What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Los Angeles is at a turning point. We are living in a defining moment. What happens next is up to us. Over the past few years, problems and challenges have shaken this city -- and tremendous opportunities for change have presented themselves. How do we rise to this moment and emerge a better place to live? What will it take to create a more just and a more equitable community? Working together, how are we going to create a stronger, forward-thinking Los Angeles? Mike Bonin, writer, teacher, progressive activist and former City Councilmember, looks at the issues and problems facing Los Angeles, examines ideas, and talks with the people who will lead us to a brighter future.
Produced in partnership with LA Forward.
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Marissa Roy: Candidate for LA City Attorney
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Did you know that as a resident of Los Angeles, you have an attorney? The City Attorney is elected to represent and fight for the people of Los Angeles and to serve as the City’s lawyer. Deputy Attorney General Marissa Roy recently announced her campaign for Los Angeles City Attorney, campaigning to protect workers from wage theft, renters from illegal evictions, and consumers from fraud.
Marissa is running against our current City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto. In stark contrast, Hydee has opposed affordable housing for Los Angelenos, sued journalists, prosecuted protesters, and surveilled the emails of her employees.
Find out more about Marissa and her campaign here. You can also follow along on social media on Instagram and X.
Links and Additional Reading
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin, The Trouble with Hydee
Capital & Main, The Landlord Behind Massive Los Angeles Eviction Has Spent More Than $1 Million on City Elections
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
Hi everyone and welcome to What's Next Los Angeles. This is Mike Bonin. Thank you for joining me. Did you know that as a resident of Los Angeles you have an attorney? Like a real-life lawyer who can fight for you. As a consumer, as a taxpayer, as a voter, and as someone who deserves to have their human and civil rights protected. Well, at least in theory you do. That lawyer could and should be the Los Angeles city attorney, who has broad powers to fight for the people of Los Angeles. Our current city attorney, though, Heidi Feldstein Soto, hasn't really warmed to that part of the job. She's been busy opposing affordable housing, suing journalists, prosecuting protesters, and snooping through the emails of her employees. Feldstein Soto is up for re-election next year, and just yesterday, Monday, March 10th, a formidable opponent jumped into the race. Her name is Marissa Roy. Marissa is a deputy California Attorney General, a consumer attorney, and a lecturer at USC Law School. Marissa eagerly embraces the role of city attorney as the public's advocate, and she is my guest today. Let's get into our conversation. Marissa, welcome back to What's Next Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00It's good to see you, Mike.
SPEAKER_02It's good to see you. You have been here. How many times have you been here before? I've been on the show twice. You've been on the show twice, and once we were discussing what the person you're going to be running against. So you've been on and we've talked about a variety of things, and it's been sort of panel discussion kind of stuff. To start, like tell us a little bit about you, why you became a lawyer and why you decided to get into this race.
SPEAKER_00Sure. I mean, I'm a lifelong LA County resident. Grew up in Monrovia, multiracial, mixed immigrant status family. And I think, you know, really growing up in that sense got to sort of see the disparities in the legal system up close. And the moment that really crystallized for me, if I could kind of boil my life down to one moment, was when proposition eight was passed, taking away my younger brother's right to marry. I've there's never been a moment where I felt more powerless. You know, as a protective older sister, there was nothing I could do or say when my state voted against my family. But then it was the San Francisco City attorney, Dennis Herrera, who sued and got that law overturned. And it meant so much that the government had stood up for my family when no one else would. And that's really why it, you know, it set me on the track to becoming a government attorney myself, because I wanted the government to fight for people who couldn't fight for themselves. I wanted the government to fight for families like mine. Um, so I went to law school, ended up uh working with the San Francisco City Attorney's Office, the same division that had brought that lawsuit with my brother, and um did groundbreaking cases with them and really learned the trade. Uh, and then when I graduated, um I got my first job at the LA City Attorney's Office. Uh, the LA City Attorney was trying to build up their ability to do more public interest, large-scale, we call it affirmative or impact litigation. This was city attorney Mike Fewer. Um, and so I joined the LA City Attorney's Office and brought some of some large-scale landmark workers' rights cases, um, you know, putting thousands of dollars back in the pockets of workers. And uh then after that, I went on as outside counsel for LA County handling their litigation against the first Trump administration. So I was part of about, you know, over a dozen legal actions against the Trump administration, really trying to stop their racist anti-immigrant agenda. And after the Trump administration was voted out the first time, I ended up joining a nonprofit called Public Rights Project that helped cities all across the country do civil rights litigation. Um I worked with eight cities in Florida to sue Ron DeSantis and the city of Houston to sue uh Governor Greg Abbott and worked with cities on reproductive rights uh litigation, voting rights. And um, as great as that was, and it was as fun as it was to teach uh other cities about the power of impact litigation and what they could do. I really did miss government service back in California. And so I joined um the California Department of Justice as a deputy attorney general in consumer production. And I do have to put the disclaimer, because I'm a lawyer, that the official title is used for identification purposes only and does not imply official endorsement. All views expressed are those of the candidate alone, not of the Department of Justice or the Attorney General. I'm a lawyer, you know I have to. Um, and so now the work I do is suing billion-dollar companies who are taking advantage of California consumers and also um doing housing justice work, uh, investigating violations of state housing law. So um in my career, I've had the opportunity to touch so many different areas of law from housing justice to workers' rights to uh reproductive rights and voting rights. And but I think at the end of the day, it does all come back to that moment um as a sister, because every single time I file on behalf of the people of the state of California, I know there's a family behind that lawsuit. Um and I hold that deeply and that responsibility to fight for them deeply.
