Los Angeles Data Justice Hub

Black Lives Matter - Century City Protest - June 6, 2020

Photos by Brett Morrison, Jonathan McIntosh, and Daniele Marzocchi.

About Data and Dashboards Data Training and Education Featured Examples of Data for Justice Recommended Readings and Resources Projects

What is the LA Data Justice Hub?

The Data Justice Hub is an initiative that empowers students, community organizations, and faculty to access and use data to rectify harm. We hope this digital tool will help train the next generation of social justice and data-driven change agents.

This site has been developed through the Mellon Social Justice Curricular Initiatives at UCLA. The new “Data, Justice, and Society” curricular initiatives aim is to create a “data-driven approach to teaching and research on social justice issues, positioning more UCLA graduates to become social change leaders in their chosen professions.”

What is the Data Justice

Data Justice is an emerging technique and ethos that examines the link between the datafication of society and social justice causes, as well as addressing data harms and misuses of data. We hope this site will provide you with resources to enact data justice vis a vis vulnerable communities in Los Angeles.

How Can I Use This Site?

This site is meant as a pedagogical tool to empower students, community organizations, and faculty to use data to rectify harm and access open data. Open data is data that can be freely used, re-use, or redistributed. A list of sites that you will find here can be used to better understand some of the largest issues facing the Los Angeles communities today.

Co-authors: Dr. Munia Bhaumik (Founder), Sydney Saubestre (Masters in Public Policy Candidate), and Rafik Wahbi (PhD Candidate in Public Health).

Thanks to William Melendez for web software support.

Open Source Data Sites

Los Angeles Regional Data

Los Angeles

DataLA (City): General data maintained by and related to the city of Los Angeles.
DataLA (County): General data maintained by and related to the county of Los Angeles.
LA Geo Hub : Data on location-based open data maintained by the city of Los Angeles.
LA County Daily COVID-19 Data: LA County’s daily Covid-19 rate tracker and maps.
LA County WIC Data: LA County information on WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).
Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies: Research Institute at UCLA that publishes the LA Quality of Life Index.
Los Angeles Sustainable Development Goals: Tracks Los Angeles’ efforts and outcomes related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by Mayor Garcetti. Open-source data sets related to sustainable cities, reducing inequalities, gender equality, unhoused rights, etc.
USC Neighborhood Data for Social Change: Maps and data set of various indicators in LA neighborhoods

California

California Open Data: State of California Open-Data portal with wide-range of datasets, including datasets on Covid-19 vaccine progress, environmental indicators such as bacteria in waste-water, and homeless reports.

National

Community Action Partnerships Data Hub: maps and indicators related to community needs across the US, including demographic, educational, housing, and poverty indicators.
Data.gov: Site maintained by the U.S. General Services Administration that collects datasets on everything from the demographic numbers related to Alzheimer’s to the number of Black Owned Businesses in Los Angeles. Easy search function, and can further find specific information by using filters.
US Census.Gov: Every ten years, the federal government oversees a national census that counts how many people are in each census tract and collects additional socioeconomic and demographic data. They also have courses on how to navigate the site.

Criminalization, Incarceration, and Carceral Systems

Bureau of Statistics: The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics includes summary data tables of crime statistics in the US, as well as a variety of analytical tools. The full datasets can be found at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data.
KPCC Officer Involved Shooting: A KPCC investigation into officer involved shootings in the Los Angeles area.
Fatal Encounters: Fatal Encounters is a partial database of fatal police encounters, leading to the creation of the National Officer-Involved Homicide Database with a team at USC.
Million Dollar Hoods: A project at Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA that provides a wide-array of data related to incarceration and criminal justice.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: Federal site providing access to various indicators and data analysis tools related to juvenile criminal justice.
State Sentencing Data: The Sentencing Project is a criminal justice reform organization that advocates for effective and humane responses to crime prevention. Full datasets on crime states are available for each state.
Vera Institute of Justice: The Vera Institute of Justice has a searchable database for research related to criminal justice reform that can be searched by topic, typ, or region.
Washington Post Fatal Force: The Washington Post Fatal Force Project is an attempt to log every fatal shooting by an on-duty police officers since 2015. A full database is available.

