Kirk Samuels is a community organizer in South Los Angeles and works in with the community encouraging the people in the city to vote.

Samuels has been a community organizer for eight years in the place called Community Coalition in South L.A off of 81st and Vermont.

Samuel’s beliefs are to help the black and brown people throughout the county of Los Angeles and to bring hope to the community to have a voice so they can speak out against social injustices.

His reason for being a part of his politics is to help more available jobs for people of color so they can have a shot at being successful.

Since his time at Community Coalition, he has further advanced in his political career by working as the director for District 28 for Senator Lola Smallwood Cuevas.

Samuels was overjoyed explaining working for Cuevas because she is the first black senator in the state of California.

Samuels dives more into the history of the Community Coalition as he was sipping his coffee and goes over how (Congresswoman now Mayor) Karen Bass began the organization.

“The people were fighting against drug abuse and treated as a public health crisis because crack-cocaine was an epidemic at the time,” Samuels says.

Under Samuel’s understanding of the movement, the sole purpose of this organization was to get black and brown people off of drugs and provide opportunities for those who don’t have a degree.

During his time working for Mayor Bass, Samuels broke down how he did his job as a community organizer at Community Coalition.

“We go from door to door knocking persuading members of the community to vote and to get involved on what’s going on in the community,” he said.

Samuels says that if he wasn’t working in the politics then he would eventually start organizing his community outreach program.

He strives for black and brown communities to be able to get up and go out and vote rather than just say “I don’t vote” but still complain about issues in the city.

He loves the advancement of his community so much that he would die trying to make every person of color get the proper respect as he explains his background.

“Being an activist isn’t always easy, it has many stressful times when my people are treated horribly and no ones does anything about it that’s why I have a voice to fight back,” Samuels says as he drinks from the same white mug of Folgers coffee.

“As a proud black man it is important to me to have our right to live but as citizens, we are still under attack by legislations that were against black people many years ago,” Samuels says as he goes over why voting is a key factor.

When it comes to the future people, Samuels makes it known that he will be working on measures that be on the ballot for the upcoming years.

He wants to have an independent commission fighting against racism and discrimination, more affordable housing or low-level rent control.