SPEAKER_02As someone for whom the passage of Prop 8 was a political turning point, uh thank you. I mean, I I remember I was working on the Obama campaign, and I remember being so elated that night, and then checking my BlackBerry and seeing the results for Prop 8, and all of a sudden all that joy went away. Right? It was just this period of deflation. But something amazing happened afterwards. There was the emergence of a new generation of activism. People who had not been involved before, they formed new organizations, they brought new energy, new enthusiasm. And now, you know, almost 20 years later, so many of those people are are changemakers. So it's it's really cool to see that manifesting as part of your candidacy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So let me ask about the job that you're seeking. Um I I don't want to assume that the the listeners are intimately familiar with the the different positions in in the city of Los Angeles. Explain what the city attorney does, um, how it's different from the district attorney, and what relevance it has to people's lives.
SPEAKER_00So I would say the city attorney's office is one of the most powerful, least understood positions uh in Los Angeles. So the city attorney wears many hats. Under uh section 271 of the Los Angeles Charter, the city attorney uh is charged with representing the city and all legal actions against it. So whenever someone sues the city, it's the city attorney's office that defends. Um the city attorney is also the legal advisor to council, the mayor, um, city departments that ask for legal advice. Um, the city attorney also uh is in charge with kind of managing and checking over contracting and bonds, things like that. So when you think of kind of the municipal aspects, those are the municipal aspects of the city attorney representing the municipal as a municipality as an entity, then the city attorney also has a role uh in terms of criminal justice. They have jurisdiction over misdemeanors. And that's where you get the difference between the city attorney and uh the district attorney's office. So the district attorney does is has jurisdiction over um all felonies in the county of Los Angeles, so all 88 cities, including the city of Los Angeles, and then misdemeanor jurisdiction for the 87 cities that are not the city of Los Angeles. So the city attorney's office does has jurisdiction over misdemeanors for the city itself. Um, and then um outside of these charter roles, uh, the state, California Business and Professions Code, Section 17200, the unfair competition law, my personal favorite law. Um, because of course I have one.
SPEAKER_02Write in and email me and tell me what your personal favorite law is.
SPEAKER_00Um it empowers, uh, it gives any city attorney in a city over 750,000 kind of concurrent consumer protection authority with the attorney general, the authority to sue any business for anything unlawful, unfair, or deceptive. And unlawful means anything, violation of federal law, state law, local law, regulation. Um, it is what gives the city attorney's office this incredible power to sue and bring workers' rights lawsuits or tenants' rights lawsuits, any any violation you can think of in your personal life, corporate pollution, um, the city attorney could be addressing it. And there are cities in California that really use this power for the public good, like the city of San Diego, County of Santa Clara, um, city of San City and County of San Francisco, they really view the public potential of their office as so important.
SPEAKER_02So just to break it down and underscore it a little bit. So the city attorney has a number of different roles. One of them is a prosecutor of misdemeanors, another is lawyer for the city of Los Angeles, the city as a government entity. And the third, really, that you just articulated is lawyer for the people of Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Um, and that's often the aspect that goes underutilized and overlooked. Um, but it is also um the aspect that has the most power to touch people's lives.
SPEAKER_02For full disclosure, the way you and I met actually was in trainings that we were doing for new elected officials. And one of the trainings you were doing is on the power that city attorneys have to bring lawsuits on behalf of the people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I remember you coming up to me after that and being like, wait a minute, you mean to tell me this entire time when I've been seeing corporate pollution in my district or I've been seeing, you know, abusive landlords and slumlords, I could have been referring cases to the city attorney. And I could just see the light bulb go off in your head. And I I think um that also is what I'm hoping to bring through my candidacy is I want the light bulb to go off in people's head about any, I guarantee you, anything you care about, the city attorney's office could do something to address it and address these issues, and I which I'm excited to talk about in more depth.
