Sonoma County Human Rights Commissioner Currently Under Investigation With FPPC for Giving Herself a $2,500 Grant to Lead 40-Mile Walk Supporting Passage of HR 1511
Raizes Collective Executive Director & Human Rights Commissioner Isabel Lopez Paid Herself a $2,500 Commission Grant to Lead a March While Apparently on DUI Probation
Ms. Maria ‘Isabel’ Lopez has simultaneously served as Executive Director of Raizes Collective while serving as a Commissioner on the Sonoma County Human Rights Commission.
On August 4, 2023, Ms. Lopez sent a $2,500 invoice to the attention of the Human Rights Commission on behalf of Raizes Collective. She requested a sponsorship payment for supporting a 40-mile March on August 5-7 from Petaluma to the Federal Building in San Francisco. The project was sponsored by the Northern California Coalition for a Just Immigration Reform March to Push for HR1511.
On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, the Sonoma County Human Rights Commission Meeting Minutes stated:
AD HOC COMMITTEE AND PROJECT COMMITTEE UPDATES
Immigrants' Rights Ad Hoc reported on The Registry Bill that would allow immigrants to apply for green cards if they lived in the U.S. for 7 years and are in good standing. Mujeres from ALMAS organized conferences and the next step in this campaign is a march on August 8th, 2023, from Sonoma County to San Francisco then followed by a National Boycott on August 9th. Commissioner Lopez is attending and will represent the Commission in the Coalition.
Because Ms. Lopez appeared to utilize her position as a Commissioner to provide herself with funding, I reported her to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for the apparent conflict of interest. As of December 13, 2023, the FPPC opened a case which is actively being investigated further:
On August 12, 2020, a “Maria Lopez” (Isabel Lopez) was arrested for drunk driving after her car plowed into a parked police car. CBS News Bay Area reported:
“The crash happened Wednesday at around 9 p.m. in the area of Cleveland Ave. and Ridgeway Ave. where police were assisting with traffic control during a fire, according to Santa Rosa police.
An officer had arrived at the scene and parked his marked vehicle with the patrol lights on. Moments later, a white Hyundai Accent smashed into the patrol car’s rear driver’s side quarter panel.
The officer was slightly injured and taken to a local hospital where he was treated and released.
The Hyundai’s driver was identified as 39-year-old Maria Lopez of Santa Rosa. Police said Lopez exhibited objective signs of intoxication and was determined to be driving under the influence of alcohol.
Lopez was arrested and booked into Sonoma County Jail DUI causing injury. She was not injured.”
Ms. Lopez appeared to be sentenced with a felony and placed on formal probation through November 10, 2024. She missed many consecutive meetings while incarcerated. It is unclear as to why she has been continually appointed to serve on the Commission while simultaneously serving her probation period.
On Tuesday, January 26, 2021, the California Arts Council published the following bio about Ms. Lopez in their meeting minutes:
Lopez, Isabel; Raizes Collective; Santa Rosa, Sonoma
Inspired by artists, students, and professors involved in the social justice art community during her time at Sacramento State University, Isabel Lopez founded Raizes Collective in Santa Rosa in 127 [Return to Table of Contents] June 2015. The nonprofit was created out of a need to have dedicated spaces and programs for intergenerational, family-friendly art among the bi-lingual, bi-cultural community in Sonoma County with a mission to empower people through art, culture and environmental education. Raizes has had a remarkable level of success for its young life. A slate of over 90 art and cultural workshops and events have been produced and implemented by Lopez throughout 20 institutions, organizations and schools throughout Sonoma County. Lopez holds a bachelors degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing and has been an ACE’s & Resiliency Master Trainer for the Sonoma County Human Services Department since April of 2017. This great momentum has made it possible to transition from a volunteer-run organization to a nonprofit with Lopez becoming the first Executive Director in June of 2019 with help from the California Arts Councils’ Cultural Pathways grant program.
Being that Ms. Lopez’s nonprofit was newly formed just prior to the inception of the pandemic, she was tasked with seeking additional funding sources.
An anonymous Board Member of Raizes Collective forwarded me internal financial records and requested confidentiality out of fear of retaliation. Income statements indicated that Raizes Collective only possessed $31,633 as of 6/30/2020. Raizes’ income increased to $372,411 as of 6/30/2021 and $409,558 as of 6/30/2022.
During the pandemic, Ms. Lopez was featured in the CDC’s Engaging Arts and Culture for Vaccine Confidence booklet - A Guide for Building Programs and Creative Campaigns.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Raizes Collective developed the Novel Artist Health Equity COVID Campaign, which employs local artists to create artwork that raises vaccine confidence in their local communities.
