As Gloria Molina battles
terminal cancer,
a number of Latino leaders who have known and worked with her for years spoke with LAist about the huge impact she’s had in her years as an activist and a politician.
Molina was “always pushing the Mexican agenda, the Mexican working-class agenda, never forgetting where she came from,” said Antonia Hernández, president and CEO of the California Community Foundation and Molina’s longtime colleague and friend.
Where Molina came from is the Eastside: born in Montebello, which borders East Los Angeles, and later raised in Pico Rivera, the first of 10 children of a Mexican mother and Mexican American father. Those close to her say these roots have grounded her, particularly in her service to the communities she has represented.
In her 23 years as a county supervisor, Molina represented the First District, which stretches from downtown and northeast L.A. into the San Gabriel Valley and includes historic Latino working-class hubs like Boyle Heights, El Sereno, East L.A. and Montebello.
‘No hesitation’
Hernández met Molina in 1974, about eight years before Molina would become the first Latina elected to the State Assembly. Hernández, an attorney, was at the time seeking a Latina organization to join her in a class action lawsuit against L.A. County-USC Medical Center for
carrying out forced sterilizations
on Latinas who were delivering their babies at the county hospital.
Back then, Molina was president of a Latina women’s rights group, Comisión Femenil; Hernández asked the group to join.
“If you become a class plaintiff as they did, and you lose a case, you might be liable for, you know, attorney’s fees and court fees,” Hernández said. “Gloria had no…
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