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
REV. RAE HUANG: Candidate for LA Mayor
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A community organizer and faith leader focused on housing and affordability is running for mayor. Reverend Rae Huang joins me to talk about her campaign. That’s on this episode of WNLA.
Huang has spent two decades bringing people together across faith communities, neighborhoods, and movements to advocate for dignity, fairness, and a more inclusive city. As Deputy Director at Housing NOW! California, she directed statewide campaigns to expand affordable housing and prevent displacement in working-class communities of color. She helped lead efforts behind major legislative and budget wins, including expanded tenant protections under SB 567 and the passage of California’s social housing study bill, SB 555. She has also organized with Clergy for Black Lives and the People’s Budget LA, worked alongside hotel and service workers through Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, and helped launch the Healthy LA Coalition, which secured pandemic relief for families who might otherwise have been left behind. Huang also played a role in organizing fire recovery efforts in Los Angeles.
She says her campaign is focused on strengthening community-driven solutions to make Los Angeles more affordable, more sustainable, and safer for every resident. Toward the end of the discussion, we discuss how she maintains grace and faith in the world of activism and politics.
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
A community organizer and faith leader who is focused on affordable housing is running for mayor of Los Angeles. The Reverend Ray Wong joins me to talk about her campaign and her vision for the city. That's on this episode of What's Next Los Angeles. Hi everyone and welcome. I'm Mike Vaughn and thank you for joining. As part of this podcast, we're bringing you conversations with candidates running for mayor of the city of Los Angeles. They're recorded live in front of an audience in a series of fireside chats. These conversations are conducted in my capacity as Executive Director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State, LA. These fireside chats are designed to be longer, more in-depth discussions about the nature of public leadership and about the challenges facing the city and the ideas that candidates have for addressing those challenges. This mayor's race is unfolding at a time when LA is facing incredible pressure around housing, homelessness, public safety, and the overall performance of city government. Voters are going to be weighing whether to continue with the current administration of Karen Bass or moving in a different direction. Today's guest is Reverend Ray Wong. She's a community organizer and an ordained Presbyterian minister. Wang has spent much of her career working in coalition-based advocacy, particularly around housing and economic justice. She's worked with Housing Now California, where she was involved in statewide efforts related to tenant protections and housing policy. She has participated in organizing efforts connected to groups like Clergy for Black Lives and the People's Budget LA and Black Lives Matter. Her work has also included advocacy alongside labor and community organizations, as well as involvement in pandemic era relief efforts for low-income residents, mutual aid programs. More recently, she's been part of an organizing and recovery effort following major fires in LA. Wang's campaign is centered around housing affordability, public safety, and the role of city government in responding to neighborhood concerns. Now, before we get to that conversation, I want to give a few disclosure notes about my relationship with the candidates for mayor of LA. I have known Mayor Bass for decades and I supported her in her last election. I served for two years on the city council with Nithya Raman, and I supported her re-election in 2024. My husband works for Adam Miller, running one of his nonprofits, and I have done a lot of coalition work with Reverend Ray. And she has been to my home and socialized with us. So just to be clear, I am not endorsing any candidate in this race, and the Pat Brown Institute is a nonpartisan organization, and we hope to host your co-sponsor mayoral debates during this campaign. Here is my conversation with Reverend Ray Wong. Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_06Thank you, Mike.
SPEAKER_03So uh I'm not doing an intro of you because I'll let you explain who you are. The way I start all of these is uh I give candidates an opportunity to give their elevator pitch. Explain who you are and why voters of Los Angeles should choose you as the next mayor.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, thank you. Before I begin, Mike, I just want to thank you so much for this space and this time. Mike is Mike was my city council member in CD 11 where I live, and I'm so grateful for your bold and courageous leadership when you were in office. Um, you really stood out to me as a city council member who stick to your convictions and your values, and that is why, in fact, I'm running today, because I plan on doing the same. So thank you so much, Mike.
SPEAKER_05Thank you.