SPEAKER_02You know, when you run for office, I mean there's two different ways to run for office, right? You run for an open seat, and then it's really all about sort of defining who you are. When you're running against an incumbent, you have to do that definition of yourself, but you also have to explain why this person doesn't deserve to keep their job. So uh the incumbent city attorney, uh Heidi Feldstein-Soto, was elected in 2022 uh to succeed Mike Fuhr. Uh, why is she not doing a good job and why should she be booted out?
SPEAKER_00Well, we've talked about the incredible potential of this office to be a public interest law office on behalf of the people. Um, that is going largely unused. Um, but it's not just about the fact that this potential is being unused. It's that the current city attorney has been abusing the powers of the office to advance her political agenda. Um and, you know, we've seen this come out in news outlets for the past, you know, two years. It's been a bit of a barrage, and I don't think we could even cover all of the instances. We we actually had a whole podcast where we covered only a year of them at that point. But I think that three sort of examples stand out in my mind that I think kind of are illustrative of again the city attorney really inserting a political agenda rather than acting in the interests of the public or within legal competence and duties. So um, a current example is the Venice Dell project. So that was an affordable housing project to put 140 units on an abandoned parking lot. Uh, it was vetted at 18 public meetings between 2017 and 2022 and approved by city council. Now, when I was there. Yeah, you were there. So when the city council approves a project for development, the city attorney's job is to carry out the will of counsel. That's that's their client. You owe duties of competence to your client. Um, instead, the city attorney came in and started inserting obstacles for final approvals, um, which again is sort of blocking her own client and not following as you know, as the attorney, you don't get to disagree. If your client has made a decision, you you facilitate your job is to carry out their vision. You are not an independent political actor. Um, but the city attorney disagreed with the project and has been um inserting obstacle after obstacle to obstruct the will of her client. Um, and it's invited a lawsuit where the city was just dealt a huge blow by the court, um, which by the way means that taxpayer dollars um are now going to go to fighting that lawsuit as the city attorney is thwarting a housing development in a time of crisis. So that is that's one example, um, but it's not the only one. Earlier, this city attorney also, um, in the middle of you know, our hot labor summer, um, city council members were showing solidarity, attending strikes and actions. And um, it was reported by the LA Times that this city attorney sent a memo to discourage the city council members from attending strikes in their personal capacity. Um, and the thing about it is the case that was relied on was from 40 years ago in a completely different posture, where the facts of the case were the city acting as a body and and interfering with um ongoing contracting, not individual city council members who have their own free speech rights.
SPEAKER_02And I mean, she basically told a couple council members they shouldn't be walking the picket line with workers.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And because again, the legal analysis was so uh sparse and scarce, it really to me, it shows and implies like a deeper political motivation against workers. And then I think the third kind of more blatant targeting of political adversaries, we've seen this city attorney um sue a journalist who was in possession of records given to him by the city, court ordered through a California Public Records Act request. Um, and the city sued him, and every First Amendment scholar denounced it. Um and the city ended up having to pay that journalist $300,000 to reimburse for legal fees, which by the way, taxpayer dollars again.
SPEAKER_02He he legally requested public records. He received them from the city. Yep. And then the city Heidi sued him for receiving them.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes, yes, exactly. Um and I think we've we've seen not just the targeting of journalists who are perceived as political adversaries, but also protesters for prosecution, even when LAPD and the head deputy in the city attorney's office regulatory prosecution division is raising alarm about the lack of evidence. Um, you see the city attorney push forward because she is more interested in targeting her adversaries than the prosecutorial ethics. And we've seen, unfortunately, reported retaliation against anyone who raises concerns about her ethics or prosecutorial misconduct. We've seen the firing of the head of the criminal division. We've read about surveillance of employee emails. And like it's it's particularly painful for me as an alum of the office because I really want to tell you and your listeners, the people who work in the city attorney's office are the epitome of public servants. I guarantee you they could be making more in the private sector. They choose to work at the city attorney's office because they believe in local government so deeply and they are there. They are a careerist, they are there for like 20 years, 30 years, 50 years even. Um, because they believe in this and they believe in what they do and they carry so much expertise and they deserve all the respect. Um, they deserve, they don't deserve to be retaliated against or surveilled. Um, and so it's it's just been it's been so hard for me to see how my old colleagues are being treated. It's been so hard for me to see this office that I I hold to such high esteem being abused to advance a very transparently political agenda. And then I think it's just been, it's been really tragic to see the potential of this office go unused. Um, and so those are all of the reasons I have decided to challenge an incumbent because I don't think you could find two attorneys more different. Um and I am really running based on my record and career of working within government to serve the public interest, um, to make sure that the city attorney's office, not just to restore competence, but also to make sure that it is acting as the public law office on behalf of the people that I know it can be.
