serving the Inland Empire community as a fellow with the Warehouse Worker Resource Center after graduating from UC Riverside with a BS in Business Administration with a Concentration in Management and a Minor in Ethnic Studies.

Denise Herd is the Institute's third Associate Director, a longtime member of the Institute’s Diversity and Health Disparities research cluster, and a Professor of Public Health at UC Berkeley. Herd’s scholarship centers on racialized disparities in health outcomes, spanning topics as varied as images of drugs and violence in rap music, drinking and drug use patterns, social movements, and the impact of corporate targeting and marketing on popular culture among African American youth. In addition to her extensive scholarship in public health, Herd has also served as associate dean at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health for seven years.

Art Reyes III is the founding Executive Director of We The People. He was born and raised in Flint, MI, and hails from three generations of proud UAW members. Before WTP, Art was the training director at the Center for Popular Democracy, where he led national training programs for organizers, lead staff, and executive directors. He spent much of 2016 working in Flint responding to the water crisis and helped launch Flint Rising. Previously he led Michigan Voice, a statewide civic engagement organization. He has a BA from the University of Michigan and an MPP from Harvard, where he taught a community organizing class with Marshall Ganz. He’s filled with random facts about the state of Michigan and has a gigantic puppy named Kona the Coney Dog.

Phi is the Litigation Director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. She focuses on impact litigation in the areas of voting rights and immigrant justice. Since joining Advancing Justice-Atlanta in early 2017, Phi has helped block a Georgia state law that restricted voters’ right to an interpreter at the polls and represented a class of Vietnamese immigrants suing the federal government over the indefinite nature of their detention in ICE prisons.

Phi graduated from the Georgia State University School of Law in 2009 and practiced as a medical malpractice trial lawyer for eight years before dedicating herself to community-centered civil rights litigation. Growing up in the South as a Vietnamese American with refugee parents, Phi's life experiences formed into her passion to protect and expand the civil rights of AAPIs and other marginalized communities. Phi was introduced to Advancing Justice-Atlanta in 2016 when she partnered with them to lead Vietnamese Voices, a voter registration drive targeting Vietnamese Americans; this became a jumping off point for further grassroots efforts to politically mobilize AAPI communities. Outside of her legal practice, Phi co-produces Wake Up, Atlanta, a web series dedicated to educating and civically empowering AAPI millennials in Georgia.

Take this as a warning: WE ARE DONE being ignored and done being last. We demand vaccinations. Healthcare. Financial relief.
Because while COVID-19 itself is incapable of distinguishing the melanin in my skin, we can’t say the same is true for YOU.
But who are we, and who are you?
We are Latinx communities, who comprise 55% of all confirmed COVID-19 cases in CA, but only 39% of California’s population. We are Black communities, three times more likely to die from COVID compared to white people. We are Indigenous communities, who have the highest actual COVID-19 mortality rate nationwide. We are the BIPOC bodies you refuse to vaccinate.
You are the greedy death-enabling capitalist system putting profits over our lives.
You are the generations of unhinged persecutions against our humanity.
You are the racist systems put in place to harm us.

But, WE ARE DONE. We will fight for each other because, WE GOT US.
COVID Relief NOW!

Inspired by @osopepatrisse and the @crenshawdairymart