SPEAKER_06Why am I running for mayor of Los Angeles? I'm running because we need real courageous, moral, and grounded leadership, in especially in this moment in our city and in our country when we are regularly under attack. I've been a community organizer and also running social justice organizations and mentorship over the last 20 years, working on anti-racism trainings and also organizing work in our communities. In fact, I worked on organizing youth safety in Boston. I've worked on human trafficking issues to end it in Greece. I've worked on peace in the West Bank and in Israel. I've also worked to fight alongside Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles, to end violence against our own residents here in Los Angeles by the LAPD and now by ICE. I've defended and worked alongside tenants to ensure that they can stay safely housed. And I've also fought to end foreclosures, unjust, illegal foreclosures to our homeowners here in Los Angeles. We need new leadership in this moment. We need somebody who is collaborative, who works well and plays well with others. Something we're not seeing in City Hall right now. We need a coalition builder. That is who I am and what I do. And I've been doing that for over a decade here in Los Angeles. We need real systemic change. Our system, it's not that it's broken, it's working exactly as it's intended to work. The problem is a system is not meant for working people. It serves the billionaire class, and that has got to stop. And that's why I'm running on values and on a platform that changes ultimately this system. I have over the last decade started and led coalitions in this city and in the county, such as Healthy LA Coalition, where I worked very closely with you, Mike, to be able to lead on protections during the pandemic. I've also now worked for a statewide housing justice coalition over the last six years working and organizing over 350 organizations across the state towards solutions to make housing actually affordable and keep our tenants safely at home with their families together. This is why my platform is rooted around the idea of values, the idea that housing is a human right, the idea that homes are for people and not for profit. The idea the economy is there to serve the working people, not the billionaires, not the rich, not the 0.01%. California is the fourth largest economy in the world. Los Angeles makes up one-third of that. We have the wealth here. We're just not seeing it and we're not experiencing it. That is why I'm planning on ushering in a public bank to ensure that our investments are going back to us, not into the pockets of Wall Street. I believe in real safety. That's why I will be working on making our buses fast and free, making the Dash buses immediately free when I get into office. It brings affordability and also most importantly, it brings safety so that people don't have to choose between whether or not they're going to eat that day or pay for their housing or pay for their transit to get to important places they need to get to for their health, their well-being, or for education, or for work. I also will be ushering in and expanding social housing here in Los Angeles. I am so proud that I've been with in coalition spaces working on expanding social housing over the last, I believe, actually the last, almost the last decade now. We have so many infrastructures set up to finally expand social housing at what we need. And so we will be ushering that in. And I plan on making that a priority in my administration. And finally, I am somebody who has worked on strategic visioning for many public institutions and private institutions over the last two decades. I've actually been doing this. We need to have a real vision and a strategy and a plan to get us into the future, to help us move towards 100% renewable energy by 2035, which is a commitment we made as a city, but we're not moving forward. It's time that we do that. It's time we make our city actually safe, actually affordable, and actually clean and green for our residents to have a real future, both for my children and for all of us.
SPEAKER_03I want to tease out the bio part just a little bit. You talk a lot about your experience as a community organizer. That's an experience that Mayor Bass shares. She did a lot of community organizing before she ran for office. Can you talk about life experiences that you may have had that distinguish you from the other candidates and that would inform how you would govern as mayor?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So as I stated in my sort of introduction, the main thing that I've been doing over the last uh 20 years actually has been around bringing people together who don't usually agree. I've been doing interreligious dialogue, for example, over 20 years now. Even though I myself am a Christian pastor, I've been working with imams, I've been working with rabbis, I've been working with people all different religious beliefs, even uh even atheist agnostics, working together towards a common vision, which is trying to bring us together around peace. That's one area to just demonstrate. I've done mediation actually for public schools when there's been a racial incident and the school was learning and figuring out how to heal after the incident and what kinds of policies they need to usher into the city, into, excuse me, I'm still talking about the city, into the school to make it a safer space for all their students. I've also worked on, like I said, coalition building where I've brought hundreds of organizations to have to come together towards something that they areas where there's agreement, areas where they need to see protections for the workers, protections for their tenants, uh, protections for small businesses who are struggling, especially during the pandemic. So these are areas that I've worked on. Actually, one more thing I'll also name in my experience is that I've been on the front lines when it comes to rapid response. During the pandemic, like I named, I gathered, you know, groups across the sector, across the region of the city, and then later the county to work together on protections. It is rapid response work. I know how to act quickly when emergencies happen, when crises happen. Another time I did this was during the fires that we had last year. A lot of folks uh may not know, just a couple months in October of the year before our fires, I actually had gone up to Butte County uh specifically to go and build small homes and actually to spend time and interview with people who uh individuals, the leaders of their fire collaborative in their recovery process, because I was curious about learning how they were recovering and preventing speculation from coming in, buying up all that land so that the families who were displaced could return and stay housed. And I was curious about that because we were seeing fires and crises and floods all across the state. So I was doing this as a state organizer. I had no idea it was going to come to my own doorstep in my own neighborhood. I could see outside the steps of my house the fires just above the hills in the Palisades. It was really scary. And but I knew when that happened, I knew exactly what to do because I had just worked on this with other colleagues. And so I gathered again, people across our organizations across sector and across the region to talk about rapid response, fast recovery, and advocacy. Today, I still work with those organizations on fire on the fire recovery advocacy work. So these are things I've done, and these are things that we need in terms of leadership for our city.
