DEI Spotlight
4Ws and an H—Elena Loredo Velarde and Joe DesBarres
This series profiles LWV-PA members and how they connect to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) by asking: Whom would you most like to see become a part of the League but have yet to see in the membership? What prompted you to join the LWV-PA? When did you become socially or civically active? Where were you born and/or raised? Why does that matter in terms of DEI? and How will you know the League is a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization?
Elena Loredo Velarde and Joe DesBarres are a couple whose similarities far outweigh the opposites that might have kept them apart. Elena, raised in Echo Park in a Mexican American family of five, recalls it as “an idyllic place where freedom of expression and progressive ideology were valued.” Joe grew up in Massachusetts with his brother and single mom. Witnessing the struggles his mother endured, he recalls, “went a long way toward shaping my view of equity and inclusion.”
Political activism began early: Joe ran for town office in graduate school and Elena’s first job as an L.A. Music Center usher “opened up my life and completely revolutionized me. Interacting with hundreds of youth from every neighborhood and economic stratum absolutely took my breath away.” Their Catholic education led both into “helping professions”—teaching and psychiatric social work, respectively.
Elena and Joe joined the DEI Taskforce during the October 2019 New Member Gathering. They also sit on the Membership Committee. They are committed to volunteerism and pragmatism about changing demographics. “Achieving DEI within the LWV-PA means talking about power—those who have it and how difficult it is to relinquish power,” Joe has noted. Elena has cited “meager member introspection, a scarcity of opportunities for uncomfortable discussions, and thinking that LWV-PA already embeds DEI in its foundation, so further member action is superfluous.”
Each wants to see members include younger people of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, particularly Asians and Latinas, who, as Joe reminds us, “are a large segment of our area’s population.” Elena’s vision is “an opulent diversity of members … with members upfront in welcoming all.” For Joe, “When I don’t have to look hard to find others like me and can rejoice in kinship with others not like me, then I can say that we have achieved DEI within LWV-PA!”
—Jacqueline Pinn, Co-chair, DEI Taskforce (Jacqui.lwv [at] gmail.com)
