At the Multi-faith ACTION Coalition, our core work is to research topics and potential policy changes that can reduce the impact of poverty on our neighbors. That means that we regularly identify pieces of state legislation that warrant support; we then call on advocates in our constituent faith communities to take action by contacting their elected representatives.
The bills listed here follow our faith teachings and promote fairness, equity, and more opportunities for low-income residents. We send messages to Contra Costa Senators and Assemblymembers, and ask them to vote for them when they come to the floor. (Instructions on how to contact your elected representatives come after this list of bills.)
SB 81 (Arreguin) – Health and care facilities: information sharing
Federal policies and actions have stoked fear among immigrants across California. This deters people from accessing the health care and essential services they need due to the possibility of arrest, surveillance and family separation by immigration agents. SB 81 seeks to safeguard access to health care for all Californians by protecting people’s immigration status and place of birth information from being shared with immigration authorities, and prohibiting immigration agents from accessing the private spaces of health care facilities.
SB 518 (Weber Pierson) – Descendants of enslaved persons: reparations
This bill provides an opportunity for the state to correct the historical neglect and disenfranchisement experienced by Black Californians, fostering equity and social justice. SB 518 is an essential component of the broader effort to address the economic, social, and legal inequalities that continue to affect this community today. Building on the findings and recommendations of the California Reparations Task Force, SB 518 creates a state agency to verify lineage and facilitate access to reparative programs. By ensuring that descendants of enslaved people receive recognition and targeted benefits in housing, education, and economic opportunity, this bill takes a critical step toward dismantling institutional barriers and advancing justice for Black Californians. We support SB 518 because it reflects a commitment to justice, equity and opportunity for an important community that has been disproportionately harmed by historical oppression.
AB 49 (Muratsuchi) – Schoolsites: immigration enforcement: California Safe Haven Schools Act
The threat of federal immigration officials coming onto school grounds to detain undocumented students or family members casts a shadow of fear over all California students. Students cannot learn if they are living in fear of being deported or separated from their family members. This bill is necessary because children should not be afraid to come to school, and parents should not be afraid to send their children to school.
AB 57 (McKinnor) – California Dream for All Program: descendants of formerly enslaved people
AB 57 acknowledges and addresses the systemic barriers that have prevented descendants of enslaved people from achieving equitable access to homeownership. Homeownership is a cornerstone of wealth building and this bill is an important step toward ensuring that this historically marginalized community has opportunities to close the wealth gap and achieve economic stability. We support AB 57 because it reflects a commitment to justice, equity and opportunity for an important community that has been disproportionately harmed by historical oppression.
AB 62 (McKinnor) – Racially motivated eminent domain
This bill seeks to review, investigate, and make determinations regarding claims for compensation from individuals who assert ownership of property taken due to racially motivated eminent domain. We believe it’s important to support this bill as it recognizes the impact of unjust property takings on communities and aims to provide compensation to those affected by racial discrimination.
AB 1229 (Schultz) – Adult Reentry Grant Program
This bill would restructure the existing Adult Reentry Grant program (ARG) that currently receives ongoing funding to pay for rental assistance and warm hand-off reentry services to individuals who have exited state prison. These changes to ARG are modeled on successful programs in other states to increase housing stability and improve public safety. Restructuring ARG would enable the state to take a significant step in solving homelessness among people on parole.
Calls to ACTION
Our legislative calls to action for you this month (August), as individuals, are these
- to ask your Assemblymember to support one or both of the MFAC-supported Senate bills (SB) when they come to an Assembly Floor vote (between August 25 and the September 12 legislative deadline), and
- to ask your Senator to support any or all of the MFAC-supported Assembly bills (AB).
- You can also go on to ask your Senator to support other Assembly bills and ask your Assemblymember to support other Senate bills, such as the ones in the MFAC Racial Justice Task Force’s Watch List, which is made up primarily of bills on the California Legislative Black Caucus’s reparations-related legislative priority list.
How to take ACTION
If you’ve read this far, maybe you’ve decided to take action. Great! Here’s how.
- Look up your Assemblymember and Senator in this 2025 East Bay Legislative Delegation document (provided by East Bay Housing Organizations)
- The Senator for Brentwood, Christopher Cabaldon, was omitted from EBHO’s list.
- Click on that legislator’s name in the EBHO list to go to your legislator’s website. Office locations, phone numbers, and fax numbers should be on the home page, at the bottom.
- Decide how you want to deliver your message. Phone calls are fine. Alternatively, you could print and sign a letter, then mail, fax, or hand-deliver it.
- Email is also an option, but please use the legislator’s website for this purpose.
- Look for a “Contact me” or “Email me” option in the menus on the legislator’s website.* This should bring you to an online form to fill out with your name, address, and phone number.
- If there is a “Select an Issue” box, select “Bill comments” or something similar. (Currently, Senator Grayson’s form won’t let you select an issue in the “Select an Issue” box.)
- Please give the bill number and the word SUPPORT in the first line.
- Even better, give bill number, bill author, bill topic or name (which you can cut and paste from the list above), and the word SUPPORT. You can cut and paste text from the MFAC bill statements into the Comments box, or compose your own reasons.
- Then end with something like “Please vote AYE on AB 49!”
It’s best to do this one bill at a time, rather than include multiple bills in the same email. If your Senator is Grayson or Cabaldon, who sit on the Senate Appropriations Committee, you can end with something like “Please vote AYE on AB 49 in the Appropriations Committee and on the Senate Floor!”
*It’s a bit tricky on Senator Grayson’s website. You can either click “Menu” (upper right corner of home page), then “Contact”, or scroll to the bottom of the home page and click “Contact.” Then find and click “Email Senator.” What pops up is a Meeting Request form. Scroll down below it to find the Email Senator form.
All six of the MFAC-supported bills are in Appropriations Committees right now, during the summer recess, which ends on August 18. Some will make it out of Appropriations for Floor votes, and some may remain stuck in Appropriations. You can wait for an update, but why wait? If you support a bill, you can ask your representative to vote for it even if you don’t know whether it will get out of Appropriations.