SPEAKER_03So you've talked about your leadership skills, you've talked about areas where you would lead. Just wanted to drill down a little bit. What specific tests of leadership do you think that Mayor Bass has failed? Either issues or incidents?
SPEAKER_06I think there are two primary ones that I think are really important here. One is that she is not, I have not seen her to be a collaborative colleague. I have not seen her to have the ability to bring people together and be able to work effectively to solve, to make the city work efficiently. I have actually heard, and a number of staff members have come to me personally. I cannot name names and I will not name names, of how inept and inefficient a lot of the departments and offices are. And the fact that they want to come and support me and work with me. And often my platform is actually in part created by city staff members coming and making suggestions saying, we've been trying to make this change in our city. I've been a city worker for over 30 years, and I'm so sick and tired of the fact that I'm not being heard. And it's in this particular, and they often will say, this particular administration is way worse than the years prior. So that's one. The first is the fact that we need effective leadership that brings people together. And we've seen also the fact that we've heard, for example, super advisor Lindsay Horvath talk about the fact that she's been frustrated with the fact that the city and the county's not bringing working together. The second area is around that there's been no planning, no preparation. We could, the the fire crises, it was bad. Of course, you can't prevent a fire, but you can. You can't, there's definitely forms of prevention that we could have done actually in the Palisades. So actually, we can talk about prevention there. It was a preventable fire, and the Palisades residents will tell you that. But it's not just that it's also secondarily how you then recover afterwards. What I have not seen Karen Bass be able to do is be humble and learn and listen. What we need is somebody who is able to prepare and have things in place for emergencies, have the infrastructure ready because disaster has happened and disaster will come again. So we need to have a plan for the future. I'm all about strategy and vision. That's what I've been doing for a lot of my career. But then the follow-up is you also have to be humble and learn and listen to figure out where we've gone wrong and how to do it better. But instead, what we've seen is over and over again, she throw people under the bus to hide from the fact that she could have made a stronger decision. I think it is powerful, powerful, powerful. When a leader is able to say, I made a mistake. I'm sorry. Let's make it right.
SPEAKER_03Okay, let's go back to talking about you again. Yeah. Um, as I said, I've seen you at a number of forums over the past few days. Uh, and the next few questions I have come directly from people who are considering voting for you, people who uh saw you at at one of the forums over the past few days and are trying to choose between you and Councilwoman Raman. Those are that that was the constant refrain I heard. Lots of people who are totally in your camp, lots totally in her camp, but the the the voice I kept hearing is people who were trying to decide. So three questions I have from them. One is um, what kind of management or organizational leadership experience do you have? And how can you scale that to the complexity of a of managing a city with 40 departments and more than 50,000 employees?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So, like I said, I've been running coalitions, and this includes trying to bring, it's like, you know, how do they say it, shepherding a bunch of cats that go in the same direction. Um that is how it feels to do coalition work is you're bringing a lot of different groups who have different interests, different cultures, different um different uh experiences, and trying creating an infrastructure to allow to allow for the plan that you've created together, the strat and to organize a strategy, a common strategy, and find where there's commonality and kind and find where you are headed in the same direction together. And I'll, I mean, I'll be honest in that the role of an executive is very different than the role of a council member. What I often hear people say to me, um, especially in the beginning when I first started running, is why are you running for mayor as opposed to, you know, a smaller seat is often what they say, such as a city council seat or something like that. And I will often say, that's because I have a skill set to be an executive. That is the skill set that I've had. That's the skill set that I've played out, and that's a skill set that I'm that I'm good at. And so I know how to create infrastructure to be able to make things work, to be able to ensure people are communicating effectively across the various systems and also together. I also know how to guide people and do decision making together. That is what coalition work is. It's not top-down, one person makes the decision and everybody follows. That is important in an executive. So don't get me wrong there. But it is also equally important in making sure that everybody co-owns and believes in the direction we're headed. That's what you do in coalition work. Bringing everybody together to decide on a common strategy, to decide on a common goal, and then head there together in the various pieces and components you need to do that. These are things that I'm good at.