SPEAKER_02Another issue that that played out in my old district that I wanted to ask about is uh the mass eviction at Barrington Plaza and uh the city attorney's role in that. Is there anything you want to say about that?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Um so Barrington Plaza, essentially, Douglas Emmett, the landlord, uh corporate landlord, filed for an exception under the Ellis Act, um, saying that he was going to substantially remodel or take the units off the market and therefore could mass evict um all the tenants. I believe it was 700 tenants and rent-controlled units, the largest mac mass eviction in the city. Um, but if you looked at the forms, there were several indications that actually the intentions were just to flip the units, not to take them off the market, not to really uh meet the exceptions to the Ellis Act. The city has regulations that essentially you you can't be deceptive when you try, when you say you're you're applying for an Ellis Act eviction. And so um there were avenues to at the very least investigate um what Douglas Emmett was doing. So the city attorney, um, what's really interesting about the office is it can both bring lawsuits when there's been a violation of state and local law, but they also can issue pre-filing subpoenas. A lot of people, when they bring lawsuits, um, kind of have to wait through a process of kind of motions and before before the court before they can kind of get discovery and get the fact finding. That's not the case with the city attorney or or you know, the any government enforcer. You can subpoena and start the investigation if you have a reasonable belief. And that certainly was the case here. And there could have been a start to an investigation, and that itself could have brought Douglas Emmett to the table to talk. So really the city attorney could have been involved there. I know tenants' rights advocates were begging for the city attorney's help.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And to see the city attorney uh turn a cheek and let this happen again is is a is a tragedy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, folks were saying the people facing eviction, working class folks who've been living in these units for decades in some cases, they were saying these evictions are illegal, and the city attorney said, no, they're not, nothing we can do about it. But but then a a superior court judge ruled that the tenants were correct. Right. And that the city attorney was wrong, and the city could have done something, but by then almost everybody had been evicted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that's the that's also uh something to note with like we talk about being proactive with the law. It's like it's important to be proactive because when the damage it's is done, it's you can't really reverse it.
SPEAKER_02Talking both about uh what Heidi has done and what what you're looking to do, I want to draw that contrast. What could the office of the city attorney be doing for tenant rights?
SPEAKER_00So again, I mentioned that the city attorney has this huge affirmative litigation power, the ability to sue any company for anything that is unlawful or deceptive or unfair. Um that includes abusive landlords, that includes slumlords. Yeah, at the attorney general's office, I'm on the housing justice team, um, where we investigate violations of housing law. Um, this is not an unusual division. The San Francisco City Attorney has um its own housing unit that city attorney David Chu created. And they go after, you know, they sue about unsafe living conditions, discrimination against low-income tenants, code violations. They've won back millions of dollars. So there is absolutely more that the city attorney's office could be doing. And, you know, when I look at what's happening right now, two years ago, we've we've elected all of these, you know, very tenants' rights forward new council members. And they're passing incredible laws, like the tenant anti harassment ordinance. Um, but here's the thing about the tenant anti harassment ordinance it was passed two years ago. There have been 13,000 complaints of tenant harassment, no affirmative cases, only four administrative fines. out of 13,000. Wow. I can't do math on the spot, but I'm gonna guess that's less than 1%. Um and that that shows that like we do all this work to pass these laws and pass these protections. But if you are not enforcing them, they are rights on paper. They don't mean anything. And then it becomes frankly a part of the industry practice to disregard these protections. And it not only hurts tenants, it also hurts the the the business actors that are trying to do the right thing because they're at a competitive disadvantage now. And so one of the things I want to do as city attorney is follow the best practices that have been set by the state and other cities and bring housing justice work to the city attorney's office and really make it an engine for tenant protections because so many people in Los Angeles I'm a renter myself. I I certainly pay more than one third of my income and rent. So I'm technically rent burdened. And that is the story of so many people in Los Angeles tenants need advocacy and tenants need to, we need to be able to vindicate their rights. And that should be a huge focus of the city attorney's office that just currently is absent.