Economic Justice

The Opportunity Atlas: The Opportunity Atlas examines which neighborhoods in America lead to the greatest intergenerational social mobility and relevant factors. While a full dataset is not available, a user guide to utilizing the tools is provided.
UCLA Labor Center: Provides guidance on best practices around survey design, particularly for issues of labor rights, as well as an extensive database of reports from the center.

Education

CA School Dashboard: The California School Dashboard is a state-wide database that provides broad data related to education by school district or county.
California State Report Card: Provides enrollment, demographic, educational attainment, etc.l data for public and charter schools, districts, and the State.
Childstats.gov: Data sets concentrated on indicators related to children and families.
KidsCount Data Center: Hundred of measures of well-being for kids across the nation, which can be focused down to Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Unified School District: General data on LAUSD and individual school sites.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): A program of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, this site provides annual and national statistics for all public elementary and secondary schools, and school districts across the U.S.

Environmental Justice

Asia-Pacific Data Research Center: Large data repository for measures related to climate change and oceanology maintained by the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
CalEnviroScreen: The California Environmental Office of Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) contains a multitude of data sets and tools related to environmental health, including pollutants burdens and health indicators for communities. There are a series of How To videos that help to navigate the site.
EcoAtlas: EcoAtlas aggregates datasets from many different sources, with many datasets being specific to California. Datasets related to water quality, vegetation, conservation, etc. can be found on the site.
EJScreen: EPA’s environmental justice screening and mapping tool. Includes numerous environmental indicators and guide on how to use the site.

Food Insecurity

Food Insecurity in LA: LA Controller site on food insecurity in Los Angeles.
USDA Food Access Maps: A site that maps food access in the US.
CA Food Banks Hunger Data: Food insecurity rates by county.
US Census- Food Security Measures: Measures of food security by census tract.
Feeding America Data Commons: Collated data sets of various measures related to food insecurity, including temperature rises, health, income, etc.

Gender Justice

Data 2X: A collection of informative data related to gender and
OECD Gender Equality: Includes indicators related to gender inequality, including education, employment and health. Only includes OECD member countries, as well as a few non-Western countries.
SDG- Gender Equity: Datasets and reports on markers of gender equity in Los Angeles.
UN Women Global Database on Violence against Women: A collated tracker with metrics on gender-based violence from across the world.
Woman Stats: Dataset that compiles information on the status of women across the world.

Houseless Rights

Identifying the Rights of the Houseless
- Anti-Eviction Mapping Project: A data-visualization tool and multimedia storytelling collective documenting dispossession to gentrifying landscapes.
- Unhoused Street Count: Data from yearly street count of unhoused people in Los Angeles.
Sustainable Development Goals Los Angeles: Unhoused equity markers.
UCLA Luskin Institute for Inequality and Democracy Unequal Cities: A research coordination network designed to address the housing crisis in Los Angeles and other cities.

Migration

California Immigrant Data Portal: A resource and progress tracker for immigrants and those serving immigrant communities across the state of California.
State of Black Immigrants: Research Institute produces research reports and facts sheets on the state of Black immigrants and advocacy tools for Black organizations and allies.
State of Immigration in Los Angeles: Report on the state of immigration in Los Angeles, as well as some data visualizations.

Political Disenfranchisement

American National Election Studies: The American National Election Studies is a long-running research project that aims to capture voting trends across time in the US.
Democracy Map: Tracks state election laws and policies that aim to disenfranchise marginalized groups, as well as recommendations on how to optimize civic engagement and protect electoral integrity.
Los Angeles Ethics Committee: Open data portal maintained by the city of Los Angeles that allows constituents to view data related to election ethics and campaign contributions.
Latino Policy and Politics Institute at UCLA: LPPI at UCLA has a series of resources and research on voting rights. Data would need to be extracted from reports.
Pew Research Center: A nonpartisan fact tank that conducts polling and informs the public about issues and trends shaping the United States and the world.

Public Health and Healthcare

CA Health and Community Services Open Data: Non confidential health and human services data that can be easily retrieved, combined, downloaded, sorted, searched, and analyzed.
CA Department of Public Health Data and Statistics: Access to public health data and information, such as queries, resources, statistics, surveys, informatics, GIS, and health indicators
Covid Racial Data Tracker : COVID Racial Data Tracker aimed at gathering race and ethnicity data on COVID-19 in the United States. The last data collection was completed on March 7, 2021.
COVID-19 Health Inequities in Cities: Compares and tracks inequities across individual subgroups, neighborhoods, and cities in the US.
Kaiser Family Foundation Racial Equity and Health Data Dashboard: Provides data on the intersection between public health and racial equity.
UCLA Center for Health Policy Research: DATA program exists to make easy and understandable to a wide range of audiences and health advocates.