SPEAKER_03Second question from voters. Uh, it's about power. Yeah. Uh when you run for mayor of Los Angeles, there's sort of like this assumption during the campaign, all questions, all answers, that the mayor has a magic wand, right? And the mayor is all powerful. Reality is very different. The mayor has power, but there's lots of other people and players who have power as well. So the question is how do you how do you evaluate where power is in City Hall? Where do you think the other power centers are? And how do you think you can navigate those power centers in order to get your agenda accomplished?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I'll tell you where the power is right now. The power is located in our lobbyists and in our billionaire class. That is the problem with our current system. That is the problem with our current political structures. That is what I'm trying to change. The power that is that we have this is why I believe in democracy and I believe in the American governmental system, which is we do have checks and balances. We have places where we can interact and ensure that we're making decisions together. That is something that I actually want to support more of. We have a city council making decisions, working on laws. We have a mayor working with them to enforce those laws, to carry it out, make sure our departments are functional, and we make these decisions and work cohesively together. And we right now, by the way, have a charter reform process. I know you are aware, and for those who are listening, this is a really important process for us because our city is constantly changing, and we need to ensure that our charter, which is like the city's constitution, is changing with us to meet the changing demographics and needs of our community. So going back to power, and your question is again, what am I gonna do?
SPEAKER_03What are the other power centers? And how do you intend to navigate through those power centers to get your agenda accomplished?
SPEAKER_06So the way that I will navigate them is like I said, I am somebody who knows how to bring people together to have hard discussions and conversations and to find a common vision and direction that we need to head. And I know that there will be disagreements, but like I said, there is a lot of disagreement, especially when you are running a coalition of hundreds of organizations. But the difference, right, the way that you are able to move forward is that because we have a city that we love that we want to run together. And go ahead. And the second is that when I am elected, it will be very clear what the electorate wants. It will be very clear the direction of the city that they want. And in that case, we will know then that that is what we will be carrying forward. The third piece, I know you're like wanting to hop in here. The third is that because I believe in co-governance, this is why I will be in, I will be bringing in a people to people's budgeting process. Now, for those of you who don't know what a people's budgeting process is, um I've been part of the People's Budget LA campaign, which was started by Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles, continues to be run by them, which is the idea that it allows taxpayers to determine and decide where our city budget should go. In this season, where so much of what happens in City Hall is behind screens, behind closed doors, we don't know where our money is going until it's too late. This is a way for us to actually create accountability and transparency, more transparency in the process of where our money is. Going. And by the way, I plan on putting out a dashboard on a uh for all of the major departments, such as on housing and homelessness. We have no idea what's happening inside Inside Safe. So that's something that's going to change. But in other areas as well. This is why I'm actually, I will give a shout out to Kenneth Mejia, even though you know, which is the fact that he's been able to make the budget transparent. So if we have a people's budgeting process, it allows our residents to be able to give say on way where they want their money to go. And then we can see this also participates in not where you want your money to go, also names your priorities. It allows for more conversation and dialogue on the direction of this, where the city should go. And those are pressure points to shape our city leadership. Those are pressure points to finally shift the power from those who oftentimes make decisions behind closed doors to put it into the hands of the people.
SPEAKER_03So there are, this is a follow-up from me. So there are a number of powerful forces. Um the police union, homeowners associations, conservative voices in the media, uh that have a big influence over city politics. They disagree with your agenda. They're not disappearing overnight. Uh a lot of people, progressives, have been frustrated with how Mayor Bass has dealt with those three groups, that she has done more to agree with them than disagree with them to that view. It's why she has two candidates running to her left if she was spending so much time focusing on the right. How do you intend on dealing with let's just pick one of them, the police protective league?
SPEAKER_06Oh. I mean, I think many of you already know my opinion on the LAPPL. Um, I do not take money from corporations or lobbyists. I will most definitely never take money from the LAPPL. They people deserve our residents, Angelinos deserve a committed leader that's not going to be shaped by special interests, but be committed to their people. Um, I think that is one huge step in that direction. The second is I plan on placing people on the police commission, uh, folks who actually are impacted by the LAPD. They will be able to help shape LAPD in the direction that we need. I do believe, if you have not heard already, I've said this multiple times on social media and in interviews. I do plan on firing police chief McDonnell because he has not been representing the people of Los Angeles. He has not been protecting or serving the people of Los Angeles, and that is the job of the police to enforce the law. A law such as requiring that federal agents remove their masks in public.
SPEAKER_03So that sounds like you'll your attitude towards the police union would be more we're gonna take them on as opposed to we're gonna try to satisfy them. Yes. Okay. So um this is another question from over the weekend. Um, some might argue that to effectively make systemic change in an organization as big as the government of the city of Los Angeles with all those other power centers, you inevitably have to make some compromises. Um many of your supporters disdain compromise and feel like that's caving or selling out. I I've heard that about other elected officials who are progressive. I heard that about me when I was an elected official. How do you intend to navigate that? Not just the making compromises, but handling or or or or dealing with your supporters who don't agree with those.