SPEAKER_02Yeah the longer I was in office and and since I've left office, the the greater sense I've gotten is that the city of Los Angeles tends to be very comfortable with the status quo. And when I look at what other cities are doing, you mentioned David Chu in in San Francisco doing things for tenants, I I see a much more a much more of a sense of advocacy for change to make the city on the side of people. Right. Along those lines what should the city attorney's office be doing for for workers in Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00LA is the wage theft capital of the country. Every year $2.5 billion are stolen from the pockets of workers in Los Angeles. It hurts the workers it hurts our families and it hurts the LA economy. Again we have this huge affirmative litigation power. And when I was at the office I actually used it. So when I was a deputy city attorney um the first case I ever brought was about misclassification down at the port of Los Angeles. I had read in the paper about how trucking drivers were getting misclassified as independent contractors. They were getting put in these abusive leases for new trucks as a condition of getting their job. And then the payments from the truck lease, the gas, the repairs, parking down at the port would all be deducted from their wages. There were some workers taking home as little as 10 cents on a paycheck.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00And it was pervasive. It was it was the employer standard.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00I investigated that case and I remember actually I there were so many things I learned from that case, but one of the key moments was I was investigating that case, building the legal case about how they had been misclassified, how also this was causing violations of you know federal trucking regulations. But I started to get to a moment in building the complaint where I was hitting a wall because I didn't have the workers' stories. And you know at the time 2017 first Trump administration um it was a largely immigrant workforce that had very reasonable distrust of government and there was not a distinction between like oh you're the federal government or the local government you're the good side of the government. And so I ended up going to a Teamsters rally and suddenly the complaint felt alive. It it represented the views of workers that represented their stories. And we could do so also in a way that protected them because when you bring these these lawsuits, it's often it's so difficult for workers to bring lawsuits individually because they're exposing themselves to retaliation. But when the city attorney files a lawsuit it's the the caption is the case name is the people of the state of California. No one has to put their name on it. No one's exposed to retaliation. We can protect them. And so it was again a landmark case on behalf of 500 port tracking drivers. And it was a moment for me where I really got to see why it was so important for the city attorney's office to do workers' rights, to be able to file these lawsuits when people wouldn't be able to vindicate the rights for themselves. And then I went on to do the same thing again for car wash workers. So there were a couple of car washes um in the Silver Lake area where about 40 trucking drive 40 car wash workers I mean um were getting underpaid for shifts, we're not getting um appropriate meal and rest breaks. And we worked with a nonprofit called Clean Car Wash LA to build the case again to to shield workers who, you know, largely immigrant workforce again like knew that they were being mistreated but like were getting threatened.
SPEAKER_02Incredibly vulnerable easy to be exploited.
SPEAKER_00Exactly and that's where you see most wage theft actually it's it's immigrant communities particularly immigrant women um and so we brought that lawsuit and it settled with payments between $10 and $40,000 for each of the impacted workers. And that is life-changing money um as well as injunctive relief so that we could kind of force the business to change its practices. And so I have been working at the city attorney's office bringing this type of large scale workers' rights litigation. And that is the type of work I would want to dramatically scale up. And in particular I want the community to inform litigation more. I think often we see kind of the city attorney's office people don't really have public visibility over it. Just kind of like you you didn't even know that you could be referring things to the city attorney's office. I really want um particularly like working families, tenants to know that they can report things to the city attorney's office, that they can have someone who can stand up for them. And so I think like I couldn't have built either of those cases without community they were such a boon to the investigation and it allowed me to also be a better attorney to make sure that I was building a case that reflected the relief they need. And so that's a lot of the philosophy I bring and a lot of the reason why I know that when I say we need to scale up workers' rights litigation at the city attorney's office, I've done it and I know we can do it.
SPEAKER_02So you're saying the current city attorney is not aggressively pursuing wage theft cases?
SPEAKER_00I think over the last two years I I did I've been studying this with some uh with some researchers we only could find one case in the last one yes one new case in the last two years there's some holdovers from my viewers era um but only one new case. I I did more as a single deputy when I was there um how could the city attorney's office uh be fighting the Trump administration oh this is my favorite topic um so the federal government um in an ideal world should not be an antagonist to states and local governments we are seeing we saw the first time and we're seeing again a complete breakdown in our constitutional system last time we had to defend ourselves as cities and states and as I mentioned I was outside counsel for LA County and part of over a dozen legal actions against the Trump administration cities have great independence under the 10th amendment of the Constitution which protects states' rights um which in turn extends to cities and counties um and we've seen so far 74 lawsuits against at least over 75 lawsuits against the Trump administration but also many from states and cities so the attorney generals we've seen the California attorney general involved with a lawsuit against the um birthright citizenship order so that was with 18 states and the city of county and San Francisco joined that as well we've seen um 23 attorneys general um challenge the federal funding freeze we've seen 22 attorneys general um sue about the um NIH cut uh we've seen 19 attorneys general um sue about Elon Musk's and doja's access to private records um and those have all won those have all won in court and you're saying that the city of Los Angeles city attorney has not signed on to any of those? No they not signed on to any of those and cities by the way themselves have sued. So the I'm just that was the attorneys general but the cities um the list of cities that have sued so far have been um New Haven Connecticut um which you know as someone who lived there for three years I'm a little surprised like New Haven Connecticut Santa Clara uh County of course San Francisco Portland Chelsea and Somerville Massachusetts Oakland Denver School District Baltimore like you really mean to tell me that that Chelsea Massachusetts is doing more to fight the Trump administration than the city of Los Angeles like take that in for a second.
