The Liberty Hill Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Sarah Pillsbury, heir to the Minnesota Pillsbury baking fortune, in 1976. Its motto is "Change. Not Charity." They have funded local Los Angeles organizations dedicated to environmental justice, such as East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. The name of the foundation derives from a famous incident on May 15, 1923 when writer Upton Sinclair spoke to approximately 3,000 striking longshoremen at Liberty Hill in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California. In a piece of street theater designed to highlight ongoing suppression of freedom of speech by the LAPD, Sinclair began his address by reading the Bill of Rights. Within moments, he was arrested.
Famous quotes containing the words liberty, hill and/or foundation:
“When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Who knows but this hill may one day be a Helvellyn, or even a Parnassus, and the Muses haunt here, and other Homers frequent the neighboring plains?... It was a place where gods might wander, so solemn and solitary, and removed from all contagion with the plain.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)