SPEAKER_06Here's how we do decision making in coalitions. We bring together people in a room to come and figure out the direction we need to head together. That means that my supporters, and and we do this in coalition work all the time, we bring people together to say, hey, this is what's being offered. This is the now let's decide the strategy. What do you, people who are being impacted by the police, want to do about a fire chief who is not protecting the people? How do you want the LAPD to be or look like or serve in this next transition version? And allow those who are the most impacted determine and decide and make decisions together on that instead of me making it behind a closed door. It is in dialogue that we come together. What this shifts, and this is community organizing 101, is a co-ownership of the moment and the future of the city. Because now we're making decisions together. Now we have say, we're not going to always agree. Absolutely. But if you give people the option to participate, even if they end up not getting what they wanted, if they had the opportunity to feel like they could have that they were heard and that they could help shape it and try and move it in a direction, then we know that we are making progress together. There is a difference between compromise and compromising your values. And I think that is a very important distinction to make. For me, I will never compromise my values. I've been doing this social justice work organizing for over 20-something years. I have not ever compromised my values, and that is simply the kind of person I am. And so I will lay it from in front of the people of Los Angeles to make these decisions to move forward.
SPEAKER_03You you mentioned the term co-governance. Your generation, you're younger than I am, as is well, almost everybody in the room, except Rick. It's a deeper concept than inside-outside strategy. That's right. Who are your co-governing partners? If you're saying I'm going to co-govern, who should the voters see as your effectively your running mates?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's a good question. On one hand, it is the coalition spaces that I've been working with for the last 10 years here in Los Angeles, right? And those are organizations that are part of Keep LA House, that are part of uh the Act LA, that have been part of the transformative justice community, um, Black Lives Matter LA. I have worked very hard to join in solidarity those who are on the margins of our communities here in Los Angeles. I will continue to do that and center their voices because those are the people who are most at risk and have been disenfranchised in our city in probably the whole history of LA because of redlining, because of racist policing and practices. So we need to recenter those voices. So that is one area of coalition building. The second is I am creating a new coalition through the work of the campaign. Right now, we have over a thousand volunteers. Actually, it's probably well over now because I haven't checked recently and we've been growing in numbers every week. The one of the ways that we've been building this campaign is understanding that this is a fight not to get to November. This is about the long haul. This is about creating structures and infrastructure that allows for those who get involved with the campaign to continue to shape the administrations and the city into the future. That's why, for example, I was yesterday at Mayor Bass's house with people to be able to state very clearly that we need to ensure that the K-Line North project moves forward as suggested by our transit experts. I am already, we are working on creating change now, and we are building people's capacity in learning how to advocate for themselves into the future. And so the way that we're doing this is we have neighborhood captains in the 99 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. And every person who volunteers and joins the campaign are then invited to join this neighborhood captain to be able to decide and learn about their neighborhood, learn how to connect with their neighbors, not just for the Ray for LA campaign, but to actually learn about what their neighbors need and what their neighbors' interests are. This allows for greater democracy in our city. This creates a stronger sense of network and interconnectedness that we have not had here in Los Angeles. The other way that I think is essential and important, and there's debate here, our neighborhood council system is completely underfunded, has been defunded over the last number of years. We set up this structure during the last charter reform process so we could create more space for our residents to have say in the city because people just simply don't have the capacity or resources or time to show up during a workday to City Hall. And you get two minutes, sometimes just one minute. And so our neighborhood council system needs to be supported, it needs to be strengthened. It allows us to be able to know and witness who are our neighbors, and especially when crisis occurs. And this is really key here to know who you have in your neighborhood because you'll know that Auntie So-and-so is going to need extra help if there is an emergency and someone needs to go pick her up and drive her out of the city. It's from as small, or actually that's huge, but it's from as localized as that to as large as making sure that voices are heard in City Hall.
SPEAKER_03Uh, third question subject from uh people who are trying to decide between you and Nithya. Uh, question I heard over the weekend. Uh it goes to the idea of in a mayor's race, not only is this illusion of unlimited power, there's an illusion of unlimited capacity and unlimited agenda. And the reality is when you get in there, you only got so much staff, you only got so much time, you only have so much political capital. During a campaign, you're talking to you know dozens, scores of groups, and every candidate is telling them, yes, your issue will be my priority. What are your top three priorities when you get in? And what will you say to the groups that are four through 20, that they're not one through three?
