California’s Covid Cashflow

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is deploying a “Covid-19 Workplace Outreach Program” to channel $25 million in state tax dollars to far-left political groups,” reports Katy Grimes of the California Globe. The Covid outreach program was created in 2020 to address pandemic “workplace concerns” but Gov. Newsom kept it going when he lifted lockdown in 2023. The funding runs through 2029 and flows to “community based organizations.” According to Assemblyman Carl DeMaio there’s just a bit more to it.

“They’re not Covid-19 or healthcare experts,” the San Diego Republican told the Globe. “They are not workforce safety experts. They are a political organization.” For example, the Alianza Coachella Valley holds political candidate forums and lobbies on legislation and the Alliance for Californians Community Empowerment promotes rent control. The Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project and Center for Community Advocacy, “funds illegal immigrants to fight the federal government to stay in this country.”

DeMaio found that Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE) “engaged in ballot harvesting during elections,” and wondered how that political activity squared with workplace safety. By its own account, the “prophetic” organization “mobilized over 700,000 voters” in 2016 and the group still opposes the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation, Proposition 13, passed by California voters in 1978.

The COPE website shows members proudly flashing the clenched-fist salute. So does the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) founded in 1972, when Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution was murdering millions. The CPA, “organizes and empowers the low income and working class immigrant Chinese community in San Francisco to build collective power with other oppressed communities to demand better living and working conditions and justice for all people.” The Covid workplace “outreach” program provides income for this group and the Imperial Valley LGBT Resource Center, recently rebranded as the Donnelly Community Services Center.

This bastion of “far-left progressive ideas,” is concerned about Assembly Bill 1955. That measure lifts the requirement of state employees to disclose information on a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including to the student’s own parents. Founder Rosa Diaz is concerned with “quickly recommending people to gender-affirming care.” Profiles of Diaz list no medical qualifications of any sort.

The Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ICIJ), also on the Covid workplace list, “engages in policy advocacy, community organizing and education, and rapid response to ICE and border patrol operations.” The group also supported Assembly Bill 60 which granted driver’s licenses to “undocumented” Californians – code for illegals, who are actually false documented. The ICIJ also supported Senate Bill 54, California’s sanctuary law.

Also on the Covid funding list is the Central California Environmental Justice Network, which aims to “educate Kern County residents about the negative impacts of fracking.” The CCEJN also engages in advocacy efforts to change the oil and gas extraction practices and for the “adoption of more stringent regulations at the local and state level.”

For its part, the Mixteco Indígena Community Organizing Project aims to “support, organize and empower indigenous migrant communities” through “community organizing and policy advocacy.” The group will “continue to advocate for additional state-held dollars and expanded considerations for undocumented Californians.” (emphasis added) Also on the Covid outreach program is the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) which “organizes the low-wage and immigrant Pilipinx communities in the United States. The PWC “organizes  a progressive  Filipino voice,” through “coalitions and mobilizations.”

And so on, straight-up political activism of the left in general and Democrat Party in particular. For DeMaio, “there is nothing wrong with being a political organization, but with their own money – not taxpayer money.” As it happens, funding the left with taxpayer dollars is a longstanding practice in the Golden State.

As California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1995-2003, Bay Area Democrat Delaine Eastin gave away more than $20 million to a network of “Community Based Organizations” (CBOs) including Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. That group was headed by Bert Corona, billed as a “visionary leader.” In reality, Corona was a Stalinist whose activism for the Communist Party USA went back to the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

Corona had no college degree but gained a post teaching “Chicano Studies” at Cal State LA. When Corona and other part-timers were dismissed, the Los Angeles Times recalled, “a fire was set outside department head Louis Negrete’s office and his car was set on fire in his garage at home.”

Delaine Eastin gave the CBOs millions in grants, which Corona spent on political activism and the purchase of a new home in Washington DC. When assistant superintendent Robert Cervantes blew the whistle on the fraud, Corona’s goons set fires near his house. Instead of halting the fraud, the spineless Eastin fired Cervantes and kept the money flowing.

An auditor’s report backed Cervantes, and the California Department of Education (CDE) had to repay the federal government more than $3 million. All told Corona’s Hermandad failed to account for $7 million in federal funds intended for citizenship and English classes, and grants received though the CDE from 1994 and 1998.

When Delaine Eastin ran for governor in 2018, that record of fraud failed to emerge in any detail. Her candidacy went nowhere and Gavin Newsom, with connections to the Brown, Getty and Pelosi families, prevailed as governor. In 2020 Newsom locked down the state, spent $1 billion on masks from a Chinese company, and set up the Covid workplace outreach program. In 2025, the program continues to fund the far left with taxpayer dollars.

As Carl DeMaio discovered, many of the groups getting the money are funding illegal immigrants to fight the federal government to stay in this country. That is all part of keeping Democrats in power and California a one-party state. A forthcoming article will take up this theme.