SPEAKER_02That's really astounding. I mean the the city's absence from that list is is conspicuous and really embarrassing.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely and you know I think if the city is afraid of defunding like let me address that head on defunding is where cities have the greatest protection under the 10th amendment. So um by defunding you mean Trump taking away exact money for the Olympics or for wildfire cleanup or whatever because at the end of the day states and cities are independent laboratories of democracy that are that should be able to use their own discretion and their own resources to advance the agenda that meets the conditions and needs on the ground in their own jurisdictions. And so the federal government trying to commandeer them into being agents of the federal government's will like we have protections against that. And that is truly where we are on strong constitutional ground. And we fought those lawsuits every time the Trump administration tried to condition aid to sanctuary cities including Los Angeles the city of LA was so active in fighting it last time for our voice to be missing right now and to put it on to say that it's because we could lose funding that's just that's just an empty excuse. We need to be fighting right now. And frankly when you consider the fact that one third of families in Los Angeles have immigrants in their family, it is our moral imperative to be standing up for them and fighting the Trump administration. And yes, LA's absence from this litigation when you've seen so many cities and states be brave, it speaks volumes.
SPEAKER_02So we've spoken in legal terms I I want to speak in political terms for a minute. We've spoken about immigration we've spoken about workers' rights we've spoken about tenants' rights and we've drawn a contrast between your vision for what the office can do and what the office under Heidi Feldstein Soto is currently doing.
SPEAKER_00What does that say about who you're fighting for versus who she's fighting for At the end of the day I am fighting for the people and that's who I've always fought for in my career. And to me Los Angeles someone once said this recently that I have an irrational love for Los Angeles. Los Angeles to me is the the tenants who are holding together multiple jobs as they try to realize their dreams are the workers who are the basis and the foundation for everything in this city are our immigrant families who build their lives here and as a as a first generation American on one side like that's that's my story too. I want to fight for the people of Los Angeles who right now are getting crushed and getting crushed by bad bosses or abusive landlords or the Trump administration and they don't have someone fighting for them. And I see the duty of the city attorney to be to be doing that role. And I think the contrast is you have someone who has spent her entire career working in government to stand up for the people and you have someone who spent her career um working for billion dollar corporations making them richer, doing mergers and acquisitions and bankruptcy and never really spending a day in court. And so I think I take very seriously and heavily the duty to fight for the people of Los Angeles and that's always who I'm going to center first.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell Tell me about we've talked a lot about sort of the the the civil aspects of the city attorney's office. You know there's two big branches there's a civil branch and there's the criminal branch. We talked about how the city attorney's office handles uh or prosecutes misdemeanors uh or doesn't prosecute misdemeanors depending on your your perspective or the situation give me a contrast between how you will approach using the the prosecution powers of the office versus how the incumbent does so the city attorney's office um stands in a really unique position to make meaningful progress on public safety.
