“The fact that we believe that child trafficking is a serious crime — many of us agree with that — did not bleed through,” Jones-Sawyer said. “And so that is a mistake on our part, our communication mistake on our part, that we did not make that very clear.”
Jones-Sawyer is unapologetic, however, about holding the bill to demand changes and said he still hopes it could be amended before it hits the governor’s desk.
When confronted with criticism, Jones-Sawyer said he draws inspiration from his uncle, Jefferson Thomas, one of the Little Rock Nine students who faced violent protestors as they integrated an all-white Arkansas high school in 1957 under the protection of the National Guard. A poster of the Little Rock Nine hangs in the conference room of his district office.
“He could have died any minute. He could have been lynched,” Jones-Sawyer said. His mother talked about cleaning blood, dirt and food out of her brother’s white shirt every night so Thomas could return to school the next day dignified and defiant, which Jones-Sawyer regarded as a testament to the strength of his bloodline. “So when I get attacked, I feel that,” he said.
Jones-Sawyer, himself, was born in Little Rock that same year, though he moved to Los Angeles as a child. He said his grandfather, a boisterous man, snuck out of Arkansas on an overnight train dressed as a woman to escape a threat from the local Ku Klux Klan, and the rest of the family eventually followed.
Now back at USC completing a doctorate in public policy, Jones-Sawyer said he is thumbing his nose at the racists who tried to prevent Black Americans from pursuing an education.
“You couldn’t stop my uncle and you can’t stop me,” he said. “Not only did you not stop me, but I’m moving on and on and on.”
With the Legislature on its month-long summer recess until today, Jones-Sawyer worked from the district on a recent Tuesday. Under the watch of former presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, whose portraits hung on a wall of the conference room, he met with a documentary film producer interested in his successful push last year to limit the use of rap lyrics as evidence in court and with reparation activists planning their messaging to lawmakers.
“I got one more bite at the apple,” Jones-Sawyer told a group of leaders from local violence prevention groups who had previously received funding through a grant program he established in the state budget. The governor will start planning the next budget this fall, he warned, and it was important to get requests on his radar as soon as possible: “You get one more Christmas wish. So you got to make it good.”
Because of term limits, Jones-Sawyer has a little more than a year left at the Capitol, and he’s already plotting out the end game. He launched a campaign for Los Angeles City Council in February, though he still hopes to pass a proposal to redirect savings from prison closures toward youth programs.
Then there’s the matter of who will take over the Assembly Public Safety Committee. Jones-Sawyer wants a transition to happen as soon as possible, so he can focus on his city council race. He said he is working with Rivas and other progressive members to identify a successor. A spokesperson for Rivas declined to comment.
The challenge is finding someone who can take the pressure of what Jones-Sawyer calls “the most difficult committee” in Sacramento, while also staying committed to building a “just and equitable system” rather than repopulating prisons.
“That’s hard, because everybody looks at justice differently,” Jones-Sawyer said, as he navigated the afternoon traffic on his drive to the Vermont Avenue market. He had just visited a training center for green jobs that was expanding through a state grant.
“There are a lot of people I think would be very good at it,” he said. “I’ve asked, some others have asked. Kind of the answer has been, ‘that would not be my first choice.’”
A health scare in December brought further perspective to his work. Following a kidney procedure shortly before Christmas, Jones-Sawyer said he went into cardiac arrest and briefly died.
In the time before he was revived — he was told it took about three minutes — Jones-Sawyer said he saw his kindergarten-age grandson graduating from college and other visions that he wanted to keep private, though he said some related what he went through this year on the public safety committee. The experience, he said, filled him with a sense of purpose and a desire to recommit to public service rather than riding into the sunset of retirement.
“The Christian in me says God wanted to talk to me for a few minutes,” Jones-Sawyer said. “I know I’m supposed to be here.”
