Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center Community, Education, and Industry Working Together Since 1966

Expanding access to health care services is another of Congresswoman Waters’ priorities. She spearheaded the development of the Minority AIDS Initiative in 1998 to address the alarming spread of HIV/AIDS among African Americans, Hispanics and other minorities. Under her continuing leadership, funding for the Minority AIDS Initiative has increased from the initial appropriation of $156 million in fiscal year 1999 to approximately $400 million per year today. She is also the author of legislation to expand health services for patients with diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Congresswoman Waters has been an advocate for international peace, justice, and human rights. She leads congressional efforts to cancel the debts that poor countries in Africa and Latin America owe to wealthy institutions like the World Bank and free poor countries from the burden of international debts. Linking Trump to the violence that erupted at a white nationalist protest rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, Waters said that the White House “is now the White Supremacists’ House”.

The author of the original story, Gary Webb, was eventually transferred to a different beat and removed from investigative reporting, before his death in 2004. Webb was found in his apartment with two bullet holes in his head. After these post-publication investigations, Waters read into the Congressional Record a memorandum of understanding in which former President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director rejected any duty by the CIA to report illegal narcotics trafficking to the Department of Justice. Waters was born in 1938 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Remus Carr and Velma Lee (née Moore). The fifth of 13 children, she was raised by her single mother after her father left the family when Maxine was two. She graduated from Vashon High School in St. Louis before moving with her family to Los Angeles in 1961. She worked in a garment factory and as a telephone operator before being hired as an assistant teacher with the Head Start program in Watts in 1966.

Los Angeles Office

Your gift will power our data analysis and investigative reporting covering this year’s elections. Neither the Catt Center nor Iowa State University is affiliated with any individual in the Archives or any political party. Inclusion in the Archives is not an endorsement by the center or the university. Born on August 15, 1938, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Remus Moore and Velma Lee Carr Moore, Waters was one of thirteen children. In 1961, she moved to Los Angeles, California, where she found work in a garment factory and as a telephone operator. In 1966, Waters was hired as an assistant teacher with the newly formed Head Start program in Watts. Waters decided to attend college while working at Head Start, and in 1970 earned a sociology degree from California State University in Los Angeles.

In the Assembly, she worked for the divestment of state pension funds from any businesses active in South Africa, a country then operating under the policy of apartheid, and helped pass legislation within the guidelines of the divestment campaign’s Sullivan Principles. She ascended to the position of Democratic Caucus Chair Maxine Waters for the Assembly. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Sign up for our newsletter to track money’s influence on U.S. elections and public policy. OpenSecrets aggregates state data from many sources and formats.

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Many young people, including those in the hip-hop music community, praise her for her support and understanding of young people and their efforts at self-expression. One testament to her work is the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center, a multimillion dollar campus providing education and employment opportunities to residents of the Watts area.

In 1992, Waters ran in the much larger 35th District, representing South Central Los Angeles, Inglewood, Gardena, and Hawthorne, and won eighty-three percent of the votes. Waters continues to represent the 35th District and has been active on a number of issues including affirmative action, community development, women’s health and welfare reform. Waters focused attention on the plight of inner city communities as well as the allegations of CIA involvement in Contra cocaine drug trafficking in South Central Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. She authored the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which provides grants to states, local governments and nonprofits to fight foreclosures, home abandonment and blight and to restore neighborhoods. Through two infusions of funds, the Congresswoman was able to secure $6 billion for the program. On March 27, 2014, Waters introduced a discussion draft of the Housing Opportunities Move the Economy Forward Act of 2014 known as the Home Forward Act of 2014.

www.congress.gov

Before becoming a U.S. representative, Waters served in the California State Assembly, to which she was first elected in 1976. As an assemblywoman, she advocated divestment from South Africa’s apartheid regime. In Congress, she was an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War and has sharply criticized Presidents George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

At a Congressional Black Caucus town-hall meeting on jobs in Detroit, Waters said that African American members of Congress were reluctant to criticize or place public pressure on Obama because “y’all love the President”. The judge in Chauvin’s trial said on April 19, 2021, that Waters’s comments were “abhorrent” and that it was “disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch” for elected officials to comment in advance of the verdict. Upon Barney Frank’s retirement in 2012, Waters became the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee. The amendment targeted domestic surveillance activities, specifically https://wave-accounting.net/ that of the National Security Agency, and would have limited the flexibility of the NSA’s interpretation of the law to collect sweeping data on U.S. citizens. As a Democratic representative in Congress, Waters was a superdelegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She endorsed Democratic U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton for the party’s nomination in late January 2008, granting Clinton nationally recognized support that some suggested would “make big waves.” Waters later switched her endorsement to U.S. Senator Barack Obama when his lead in the pledged delegate count became insurmountable on the final day of primary voting.

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A key provision of the bill includes the collection of 10 basis points for “every dollar outstanding mortgages collateralizing covered securities”, estimated at $5 billion a year. These funds would be directed to three funds that support affordable housing initiatives, with 75% going to the National Housing trust fund. The National Housing Trust was enacted in 2008, but has yet to be funded. In 2009, Waters co-sponsored Representative John Conyers’s bill calling for reparations for slavery to be paid to black Americans. Waters is the representative for California’s 43rd congressional district and is a Democrat.

• In cases where two or more people from the same family contributed, the income-earner’s occupation/employer is assigned to all non-wage earning family members.
• Based on the available information, the donor is given an economic code.
• Waters later said that her remarks in Brooklyn Center were taken out of context and that she believed in nonviolent actions.
• We do not control or endorse the conduct of users and make no representations of any kind about them.
• The protests outside the Brooklyn Center police station remained peaceful through the night.
• While summary numbers are reported almost immediately by the FEC — and listed quickly on OpenSecrets — processing and analyzing the detailed records takes much longer.
• Inclusion in the Archives is not an endorsement by the center or the university.