A press release issued by Community Foundation Sonoma County stated the following:
Raizes Collective: bringing together art and medicine for community health
Since local coronavirus infections were first detected in spring 2020, Sonoma County’s Latinx community has been disproportionately affected. Comprising roughly 30% of our population, Latinx people were hit with more than 60% of Covid infections over the last year.
Although several local organizations worked to offer education and vaccines to this marginalized population, many continued falling through the cracks. In response, a collaborative venture established the first in what grew into a series of outreach and education events in February 2021: the Novel Artist Health Equity COVID Campaign.
Among collaborators was Santa Rosa based nonprofit, Raizes Collective.
“It was an obvious inequity, in terms of access to vaccines,” says Raizes Collective founder and Executive Director, Isabel Lopez. “I saw that there wasn’t enough messaging focusing on the communities who have been historically disenfranchised; people who don’t speak English. People who can’t even read and write.”
Earlier in the year, Lopez had coordinated essential worker vaccination clinics in West County. In the process, she connected with numerous essential workers that didn’t speak English, and didn’t have access to health care. Between the gaps in access and Lopez’s experience witnessing the power of art and cultural work to engage disenfranchised communities, she began organizing artists to help get information—and vaccines—into the Latinx community.
The resulting project, Novel Artist Health Equity COVID Campaign—which Community Foundation Sonoma County recently supported with grant funds—is the exact type of community building work you’d expect to see Raizes Collective doing in the community. Lopez founded the collective in 2015 with the mission to “empower and mobilize community through the arts, culture, and environmental education.” She says at the heart of the collective is the commitment to draw these facets together to offer artists and teachers of color the resources of space, programming, events, shows, and activities to affect social change through community building.
For the COVID Campaign, Lopez brought together nine local artists, four of whom live in the 95407 zip code in Roseland, which at the time represented the Santa Rosa area’s highest number of active COVID cases. The artists developed art and messaging to engage the community and to demystify the vaccine for those who didn’t otherwise have access to education about it or didn’t have access to the vaccine itself.
“We started in February on Valentine’s Day, holding an action of love,” says Lopez.
That first event in Roseland was a success and included music, healthcare workers offering resources and referrals to health services, free art prints, and more. From there, Lopez and others began organizing a series of community-based pop-up vaccine clinics, and between 100 to just over 200 people were vaccinated at each event. Both Sutter Health and Kaiser have participated and administered vaccines.
Each event was organized through collaborative efforts that created a strong sense of community. One, in particular, was especially meaningful to Lopez.
“There were about 30 nations from different indigenous tribes in groups that came together to just share dance and song and drumming. Leaders from the Lakota nation flew out to participate and share,” says Lopez. “It was medicine in a different kind of way; through sharing culture and coming together.”
The event inspired local indigenous folks to continue the outreach with their own families and friends.
“For me, it was also a way of bringing in trusted messengers, so that they could lead, to empower people in reaching out to their own communities about how to stay safe, especially for indigenous communities,” says Lopez. “Because it’s about survival and our future generations.”
The event series continues to have ripple effects, with collaborators continuing to plan events as well as create art, videos, and more to bring awareness to the importance of vaccines. Lopez says that local youth have also been involved with creating art and messaging on buttons and stickers and have even learned how to silkscreen shirts for the program.
“They’ve created t-shirts with the word pontelo, which in Spanish means ‘put it on.’ And that can mean either put on the vaccine or put on your mask, whatever you want it to mean,” says Lopez. “It’s up to people’s interpretation.”
As Sonoma County and the rest of California begin opening up, there’s a misconception that the pandemic is over. Yet Lopez sees the importance of continuing the events and continuing to support the Latinx community in getting vaccinated. There are several Novel Artist Health Equity COVID Campaign events planned throughout the summer, and Lopez hopes to secure additional grant funds to ensure those working behind the scenes to make these events happen can get compensated for their time.
“It wasn’t me coming up with a strategy and then bringing it down to the bottom. All of what we do comes from the bottom, and it goes to the top,” says Lopez. “It’s bottom up, which is such a shift from the traditional organizing models that you experience institutionally. And that’s the beautiful thing about this, it comes from the community, and it was brought about collectively.”
On March 12, 2021, Nor Cal Public Media shared the following article:
West County Health Centers hired Isabel Lopez in December to help get people signed up for the vaccine.
"The state system to register them is only in English, and it's not very user friendly, and you have to have an email in order to sign up," Lopez said. "And there's even elderly people that aren't able to sign up because they're not tech savvy."
