Chairwoman Juanita Millender-McDonald
I have known Juanita Millender-McDonald for over 35 years. I knew her before she was the president of the Compton chapter of the NAACP. She contacted me when she became the president and we worked on some projects together. We went on to work on many projects together. When my son ran for the California State legislature, she was involved with his campaign. When her son made an attempt to get back into professional football, my husband who was a professional football player, having played for the Cleveland Browns, helped to connect him with some recruiters in order to get him into professional football. And so we have interacted on a professional level, on a personal level and in so many ways for such a long period of time.
We have been involved in some of the same kind of issues over the years. I can recall, it was not so many years ago when it was revealed that perhaps our government had known about drugs that were being transported from Nicaragua into south central Los Angeles, and, of course, that revelation kicked off a firestorm in this country. Juanita McDonald invited the head of the CIA to come to south central Los Angeles to speak to the people and tell them what he knew about the Contras and about the Sandinistas and our involvement with the drug trade, this government. Did this government turn a blind eye while drugs were being transported across our borders?
It was an unusual event. Never had the head of the CIA been to a community to speak with the people, and people were everywhere. The FBI, the CIA, everybody was standing on roofs all over the place. It was a spectacular event. But that was her style.
Juanita McDonald and I not only worked on that issue in different ways. We have been involved in trying to save Martin Luther King Hospital for a number of years now. This has been a tough, tough battle. This hospital was born out of the ashes of the insurrection of 1965 in south Los Angeles. This is an institution that is so very much needed but is such at risk at this point. This institution has been threatened by the Federal Government to withdraw all of its Federal funds and we have fought day in and day out, month in and month out, year in and year out to maintain the funding from the Federal Government so that that hospital could stay there for people who need it so desperately.
Juanita McDonald has organized many meetings. She has interacted not only with CMS and the Federal Government but all of the county officials. Time after time we have sat before the board of supervisors, imploring them to do everything that they could to straighten out the problems at Martin Luther King Hospital, to work harder, to make sure there was the management and the supervision.
Juanita McDonald cared about health issues. Not only was she involved with trying to save Martin Luther King Hospital, she organized an AIDS walk that took place every year. She and her women's group organized and each year they went to one of the stadiums in the south Los Angeles area and they held their walk. It got a lot of attention, but this was her way of saying to the community, not only do I care about AIDS, I'm willing to put some quality time and attention on this issue. I want you to get tested. I want you to get involved in learning how you can protect yourself from being infected with HIV/AIDS. And so it is just a small example of the care and commitment that she has demonstrated over the years, whether we talk about health care or education or voting rights that she was so very much involved in before she took her leave of absence.
She cared about justice. She cared that this democracy would truly act in ways that supported the proposition that everybody has the right to a decent quality of life. Everybody must be protected by the Constitution of the United States of America. Everybody must enjoy the benefits of living in this great country. And she reached beyond with care for the mother continent of Africa. She was involved in those issues, also.
And so I stand here today to say, Juanita McDonald has taken her place in history and she did it her way. Sometimes we did it different ways, but she knew what she was doing and why she was doing it the way that she did. Her husband can be proud. Her children can be proud. And we can all be proud that we had the blessing and the opportunity to live and work with a woman of substance, a woman who cared, a woman who gave of herself and a woman who left us with dignity, a woman who never complained, a woman who never said, I feel bad, I have pain, I can't do it today. She worked right up until she took a leave of absence just a few days ago.
I am proud to stand here and say that I knew her, that I worked with her, that I have appreciated everything that she has contributed to our great society.
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