Honorees Exemplify Community Service, Spirit
By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer
As California’s first Black Secretary of State, Dr. Shirley N. Weber travels the state, reminding people of the power of their votes – and voices. The work seems tailor made for Dr. Weber, a child of the oppressive Jim Crow South.
Dr. Weber was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020 to replace Alex Padilla, whom the governor had tapped for the U.S. Senate as Kamala Harris’ replacement after she was elected vice president. Voters overwhelmingly kept her in the position in 2022. Dr. Weber served eight years in the Assembly before serving in her current capacity.
In 2019, The OBSERVER named Dr. Weber its Person of the Year, mainly for her work demanding police reform in the wake of the tragic death of a local unarmed Black man the year before.
It was during her Person of the Year interview that Dr. Weber first identified reparations as a priority for the California Legislative Caucus. True to her word, a year later she authored Assembly Bill 3121, which led to the formation of the historic California Reparations Task Force. The task force was tasked with exploring ways to compensate for slavery in California and its long-lingering effects on the Black community.
Dr. Weber remains one of the state’s most influential Black women, using her power for the collective good. She took office in 2012 and made a name for herself taking on issues ranging from mental health to voting rights. Dr. Weber (D-San Diego) also successfully passed legislation related to ethnic studies in public schools, racial profiling, police body cameras and improvements to a flawed database that tracked alleged gang members.
AB 392: The California Act to Save Lives was among her shining moments at the Capitol. It was also known as “the Stephon Clark bill,” as Dr. Weber and Assemblymember Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) introduced it in the wake of the March 2018 shooting death of Clark, an unarmed Black man. The 22-year-old father was killed when two Sacramento police officers mistook his cell phone for a gun and shot at him 20 times in his grandmother’s Meadowview-area backyard. Dr. Weber joined the Clark family in maintaining that the young man would be alive if the officers had used better judgment and de-escalation tactics. The police-involved shootings of Blacks and Latinos are often found to be “justified” because of the way California law had been written. The Clark shooting was a tipping point.
“[AB] 392 was a movement,” Dr. Weber shares with The OBSERVER. “It was more than just me, it was the people of California deciding that it was time for change.”
Signed into law by Newsom in August 2019, AB 392 changed the parameters for when California police officers can use deadly force from when it is “reasonable” to when it is “necessary” to prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury to the officer or another person. Even with concessions made to remove police union opposition, it’s still considered one of the country’s strongest use-of-force policies.
Dr. Weber spent more than a year traveling the state drumming up support and convincing her colleagues to vote for it. It was an uphill battle, she admits.
“Legislators are sometimes hesitant to move unless they believe they’re going to have some cover. I’m a little different in that sense. I probably have as much at stake as others in a personal way, but not in a political, career-oriented way as some of the others feel they have,” she shares.
Dr. Weber, a former college professor, was hesitant to call AB 392 her career’s defining moment, but its impact, and the work it took to see it to fruition, wasn’t lost on her.
“My career has been a very long career that has gone in very different kinds of directions at different times,” she says. “AB 392, no question, was probably the hardest bill I’d ever done and may be the most significant for not only the state of California, but obviously for the nation.
“It was a defining moment, I think, for the community and for the Legislature given the opposition that was there. The fact that law enforcement had really staked in the ground in California that they could defeat any bill they chose to … every time there is any change, dramatic change, it occurs as a result of a tremendous effort.”
The victory, she says, wasn’t hers alone, but came as a result of the “voice of the people.” The “movement,” Dr. Weber says, brought a lot of people to political, community and social justice action who may have been previous cynics, but came to realize the power of their voices.
“The forces you go up against to try to bring significant change are well organized and well funded,” she says. “Sometimes people feel overwhelmed by the fact that you can never get anything through. Yet, 392 said when you really are persistent that you can actually move the mountain and you can make a difference.
“[AB] 392 empowered communities because people said it couldn’t be done. They had pretty much counted this out. We forget sometimes the mountains that African Americans have climbed in this country.”
After reflecting on her successes, Dr. Weber set her sights on the work that remained ahead. She ordered an audit of state school funding, arguing that the local control funding formula, which is supposed to funnel money to the state’s neediest students to narrow the academic achievement gap, isn’t being spent as intended.
“We see what’s happening with the money there and it’s not being adequately used for our children who are severely behind. And if I’ve learned anything from 392 it’s that it’s going to take a movement in California to reform its education system,” Dr. Weber says.
Education accountability can be just as contentious as police reform.
“Maybe even more,” Dr. Weber says.
“The labor groups are just as powerful to lock down decisions and people don’t think it can ever happen, that we can’t reform California’s education system, that there can’t be any accountability for our children.”
The educator-turned-lawmaker was determined to show Californians otherwise and to mobilize them for the task.
“Education is supposed to be the new civil rights,” she says. “That’s what people have talked about for the last 10 years – that we’ve done a lot in the area of civil rights, but if you do not adequately reform the education system, folks will still be behind because they’ll be lacking the skills and the knowledge to basically take care of themselves and others and they’ll still find themselves unable to really negotiate the larger society and empower themselves. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not those who believe in social justice also believe that social justice has to do with education and equity.”
Attacks on affirmative action also were on Dr. Weber’s radar.
“It has had devastating effects, not so much in education, but devastating effects in business and contracting for women and people of color.”
Affirmative action would take another hit in June when the Supreme Court struck it down in college admissions. California still is governed by Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action within state and public entities.
Accountability and making sure “folks are doing what they’re supposed to be doing” also was on Dr. Weber’s agenda.
“Oftentimes, we pass bills and then they get to the administrative and bureaucratic level and they decide to rewrite it, redo it or don’t do it at all. … Legislators should be able to hold people accountable for the implementation of the laws in the state of California.”