Lopez, the Executive Director of the Santa Rosa nonprofit Raizes Collective, said she quickly realized how hard it was for Spanish-only speaking residents to navigate the vaccine process. 65 percent of the county's COVID-19 cases have been in Latinx communities, but only 18 percent of Latinx residents have been vaccinated.
Signing up for the shot isn’t the only problem. Lopez also received panicked phone calls with questions about the safety of the vaccine. Lopez knew the county’s generic messaging wasn’t reaching her community.
"And for me, I always resort to art right as my go to, to try to solve issues that I see in my community," Lopez said. "We need pictures, we need visuals."
Lopez reached out to nine artists in Santa Rosa to help create simple, powerful messages about the vaccine in Spanish. Like Martin Zuniga, a local artist and educator.
"I came up with a kind of a slogan, one word idea, which is like 'pontela,'" Zuniga said.
Zuniga painted slogans like “put it on” and “the vaccine cures” onto t-shirts and Lotería cards, from the Mexican bingo game. He knew it would be familiar to his community.
"I love his work," Lopez said. "I love the concept of turning art, like, nothing into something."
And it wasn’t just Zuniga’s art that spoke to Lopez. He’s also from Mexico and worked as a farmworker when he first arrived in Fresno, California in the late 1970’s.
In addition to creating art for the campaign, Zuniga goes with outreach workers and doctors to farms to answer questions about the vaccine. He mostly goes to make sure the farmworkers feel comfortable. As an artist he never thought he would be working to convince people to get a shot.
On the other hand, Dr. Brian Prystowski has been convincing parents to get their kids vaccinated for a decade as a pediatrician in Santa Rosa. But the use of art was eye opening.
"These artists in Raizes Collective are geniuses," Prystowski said.
Prystowski jumped in to help answer medical questions and plan events for the Art Vaccine campaign, like its first showcase on Valentines Day in Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood. The group gave away thousands of posters, banners and Lotería cards, answered questions about the vaccine and urged folks to sign up.
"You're propelling this section of our community to actually consider getting vaccinated in a way that all over the country, people are like, 'how do we reach people?' You just empower them," Prystowski said.
Lopez is planning to hold another event on April 3rd to showcase more vaccine art and get Lainx residents signed up for appointments.
And when he’s not creating more artistic messages, Zuniga’s continuing to go out to farms to urge agriculture workers to sign up for appointments.
"This time around, I have to step into shoes that I haven't worn in a long time," Zuniga said.
It was odd that our community selected a sentenced felon with multiple DUI charges to educate fellow Latinos about best practices for their health.
According to the court dockets, Ms. Lopez was booked into jail on April 1, 2022, one month before the American Rescue Plan Act funding allocation for Raizes Collective were recommended by Sonoma County Equity Officer Alegria De La Cruz.
Mr. Martin Zuniga is the spouse of Santa Rosa City Schools Trustee and former Sonoma County Equity Officer Alegria De La Cruz. As indicated on Ms. De La Cruz’s statement of economic interest, her spouse is a paid artist through Raizes.
Ms. De La Cruz, Mr. Zuniga and Ms. Lopez appear to share a mortgage together.
Conversations between Supervisor James Gore and Ms. De La Cruz have raised some eyebrows. The text messages below were received from a public records request filed with the County of Sonoma. The discussion references dissatisfaction regarding vaccination rates of farmworkers, winegrowers leveraging their money and matching investments. Sonoma County Board Supervisor Lynda Hopkins is also mentioned towards the end of the thread.
Further communications between Sonoma County Supervisor Gore and Equity Officer De La Cruz mention The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds on several occasions. Per the County of Sonoma’s website, “the federal government allocated $96 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to Sonoma County ” The Equity Office played a role in supporting the equitable distribution of American Rescue Plan Act funds with an emphasis on supporting the needs of underserved communities. If the board accepts the funds but takes no budgetary action, the ARPA funds are restricted until budgeted by the board. Supervisor Lynda Hopkins is also referenced in several of these messages. Per Best Best & Krieger Law, “conversations, whether in person, by telephone or other means, between a member of a legislative body and any other person do not constitute a meeting (Section 54952.2(c)(1)). However, such contacts may constitute a “serial meeting” in violation of the Brown Act if the individual also makes a series of individual contacts with other members of the legislative body serving as an intermediary among them”. In this situation, Equity Officer De La Cruz could potentially be considered an intermediary, therefore in violation of The Brown Act.
In March 2021, Sonoma Magazine published an article detailing the history of Ms. De La Cruz’s life:
“She was 11 when the family moved to Boston. The real estate agent helping them find a home looked at her white mother and Mexican-American father, and suggested that he not join them when it came time to look for homes.