Racial Justice

AAPI Data: Aggregated resources that aim is to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date resource on datasets on Asian Americans and NHPIs that are publicly available.
Asian American Statistics: California State Library list of various sites that have data on Asian American populations.
Black Youth Project: A research institute at University of Chicago that examines the attitudes, resources, and cultures of the young, urban black millennial.
Hate Crime Statistics: Site maintained by the FBI that collates data from local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies related to recognize and document hate crimes.
Minority Population Profiles: Data maintained by the US government outlining pertinent outcomes related to demographic, health, education, and other measures.
National Equity Atlas: National organization that publishes the National Equity Index, among others data pertinent to racial equity in the United States.
NCAI Policy Research Center: National Congress of American Indians collects and publishes their own data on past and present issues facing Native communities in the United states.
Race Counts: A database that provides racial equity indicators of the Los Angeles area.
Resource Center for Minority Data: The Resource Center for Minority Data collects and publishes a variety of information that pertains to minority groups, including housing, education, discrimination, etc. Data can be filtered by location.
UCLA American Indian Studies Center Hate Crime Map: A crowd-sourced platform that enables victims to report instances of hate crimes maintained by the UCLA American Studies Center.

State Violence

KPCC Officer Involved Shooting: A KPCC investigation into officer involved shootings in the Los Angeles area.
Fatal Encounters: Fatal Encounters is a partial database of fatal police encounters, leading to the creation of the National Officer-Involved Homicide Database with a team at USC.
Washington Post Fatal Force: The Washington Post Fatal Force Project is an attempt to log every fatal shooting by on-duty police officers since 2015. A full database is available.

User Guidance: please note that Los Angeles City data is distinct from Los Angeles County data, as well as state and national data. All of these distinct data hubs each contain valuable data about Los Angeles, although covering different geographic scopes. The best way to identify which data you need is to explore the individual links. In several of the sites below, you will also be able to locate data by inputting a specific Zip Code. This technique will enable you to find data about a particular neighborhood.

Data Training and Educational Resources

Coming soon!

This section will include tutorial videos on accessing Los Angeles Public Data, doing basic analyses, and producing data displays for social justice organizing and projects. Additionally, this page will hold a list of other training and educational resources and opportunities for data justice.

Interactive Sites to Further Learning about Critical Data Studies and Data Justice Initiatives

Algorithmic Justice League: aims to highlight algorithmic bias through media, art, and science; provide space for people to voice concerns and experiences with coded bias; develop practices for accountability during the design, development, and deployment of coded systems.
Center for Media Justice: Aims to build a powerful movement for a more just and participatory media and digital world—with racial equity and human rights for all.
Chupadatos: This project gathers stories from across Latin America about the mass collection and processing of data that governments, businesses and individuals carry out to monitor “cities, homes, wallets and bodies.”
Data 4 Black Lives: a group of various multidisciplinary organizers who aim to use data to “create concrete and measurable change in the lives of black people. By convening an annual conference, the group speaks to data scientists, policy makers, researchers, students, parents and more to “chart out a new future for data science.
DATAX: UCLA series that organizes weekly conversations with a diverse group of science and humanities scholars about social, gendered, and racial justice in data science.
Equitable Open Data: A set of guidelines for advancing “equitable practices for collecting, disseminating and using open data.”
Global Indigenous Data Alliance: Site promoting and asserting indigenous control of indigenous data.
UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry: A critical internet studies community committed to strengthening human rights, championing social justice, and reimagining technology through research, culture, and public policy.

Featured Examples of Data for Justice Projects/Initiatives

This section will feature some examples of how data is being used for social justice and transformation. This is not an exhaustive list, and some examples that might be helpful for envisioning what a data for justice project might look like. We hope this section will encourage others to dream up and create new “Data for Justice” projects.

Youth/Community Action Participatory Research for Justice

Interactive Data Hubs/Dashboards

*This is a non-exhaustive list of some topics where data can inform social justice work. We hope to add a submission tab in the near future.