SPEAKER_06I'm gonna say, don't worry, we'll we'll get to you. We're we're gonna do this too. We're gonna do it together. Um, my priorities are rooted around the idea that we that safety first. I have two children, they're 11 and 13. You also have a son. And you know, when they're growing up, especially when they're toddlers, you always say safety first. Because that has to be the priority. I'm telling the city right now safety first. This is about real safety for our communities. What does that mean? It means that we have to take into seriousness our street safety. 300 people die every year because of traffic collisions. The biggest killer of our children is traffic collisions. I have tried to ride my bike from my house. I'm an avid bike rider. I tried to ride when I first moved here a couple years in, I I had I arrived pregnant, so that didn't happen the first year. Um but safety first. Safety with my helmet and everything. By the way, I I loved biking with my kids behind me, the bike and the trailer thing. Oh my gosh, it was so fun. But so I tried biking. I had a meeting downtown, and I thought um instead of taking the train, I'm actually gonna bike this time just to just experience it. I had extra time. So I decided to bike from my house to downtown. I nearly died, not because of the potholes, because there's no protection between me and the traffic. Thank you so much for helping us fix that in the Venice Boulevard because that was one of the main thoroughways. It's so crazy. If you go on Google Maps um and it and you look up the bike trail, they take you on these streets that are they're like, this is bike friendly. It's not bike friendly. It's terrifying. There's so many potholes. You can't actually even stay in the bike lane itself. I was breathing in so much smog the whole time. I thought I like had a cough at the end of it. And then I had to bike home after the meeting and I was like, I'm gonna die. I mean, this is the reality. I'm just trying to emphasize, you know, and give my own story of how terrifying it is to walk our streets. We must prioritize street safety. That is one of the biggest killers of Angelina's. If you want to talk about real safety. And so, what that means and what that looks like is actually improving the street infrastructure, actually being compliant with HLA goals and vision, vision zero goals, right? We need to um, and that means also fixing our sidewalks. That means also fast and free buses, which is what I've been campaigning on. We need to get people out of their cars. We are a city that just we're full of cars. We don't need extra lanes because that actually increases traffic. What we need to do is get people out of their cars and using public transit. If we make buses fast and free, it immediately increases ridership by 30%. Because who wouldn't want to ride a bus if it was for if it was free? And if you had a dedicated lane for a bus, it means that bus would move a whole lot faster. And if you're not having to pay for it, it also means that you're not waiting for people to have to find their change or to pull out their phone and the app's not working and all the things, right? The other benefit of having fast and free buses is that a busy bus is a safe bus. We all feel safer when we're surrounded by more people. The other way it makes us safer is we need more third spaces where we interact with people who don't look like us. Interact with people who are not like us, who share a different faith. It is the opportunity for us to connect. And I love making this joke because it's real. And then you can have your cute me cute if you haven't had one yet. Um, so that's one. That's you had three, but you want to interject? Oh, that was one. That was I know. I'm sorry. I was just talking about street infrastructure. The second.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna go safe streets and free transit. I thought that was two, but okay.
SPEAKER_06No, I'm just talking about street safety. Sorry, I know.
SPEAKER_03What are the other two more successful?
SPEAKER_06Distinctly. I love talking about fast-free buses. I'm sorry, Mike. I I could do an hour on fast-free buses.
SPEAKER_03That was my thing.
SPEAKER_06That's our that's our next uh fireside chat.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um, the second is around housing and homelessness. Of course, social housing is a priority for me. What is social housing? It's permanent, affordable housing that is permanently off a speculative market and it's owned by the public and by the community, and it has resident management. It means that you get to decide what you need for your home, how you want to live. If you want uh childcare at the bottom of your unit and your collectively of your neighbors, you could decide that. If you want a washer and dryer, if you want to fix your pipes, that's for you to decide, the residents to decide, not a landlord who's looking to make extra money off of you if they if they want to. Um, so that and why that has to do with real safety is of course, because we need to get people out of the streets and into homes. It is not safe, most especially for the people who are on the streets. A lot of times we look at homelessness as a place where it's not safe for the people who have homes to have homeless on the streets. I want to twist it on its head. It's not safe for the people who are on the streets of why they're on the streets. That's why we need to solve homelessness. And so let's get people into homes. Let's make sure that we prioritize uh making that happen by ensuring that our homelessness services are functional, are account that it's being it's actually uh being accountable, that there's accountability set in there so that way the services are appropriate and respectful. Let's make sure our service providers are being supported. And let's make sure that we build permanent supportive housing as fast and as quickly as possible. The third one is about protections for our people that and that looks like actually looking like and working as a sanctuary city. And when I say sanctuary city, I'm not just talking about for our immigrant families, I'm also talking about for our trans brothers and sisters and kin. Because that is a real fear right now in our communities. Not a real fear, it's a real, it's a reality for our communities right now. So we need to ensure that we are doing everything in our disposal to be able to protect our immigrants and protect our trans folks. And that's why I am calling for the firing of police chief McDonald. That's why I will be funding Represent LA to ensure that there's legal representation for anybody who needs it. No, even if you don't have the money. That is why I will be working and supporting the efforts by our communities who are already taking it into their own hands to protect each other through the rapid response work that's happening. They are leading the charge to protect our people. The city needs to follow that. The city needs to support it. Um, and that is uh, and those are priorities for oh, sorry, the last thing I did want to mention is the Olympics are on its way. And I know what maybe we'll get a separate question on the Olympics.