As “a little Chicana” from California, De La Cruz was “a fish out of water” at her public school in Milton, Mass. But she hit her stride, as a student and athlete, at Thayer Academy. When financial aid officers at the private school south of Boston reviewed her application for assistance, they ‘wondered if there was a zero missing from our tax docs, because my parents made so little from the UFW,’ she recalls with a smile. ‘I was a scholarship kid all the way.’
The current annual tuition for Thayer is nearly $58k per year. 82.6% of the students are currently Caucasian.
In June 2015, Author Katy Grimes published an article titled: “In Cahoots” – The Illegal Relationship Between ALRB Lawyers and the UFW
One of the most significant labor relations fights in the country is currently taking place in California’s Central Valley. The California state agency mandated by law to be an impartial farmworkers’ advocate between employers and unions is “in cahoots” with the United Farm Workers labor union. At issue are the legal tactics and scruples of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.
A state superior court judge told an Agricultural Labor Relations Board attorney in 2013 that it appeared they were “in cahoots” with the United Farm Workers labor union. Even an independent investigation has confirmed that this is so.
Since being appointed ALRB General Counsel in 2011 by Gov. Jerry Brown, Sylvia Torres-Guillén has transformed her office from ineffective but impartial workers’ advocate to a hive of United Farm Workers activist attorneys.
That advocacy is against the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which mandates the ALRB to be completely impartial between employers and unions. By openly favoring the UFW, Torres-Guillén and her staff are violating the law.
A study of the ALRB activist lawyers’ professional conduct and social networking shows that some of Torres-Guillén’s attorneys have lifelong relations with the UFW in ways that threaten the board’s credibility and authority.
As far back as August, 2013, California Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Y. Hamilton, Jr., took ALRB Regional Director Silas Shawver to task for working overtime to stop farmworkers from voting on whether or not to decertify the UFW as their collective bargaining representative.
Judge Hamilton accused Shawver of “overreach” of his legal authority in trying to stop the vote. “So the Court is very suspect of, one, the ALRB’s position here,” Hamilton said. “It almost seems like it’s in cahoots” with the UFW. “And the Court finds it very troubling that the ALRB is taking such a position, especially sitting in a prosecutorial role,” he told Shawver, who is a lawyer. “That is a role you should not be taking when you sit as a prosecutor.”
A search of publicly available social media sites and donor records show close personal relationships between ALRB lawyers hired under Torres-Guillén, and the UFW, and UFW-related causes.
Torres-Guillén, in her present position as ALRB General Counsel, was the keynote speaker at the UFW’s 50th anniversary gala in 2012. Perched before a Cesar Chavez portrait, she pledged to the union that she would “regain their trust.” Speaking at a 2015 forum marking the 40th anniversary of the ALRB, Torres-Guillén quoted glowingly from Chavez.
Photo 1
One popular photo shows ALRB attorney Jessica Arciniega, ALRB Regional Director Alegria de la Cruz, and ALRB General Counsel Sylvia Torres-Guillén in a celebratory photo with UFW attorney Mario Martinez and a UFW organizer who is giving the thumbs-up. (photo 1)
Arciniega was Facebook friends with UFW Vice President Armando Elenes. She is shown in a photo on the UFW’s Facebook page as a leader of a UFW street protest, carrying the union’s red banner. (Photo 2) Another photo shows Arciniega wearing a UFW nametag. (Photo 3; Arciniega is at right)
Photo 2
The ALRB has two regional directors, both of whom are attorneys: Alegría de la Cruz, who runs the Salinas office; and Silas Shawver, who heads the office in Visalia. Both worked together on the California Rural Legal Assistance. A report filed with the California superior court alleges that Shawver is the godfather of de la Cruz’s child.
Salinas Regional Director Alegría de la Cruz: 3rd generation UFW
A third-generation UFW supporter, since childhood de la Cruz has been steeped in UFW activism and organizing. She is the granddaughter of the late Jesse de la Cruz, an early female organizer of the UFW a half-century ago. Both her parents “were also well-known and active UFW organizers,” according to a 2013 complaint
Photo 3
before a California superior court by Anthony Raimondo, an attorney for farm laborer Francisco Napoles. “In fact, her parents met on a campaign for the UFW and later married,” Raimondo said. “When speaking of her upbringing, Ms. De la Cruz boasted that her parents ‘were both organizers and raised four kids in the movement. By the time I was old enough to walk and talk, I was doing outreach in front of supermarkets, collecting signatures on petitions.”
A photograph posted online shows de la Cruz as an infant, being held in Cesar Chavez’s lap. (see Photo 4) Her brother appears on another social media page with a large UFW logo tattooed across his back.
