By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer
The beating of Black Los Angeles motorist Rodney King and the riots that resulted from the subsequent acquittal of the white police officers who injured him polarized the nation, but it pushed Tina McKinnor into action.
“I just didn’t think that the police officers would not be found guilty,” said McKinnor, now a politician representing Assembly District 61, which includes Inglewood and other areas of Los Angeles. “My parents had raised me to think that everything was equal and fair, and so I really was devastated after the trial, the police officers got off and then when the city erupted.”
The year was 1992 and McKinnor’s sons were 2 and 3 years old.
“I thought, ‘Wait a minute, if this can happen to a Black man, this could happen to my two boys.’ So I decided that I would no longer sit on the couch and watch TV,” she recalled. “I voted in every election, I took them into the polls with me, but that’s all I was doing. I wasn’t doing any community work. But after that, I started to do community work.”
Computers weren’t a household thing and there were no websites to search for things to get involved with as there are now.
“My dad told me to contact Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ office. He was like, ‘I know she’s doing something,’” McKinnor said.
Waters invited her to a rally where presidential candidate Bill Clinton was speaking. McKinnor remembers taking her sons with her to the event. It motivated her to go out and register people to vote; her toddler sons carried their own pile of registration cards, happily helping.
“I’ve never sat down since,” she said.
Nearly 30 years later, the 2020 death of a Black man at the hand of a white police officer would have another deep impact on McKinnor. “I really thought a lot had changed until George Floyd got murdered. That was devastating and I looked at my body of work and thought, ‘Oh, my God, I sacrificed everything to make change. I could have gone and made money because you don’t make money when you’re being change agents. You give up your time, you don’t make tons of money. I thought, ‘Well, I stayed and sacrificed upgrading my family’s income to do this work. Did I just do all of this for nothing?’”
Clarity came through leaning on her team at LA Voice, a community advocacy organization where she was the director of community engagement. “We came together, we bonded, we cried, and we loved each other,” McKinnor said.
“And then we got back out there to work.”
A Black Woman’s Touch
Part of the work, she said, is getting people to understand that diversity matters.
“What’s going to change things is the people who are voting. They have the same values; they have to have the values of the people where they can see people are human. ‘I care about my neighbor. I’m not selfish. I’m not going to keep it all for me.’ When you start to elect people like that, you will see a difference in government,” she said. “We couldn’t do it without coming together and learning how to elect people. Once I got that skill, I spread it and I show everybody how to do it.
“And you will see in the California legislature this year that it’s a different kind of political will. The folks that came in, the freshmen, they’re kind of different. There are a lot of progressives. These new elected officials, they get it.”
A historic number of Black women are in state government. The number of women in general is also at an all-time high.
“We have 50 women in the California legislature,” Assemblymember McKinnor said. “I think that alone is also different. Women, we’re mothers, we’re sisters, we’re aunts, we’re grandmothers and we’re used to taking care of the family.
“We’ll address problems differently because we’re used to addressing problems in our households. We’re used to addressing the problems and helping to solve the problems in our community. When you think of Black women at the table, our relationship with the country and with the state, we know it has always been different. We’re not always seen, we’re not always heard and by us starting to run for office now and taking leadership, we will be seen and we will be heard because we’re not quiet.
“People don’t always see us,” McKinnor continued, “but when you get in power, people have to see you and that makes the difference. So we’ll bring those issues and those fights that we’ve been having with this country and with the state forever, right here in this legislature.”
The lawmaker wants to see more Black women in the legislature and has a goal of seeing 12 there simultaneously before she leaves office. She looks forward to the opportunity to collaborate and use the power in numbers.
“We’re not all alike, but when we get together in caucus, especially our organizing caucus, we try to meet and talk about where we intersect with our values,” McKinnor said. “We know that we have the same values around our kids. We want our kids to have a great education. We have the same values around police brutality, we really do. We have some of our members that were police officers, but they still don’t want to see Black men being murdered.”
Equity Advocate
McKinnor in the Assembly has focused on issues such as housing, improving public social services for needy families, and breaking the cycle of recidivism for formerly incarcerated individuals. She also has supported legislation aimed at holding oil companies accountable for high gas prices. McKinnor is an advocate for equal pay for women and is particularly proud of Assembly Bill 1, which would allow nonsupervisorial legislative staff to unionize and collectively bargain for wages and benefits.
“Each office gets a budget,” she said. “As a member, I can pay my chief of staff whatever I deem fit. We have white men making $180,000 here and then when I walked in, as a chief of staff, I only made [$90,000] because now we have people saying what your worth is and that’s not going to work.
“They determine how much you make; the offer comes from the member. We know that as Black women, we’re not always valued the same, so we have to legislate it. You can’t change the hearts and minds of folks all the time and the reason why we have these types of legislation is because we have to make them.”
It’s a cause originally introduced by a fellow woman, former Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego).
“I think we may have the political will to get it passed,” she said.
McKinnor wants to “do all she can do” without burning herself out. In a role such as hers, one carries a lot on one’s shoulders and it can feel like everyone’s watching, wanting something. It’s important to remember self-care while taking care of constituents, she said. It’s a lesson she learned while at LA Voice.
“One of the things that taught me is that you don’t have to work 24/7. You have to do self-care; you have to love on yourself, you have to take care of yourself, you have to take a break,” she said.
McKinnor already has spring and summer vacations planned. She also wants her staff to make the most of Capitol downtime.
“We can’t fight for our folks if we’re not feeling well. [LA Voice] really took that to heart and I just carried that over with me to the legislature because before that I thought I had to work all the time,” she said.
‘I Want To Do All I Can Do’
As a Black woman it’s often ingrained in you to go above and beyond personally and professionally. Listening to former First Lady Michelle Obama’s book on tape has helped McKinnor get perspective. “She talked about the Black woman thinking, ‘I’m not good enough’ and sometimes that drives us to work so hard. Sometimes I think that’s where my work excellence comes from. But I can’t do it if I get too tired and get sick.”
Like “Auntie Maxine,” McKinnor is making the most of her time.
“I’m 58 years old. After 12 years I’ll be 70,” she said, extrapolating her term to the maximum one can serve in the Assembly. “I don’t think I’ll run for another office. I really want to come in here, do my 12 years to help elect progressives, elect some Black women and really go in and change some systemic racism that’s been built into policy around housing, around transformative justice, around the prison system and jobs and even home ownership. I want to do all I can do.”
Each day she enters the inner sanctum of her office, McKinnor is greeted by the other Black women who have served as legislators at the state Capitol. The colorful photos, 21 including her own, stand out against the stark white walls of the space. Some have visited and added their signatures atop their pictures. McKinnor keeps the photos there as both a tribute and reminder.
“I am so honored to just be here,” said McKinnor, who served as chief of staff of several assemblymembers including Steven C. Bradford and Autumn Burke before her election in June.
“There aren’t many people – not just Black women but not many people – who get to serve in the state legislature and be elected by your community. It’s such an honor and a responsibility,” she said.
“Sometimes it’s overwhelming to walk in the shoes of Maxine Waters and Karen Bass and Holly Mitchell, but I’m so honored to do it. Black women don’t stray away from a fight. These women were fighters and I just hope to fight for my community as well as they did.”
Editor’s Note: “A Powerful Sisterhood,” is a series highlighting the contributions of past and present Black women lawmakers in California.