SPEAKER_00So as I mentioned the city attorney's office has jurisdiction over misdemeanors. I think it's important to distinguish what a misdemeanor and a felony are felonies are kind of the prototypical crimes um that you might think of on law and order like murder or a large crime syndicate or something like that. Those are all the district attorney um the city attorney has jurisdiction over misdemeanors and misdemeanors um in the legal world are seen as um the more minor quote unquote petty offenses not all but many um the largest share are nonviolent um and they're often stemming from poverty from addiction mental health I mean misdemeanors are kind of all around us like to give you an example I was at LAX the other day and on the loudspeaker I don't know if anyone actually listens to the loudspeaker except maybe the attorney um they say that if you're an unticketed passenger in LAX you could be subject to misdemeanor prosecution or um you know just had to renew my vehicle registration. And if you're six months late on that misdemeanor so many of the things around us like vehicle infractions um can end up being misdemeanors. When I think about the approach to misdemeanors my my posture is again this is a similar situation where like kind of the the civil affirmative um the client is every time you are engaged in um a criminal action the client's the people of the state of California and so to me these are actions on behalf of the public we don't have a client at the city attorney's office our client's the public good um and what that means is using the tools in our our toolkit for the public good to actually be serious about community safety and to not create or perpetuate more harm. And my North Star is recidivism. Recidivism is reducing recidivism, I mean so recidivism is when someone re-offends and we often see people get caught in these cycles of criminalization. My North Star is how do we break those cycles of criminalization? How do we reduce recidivism? And the answer is it's by not taking a one size fits all approach. One of the strategies that has been so successful in jurisdictions across the country have been when cities are using what's called diversion for nonviolent misdemeanors. Now diversion is where when you have a case, a misdemeanor charge, rather than seeking a prison sentence, you seek a court ordered program that can help someone get addiction treatment or mental health treatment. And then when they go through the program and complete it, the charges are dropped and no one has a criminal record. Because I think at the end of the day we all want we all want our communities to be safer none wants the situation where someone is arrested for a misdemeanor like public intoxication. Maybe they're also having a mental health episode and then they get charged cash bail's often set at tens of thousands of dollars. I certainly couldn't pay that um so you're in then this person's in pretrial detention, waiting trial, haven't been proven guilty yet. There's a presumption should be a presumption of innocence. Maybe in that interim they've lost their job and then maybe they plead guilty as as so often happens and there's a criminal misdemeanor on their record and then it's harder for them to get a job it's harder for them to get housing harder to access some benefits and they might reoffend and maybe it'll be another misdemeanor maybe it'll be a felony. No one wants that because it harms the individual it harms the community. So if we want to be serious about public safety, we want to break the cycle of criminalization and help address the underlying need. And so if that is diversion to addiction related treatment or mental health treatment, we need to be able to use that. And we also need the attorneys who are doing this work to be integrated into the community. So you know when I was at the city attorney's office Mike Fuhr was starting a lot of great pilot programs for diversion and developing more tailored approaches um specialized units so that people could could bring trauma informed approaches, could bring mental health approaches um and I think a lot of the a lot of the deputies in the office really enjoyed that too because they're problem solvers. They at the end of the day are trying to find the best solution. And also you know there were a lot of there was a whole section of deputies who were out in the neighborhood who would be at neighborhood council meetings who would kind of get insights there and they would use the whole range of tools to address people's uh people's concerns. What we've seen with the current administration um is that the current city attorney has pulled the city attorneys out of the neighborhoods um has pulled them has ended the kind of the neighborhood prosecution program and is really kind of taking this one size fits all approach. And I just think it's a complete disservice and it's it's not in service of public safety at the end of the day. If you're going to be taking a one size fits all approach it doesn't make us any safer. What makes us safer um is making sure we're taking tailored approaches that don't cause or perpetuate harm, that help people get back on their feet. I think again particularly with nonviolent misdemeanors there are opportunities where diversion can do so much more for the community and for public safety let me just take a moment here to reset.
SPEAKER_02This next part of my conversation with Marissa includes a discussion of the topic of sexual harassment just in case you or anyone listening has been impacted by this issue. We started this interview by talking in sort of personal terms about some of the reasons that you decided to get involved in in the law uh your brother, your your your grandparents throughout your career you've taken that and you have worked on a lot of really big, really significant public interest cases on behalf of cities and on behalf of the state. I'm curious though what was the case that made you want to be the city attorney instead of a deputy it wasn't really a case that I filed.
SPEAKER_00It actually was a case I could never get to filing kind of the the case that got away after me too I really wanted to sue Weinstein Co. under a novel theory of law um everyone was suing Harvey Weinstein for harassment I wanted to sue Weinstein Co. Okay. And the reason I wanted to sue Weinstein Co, there's a a law that hasn't really been used where you can hold a company accountable for their knowledge and for their complicity in creating a culture of impunity that allowed the harassment to happen. I saw this as the perfect test case. You know the board of Weinstein Co had a memo from 2012 detailing Harvey Weinstein's you know predatory and criminal behavior and did nothing and sat on it and then four years later everything comes out. And so I pitched this around um and I kept hitting walls because the people I was pitching to didn't have that personal experience. So I kept getting told you know no that's this is this would be too difficult. You know really this is an individual problem. This is not something we can hold a company accountable for and I should by the way mention that while it was a novel theory of law it wasn't crazy because state like a New York state attorney general Letitia James sued Weinstein Coe and got a very advantageous settlement. But the problem was I I couldn't I couldn't teach people an experience they didn't have um and it was just an experience that I knew very personally. Um when I was much, much younger, I was in a a work situation where there was a known predator um who really targeted me. And um everyone knew his history. Um everyone could see that he was singling me out. And no one did anything to try to stop him or hold him accountable. Um, they they tried a lot of more defensive strategies to protect me, you know, try to make sure I never get assigned to a project with him, um, make sure I have a buddy for meetings so I'm never alone. Um but those those strategies weren't foolproof. So when something did eventually happen, um I honestly put responsibility not only on him, but on the workplace that did not protect me when it knew and saw I knew how important it was to bring that case and set that precedent when we had an easy test case. And I remember thinking, if I was the decision maker, this case would have been filed. And I that that's that put the seed in me of someday I am going to run. Because, you know, being being the city attorney, it's not the reason I'm running is not just to restore competence to the office, though it sorely needs it. It's to bring courage. The city attorney's office is in an incredible position to be able to advocate for people without so many of the drawbacks that prevent people from asserting their rights. City attorney has all of this ability to do more on behalf of the public. And it does take courage. Um, and I feel like that is so much of the reason I'm I'm running is because I see the need for a city attorney who is going to be courageous on behalf of people who feel powerless. And I think so many of us right now feel powerless in some way, whether it's whether it is you're a worker who is under abusive conditions or you're a tenant struggling to get by, or you're just simply looking at the chaos of the federal government right now. If you feel powerless, what I will say is law has always been what has empowered me. Um, it is an incredible tool. It is a tool that admittedly can be used to insulate and protect powerful people, but it is also a tool that can be used to advocate on behalf of the powerless. And there is so much that the city attorney's office can be doing to use the law to realize justice. And it just takes takes that courage.
