Communities for a New California Education Fund (CNC Education Fund) is a left-of-center nonprofit organization that promotes voter turnout initiatives in California. CNC Education Fund is affiliated with Communities for a New California Action Fund (CNC Action), its sister political advocacy organization. ¹ CNC Education Fund, alongside CNC Action, advocates for left-leaning environmental, economic, and social policy within rural California. ²

Background

Communities for a New California Education Fund operates in the San Joaquin, Central, and Imperial Valleys, covering 17 rural counties. ³ CNC Education Fund also participates in monthly door-to-door neighborhood canvassing in Sacramento, Merced, Fresno, and Coachella Valley. ⁴ CNC Education Fund is headquartered in Granite Bay, California, with additional offices in Fresno, Indio, and Merced.

CNC Education Fund promotes community organizing behind liberal causes throughout California. The group also sponsors events and urges people to mobilize at city and county government meetings. ⁵

Advocacy

CNC Education Fund advocates for left-of-center political policy including increased government spending on community development, the expansion of government-funded health care, environmentalist policies, and liberal expansionist immigration. ⁶

CNC Education Fund has supported left-of-center immigration reform to grant amnesty to all illegal immigrants, calling people in the country illegally “11 million aspiring citizens.” ⁷ The organization also supports environmentalist policies, including banning some pesticides and claiming that 2.8 million people in the San Joaquin Valley lack access to safe drinking water. ⁸

In 2020, the CNC Education Fund joined a number of other left-of-center organizations to form the Cuenta Conmigo Coalition to increase the number of people completing the U.S. Census. The Coalition targeted individuals who do not typically complete the census, including  immigrants and homeless people in the San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Foothills areas. ⁹

Leadership

Pablo Rodriguez is the founding executive director of the CNC Education Fund, creating the organization in 2011. Rodriguez previously worked as a public policy consultant and communications director at a Sacramento political strategy and research firm. ¹⁰

Rodriguez has been involved in several left-of-center organizations in the past. Rodriguez was formerly director of the Dolores Huerta Community Organizing Institute. He is also a board member for the Community Water Center Action Fund. Rodriguez also supports left-of-center research goals, sitting as an advisory committee member of the University of Southern California’s Equity and Research Initiative and the University of California Merced’s Community and Labor Center. Rodriguez also previously sat on the board of directors for the Americans for Democratic Action Education Fund, the Sacramento Chicano Latino Youth Leadership Project, and the La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley. ¹¹

Hatzune Aguilar is the strategic engagement director for CNC Education Fund. Aguilar has worked on the Homeland Advisory Council of Los Angeles and worked in the Oakland Mayor’s Office. Aguilar also previously worked for the political strategy firm Jim Gonzalez and Associates. ¹²

Deja Villanueva is the Merced, California team leader. In 2017, Villanueva was a delegate for Merced County Supervisor Lee Lor (D) in her first participatory budgeting process. ¹³

Imelda Ramirez is the Fresno lead community organizer. She previously worked at both the Merced and Sacramento offices as a canvasser and phone banker for the group and led a CNC project that focused on improving how illegal immigrants are portrayed in the media. ¹⁴

Pedro Navarro Cruz is a Fresno community organizer who began with the CNC Education Fund in 2011. Cruz previously worked on left-of-center immigration advocacy campaigns and the national Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign. ¹⁵

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