SPEAKER_03So we So we can move on. Uh before I do the Olympics question, though, uh, I want to have an opportunity for folks in the audience to ask some questions.
SPEAKER_02Hi, Ray. You mentioned your experience working with Mike Bonin when he was a member of the city council. There, there's some people that are watching your campaign and are experienced with your lack of experience serving as an elected official. Can you talk a little bit more in depth about your experience working with other city council members and navigating the bureaucracy at City Hall? You mentioned you have 20 years of experience working with various advocacy groups and nonprofits. Um, can you let let voters know that talk with voters and tell them uh about your experience working in with City Hall and how you plan to get your programs and ideas move forward uh while navigating all the bureaucracy at LA City Hall?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, sure. So, Mike, I don't know if you remember this, but the this might have been one of the first times that we started working together, is that your office called me and many others and said this was just when the pandemic had just started. And I appreciated this, by the way. But you had said, hey, are you available to get on a call with my office so I can hear what's happening on the ground in the community to help us shape our pandemic uh related protections that we need right now in this moment? I have some ideas. Well, the thing is, Mike, I didn't trust you at the time because I don't trust politicians.
SPEAKER_03Fair enough.
SPEAKER_06And so I called all my people. And again, I was at that time at that point, I had been working on housing, on immigration, on public safety, and on economic justice, working with a lot of labor unions. So I called all my people and I said, Hey, Mike Bonnet just reached out and said, you know, I want to, you know, I want to lay out some ideas I have. And I said, we're not gonna listen to his ideas, we're gonna tell him what we want. So we got all together an hour and a half. I was used to that. So we got, so we I called everybody up. It was late at night. My internet was funky, it was a whole situation. On and in one hour and a half, we came up with five uh with five demands for your office around all of the issues on immigration, on housing, on worker protections, on climate. Um, I can't remember the fifth one at this moment. Um, probably Homeless Sweeps. Homeless sweeps. And so we we worked, so we came up with all of our demands, which is by the way, it is that was so impressive. Hour and a half, you have no idea, across sector and region to come and decide on something together. But we were in a unique circumstance. We were in a major world crisis. So we had to get it together. We did. And then I if you remember, Mike, we brought it to you.
SPEAKER_04I do.
SPEAKER_06And then after that, we the next day we wrote a op-ed, and it was in the LA Times, and we made it clear to the whole public what we were demanding of the city. And then we moved forward on that. And that next year and a half, we won significant protections across the city and the county, including a countywide eviction moratorium that had never been done before.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_06Today that has that coalition space called Healthy LA Coalition has now become keep LA housed. That's just one example. I'll just end there because I know you got to give other people time.
SPEAKER_03And that that is where the the legislation countywide for the eviction moratorium started. That's true. Yep.
SPEAKER_08Thank you. Thank you for not making me get up. I'm an auntie. We don't have to move. Okay. So, Ray, um, I love what you have to say about housing and housing justice, um, especially because as we know, affordability in LA is there's no such thing as affordable-why am I lying? There's no such thing as affordability in LA. Um, my situation, I'm um, because I know we have like a cap on how much you can raise your rent. Unless, like me and my wife, you live in a single family home. And yes, I know it's a state issue and whatnot and so forth, but how for never? I am part of a my wife and I are part of a rapidly growing demographic. I'm a Gen Xer. I I'm gonna be 60, but I know I look good for 60, right? Yes, you do. Okay, that part. And my wife is truly a boomer. We can't afford to our our landlord, we had a really good place. I mean, we still do, thank God, but our rent went from $2,100 a month to $3,900 a month just because they could. Not because they needed to, but because they could. I understand, you know, like you said, it's about a safety issue. What can you do? Like I said, I know it's a state issue, but what safety nets are you trying are helping people, especially people who live in single-family homes or I think condos as well, who are not covered by, you know, rental decreases. What steps are you gonna try to take to make sure that people like me and my wife and a whole lot of other folks don't get priced out of their homes?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Oh, I am so sorry that that is happening to you. And and and your story is not isolated. One of the things that I plan on doing is having the city co-sponsor a state bill that will repeal Costa Hawkins. And that is the law that is preventing us from being able to have real rent control across the whole state. That is a necessary part of bringing real affordability and, like you said, bringing real safety into our communities. That law is outdated, that law is unjust, that law is unsafe. We are going to change it.