SPEAKER_02I'm glad you mentioned courage because I mean it takes some courage to tell that story. So thank you for sharing that. Um I'm sorry that was your experience.
SPEAKER_00I think when we are feeling those moments of powerlessness, it is important to reclaim and remember our own power. And I think collectively there's so much we can do to stand up, even in this moment where things seem a little hopeless.
SPEAKER_02We've talked about the office. I want to talk to wind up about the campaign. I've always felt that one of the best ways to evaluate a potential elected official is by the type of campaign they run. It's something that they create from scratch. Uh, it's their opportunity to show whether or not they can uh build an organization, that they can run an organization, whether or not they can imprint their values on an organization. Uh tell me about the kind of campaign that you're seeking to build and what kind of values you want it to demonstrate.
SPEAKER_00As I answer, I'm going to tell us, tell you something that is going to make you and everyone listening groan. Um my original slogan for this campaign, everyone has told me it is so awful. It got rejected. Don't, don't worry, everyone, I'm not using it. But um I wanted the campaign slogan to be let's sue it. I have such a positive association with litigation that I realize maybe I'm an outlier in that. Um but I think that I have seen litigation do incredible things in in my life, you know, protecting my brother, um, how I've used it to protect workers and tenants and fight for reproductive rights, fight the Trump administration law. Law is really an incredible thing. And I hope that I, the campaign I want to build, I hope inspires people to see themselves in this office. Um, I think the law, we often think of it as very like kind of objective and dry, and in ways it is, but it's also deeply personal and impacts all of us. Um, and I hope that I am building a campaign um that is really centered on, you know, public discussion and education that brings people in, um, that shows people they have another tool and another resource fighting for them. The campaign I hope to build is one where people see themselves in the city attorney's office. People start to see the injustices that they might face and accept maybe to a degree in their life, thinking that there's no recourse. And they see actually an opportunity to do something about it. Um, and so I hope to build a campaign that many different types of people can see themselves in. I think I see this office at the Venn diagram of so much that we care about and agree on. Um, and so I think anyone who believes in justice and workers' rights and racial justice and tenants' rights and, you know, standing up for immigrants and reproductive rights, that they can find themselves in this campaign. Um, and I really hope that over the next couple of years, there are lots of opportunities to talk to people about the potential of the city attorney's office, to relate it to the things in their everyday lives, um, and to bring community into this campaign in a way that we've seen in so many great ways with the campaigns in a lot of the campaigns in 2020, since I guess 2018, um, with uh Nithia Raman's first campaign. Like I hope the community can see itself in this campaign. And that's that's what I'm trying to build and what I'm so excited about. I hope that maybe by the end of this campaign, let's sue it doesn't sound so scary, and it actually sounds like a battle cry.
SPEAKER_02So what is the slogan then?
SPEAKER_00Oh, we have no slogan because I'm uh I'm not exactly a comms whiz.
SPEAKER_02Well, you you you found a way to outwit your your your cabinet and sneak in the slogan that they rejected.
SPEAKER_00Don't worry, everybody. It won't be on the social media or the website.
SPEAKER_02Uh Maritza Roy, candidate for city attorney. Thanks for joining me on What's Next Los Angeles. Thanks, Mike. And that does it for this episode of What's Next Los Angeles. My thanks to Fanyel Lucias, our new producer. Welcome. My thanks also to LA Forward for sponsoring and partnering with me on this podcast. Please make sure you listen to our sister program, LA Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, take good care and peace.