Staying True to Your Mission in Uncertain Times

There are plenty of people who specialize in crisis communications, supplying colorful dispatches from conflict zones, advising candidates in heated political races and seeking to mitigate gritty public scandals. And although I did work for California’s governor during a very public, and very ugly, recall election, today I do a far different, and frankly far tamer, type of communications work.

I head external and internal communications for First 5 LA, whose mission is for all children to enter kindergarten poised for success. As a nonpartisan public agency that is accountable to both public officials and the public at large, we nearly always stay out of the fray of politics.

Nearly always.

In 2017, when the new presidential administration announced dramatic changes to the nation’s immigration policies that immediately changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States, we had to make a choice. We had to make it deliberatively and quickly, navigating a blurry line in terms of our role in protecting all young children of Los Angeles while also remaining as politically neutral as possible.

First 5 LA is an independent public agency with a goal to support the safe and healthy development of young children so that by 2028, all children in L.A. County will enter kindergarten ready to succeed in school and life.

Our mission at First 5 LA is to advocate on issues impacting young children, like education and health care, not on immigration issues.

But we don’t work in a vacuum. To be effective we need situational awareness of policies and politics affecting our target demographic. External situations often affect the communities we serve, and this time it was happening on a large and very serious scale.

The moment the Trump Administration announced its new directives, Los Angeles and California were thrust onto the international stage when suddenly they were faced with a federal policy that impacted local policies. It would have been absurd for an organization whose mission is to serve the children of the ultra-diverse Los Angeles region to publicly ignore these seismic shifts in national immigration policy. 

Many of our staff quickly called on First 5 LA to speak out. After all, politically-oriented groups around the country quickly took to social media and began churning out press releases vociferously deriding the Trump Administration. Other nonprofit child advocacy organizations were looking to First 5 LA for a cue about how to move forward.

We do engage in the political process, to lobby government leaders on policies and practices that benefit young children. 

But vocal public advocacy technically was outside our scope as an organization. At the same time, to say nothing also seemed outside of our responsibilities to protect families and children in the heart of a region deeply affected by the new policies. One in six California children has at least one parent residing in the U.S. unlawfully from either an expired visa or illegal border crossing, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

According to The Children’s Partnership and California Immigration Policy Center, even before the Trump Administration’s actions, immigrant families already faced barriers to enrolling in programs and accessing services for their children. Parents often do not apply because they fear that enrolling a child in public programs could affect their application for legal status or could allow personal information to be shared with immigration authorities.