In the 2006 CRLA Annual Report, de la Cruz recalled her relations with UFW founder Cesar Chavez when she was a seven-year-old child:
“Tell me who your grandparents are, Alegría,” Chavez would ask her repeatedly, pointedly, as if preparing her for an exam. “My parents, they’re farm workers – and organizers.”
“Your parents, who are your parents?”
“My parents are organizers.”
Photo 4
“What about you, Alegría? What are you going to be?”
“I don’t know,” she’d say, a typical response of any child age 7 or so.
But he wouldn’t let her off that easy.
“I’ll tell you, Alegría. You’re going to be a lawyer. Because the next step to organizing is the law. We need people who understand where we come from to be lawyers, judges, and legislators.”
Alegría de la Cruz did just what Chavez predicted and grew up to become a lawyer. While ALRB Regional Director in Salinas, de la Cruz was Facebook friends with UFW Vice President Armando Elenes. She donated to a Kickstarter.com project to make “Cesar’s Last Fast,” a documentary lionizing UFW founder Cesar Chavez. De la Cruz argued in front of Judge Hamilton to force the UFW contract on Gerawan employees, while a thousand of the workers were outside the courtroom opposing it.
De la Cruz operates a separate Facebook page under the pseudonym Valencia Gael. On that page, she is friends with UFW Vice President Armando Elenes and UFW President Arturo S. Rodriguez.
ALRB Visalia Regional Director Silas Shawver’s UFW ties
On his Facebook page, Shawver is friends with UFW National Vice President Armando Elenes, former UFW regional director Gustavo Aguirre, UFW labor organizer Yolanda Chacon, UFW representative Eri Fernandez, UFW external organizer Reyna Madrigal Castellanos, UFW organizer Maria Gallegos Martinez, UFW organizer and campaign coordinator Jennifer Hernandez, UFW organizer Lupe Martinez, and UFW Foundation Executive Director Diana Tellefson.
David Bacon, a former UFW organizer who is now a writer for Al Jazeera and who has covered the Gerawan farmworker controversy for the Qatar-owned propaganda outlet, is also a Facebook friend of Shawver. (The Qatar government and ruling royal family ban labor unions in their country.)
Shawver’s Facebook page says he lives in Mexico City. His Facebook friends are not visible to those who are not among his 710 listed friends.
Photos of Shawver on a former girlfriend’s Flickr page show the ALRB attorney performing acrobatics while wearing a UFW shirt. (Photo 5)
Those photos have become the subject of a YouTube video and animated graphics casting doubt on Shawver’s impartiality as an ALRB regional director and attorney.
Photo 5
Torres-Guillén’s UFW activist hiring strategy
ALRB General Counsel Torres-Guillén’s strategy to hire UFW loyalists in her rapidly expanded staff of lawyers first came to light in 2013. In a situation similar to the better-known Gerawan Farming union decertification controversy, workers at Arnaudo Brothers, a San Joaquin Valley asparagus grower, tried to fight the resurgent UFW after the union had abandoned the farmworkers for nearly three decades.
Francisco Napoles, a field laborer at Arnaudo Brothers, petitioned the state superior court to block the ALRB from forcing a UFW contract on him and his fellow workers. In his court filing, Napoles alleged that “the ALRB has adopted a specific hiring strategy to staff the Regional Offices with individuals who are closely aligned with the UFW, and in some cases, tied closely to each other, for the purpose of creating a closed cadre of individuals who will pursue a pro-UFW agenda.”
He specifically referenced Alegría de la Cruz, whose behavior he described in the complaint as very similar to the behavior subsequently documented about de la Cruz’s comrade regional director in Visalia, Shawver, in his campaign against Gerawan workers.
Napoles’ petition showed information that “longer term [ALRB] staff who have been willing to align themselves with the UFW’s organizational goals have done so to protect their careers, while those who refuse to be beholden to the UFW are marginalized and/or forced out of the agency. As a result, the ALRB has created a culture at the Regional Office where protecting the UFW is considered one and the same as protecting the rights of farm workers.”
Does the executive team of Raizes Collective seek prosperity for their ‘gente’, or wish to sell them out alongside Caucasian Democrats in order to bankroll their nonprofit? Do any of these folks have an actual job or do they prefer to siphon tax dollars from those who actually pay into the system?
Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”
-Hebrews 13:5
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I can only say, I pray that the Trump administration does serious corruption audits on the entire non profit industrial complex. All of it. Its clearly almost completely corrupt. Assigning yourself a grant to walk for charity is disgusting.
Everyone knows that your "anonymous Board Member" is your crony Madonna Feather Cruz, the same unnamed former Board President you attacked Trustee De La Cruz over