SPEAKER_07Hi, uh, I'm Rick Jacobs, and um, you have a great interlocutor and you are giving terrific answers, and it's a pleasure to meet you. Um, I have a question about money. Uh, the city's in a world of hurt on money, and uh tax revenues are going down, not up. Uh, social housing, a lot of the things you've called for require money. What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_06I want to first name that community organizations, the ones that I have been working alongside, like I said, over the last especially um seven years here in Los Angeles, has passed important revenue measures that is aiding us towards being able to make housing more affordable, measures like Measure A, like Measure ULA. We have through Measure A now set up uh La Casa. It is an agency that is now helping create a one-stop shop for affordable housing developers to be able to get the money they need to develop more affordable homes in our city. Why is this important? One of the reasons why it's so hard to be able to create affordable housing is because affordable housing developers have to go to multiple streams to get the resources they need. And so a one-stop shop through La Casa brings all that money together. So that's one way that we're saving money. I just want to name that. Because a lot of times what I will hear over and over again is we don't have money to build affordable housing. Well, here's the thing: we have been creating measures to get us a lot closer than we ever have before. And it's not because City Hall has led the way, it's because our community organizations and coalition spaces have. I am proud of that. Angelinos know what they need, they know what they want, and they know how to get it. Now let's talk about the rest of the budget. Yes, we do not have enough money. We are spending half a billion dollars in liabilities. A whole heck of a lot of that is because of police misconduct. The other part of that is because of infrastructure, street infrastructure. We need to cut down on those liabilities. We need accountability in our systems, which means we need to put resources to fix the streets so we're not instead paying the liability costs. We need to defund the police. Yes, I just said that. Because the police defunded the city to fund themselves. Now let's take that money back and put it back into the pockets of real safety for Los Angeles. Putting that money into street safety, putting that money into small business supports, put that money into uh into represent LA to protect our immigrants. That's real safety for us, right? Okay, then let's talk about the rest of the budget. So if the almost half the budget of Los Angeles is going to the police, and we're gonna take more chunks of that in other areas. And by the way, unarmed crisis response, that program, which the city recently made permanent, I'm very proud of us for doing that. We need to expand that. Did you know it's actually cheaper to have other health counselors than to pay for the police? The police, each police officer is a very huge cost for the city. So if we can actually expand the number of people, of experts that we need when people have a crisis, it's actually cheaper to provide them with their support. We, and by the way, I will just name that maybe we should increase the salaries of mental health counselors and increase the salaries of teachers, by the way. So we can talk about that too. And then now the other piece of it, right? So you've got revenue now coming out of the police budget that can go to fund the things that we need. Because if we don't deal with that directly, we'll be honest, we won't have enough money. We need to cut down on the liabilities. We have funding that's already coming in for housing. We need more of that. We need to be doing more campaigning and advocacy work at the statewide level. Less than 2% of our state budget has been going to housing and homelessness since 2018. And yet, our state leaders have been saying that housing and homelessness is their biggest priority. Put your money where your mouth is. So, using the bully pit as a mayor, I will be championing and forcing our state to reckon with what they promised us. And then lastly, I will be creating an office, and this was Garcetti's program, actually. An office of revenue and innovation, an office dedicated to identifying more revenue and figuring out where we can be smarter with our money and ensure that it's going to the right place. Oh, my last thing though, I do support taxing the rich. So, what that looks like is I am endorsing and supporting the CEO tax. That is a great model. And again, what I've been saying all along, the community is the one who's leading the efforts to solve our budget crises. This community has been the one solving the problems that we have. If you don't know what the CEO tax is, it is a tax on corporations where their CEOs are making 50 times more than what their workers are making. It is unjust. And part of the role of government is to create regulations of accountability, right? And so that money that we are getting in, which is gonna be a heck of a lot of money, let me tell you, because there's a lot of CEOs who make a lot of money. They that money will go towards affordable housing. It'll go towards workforce housing. What that means is housing for workers near where they work, which is gonna help us in so many ways, both the livelihood of the workers as well as lowering traffic. It's gonna increase safety for our communities in that way. It will also, that money will also go towards fixing our streets. And that money will also go towards after-school programs. And I feel like I'm missing that. A public grocery store. I feel like I'm I got one mixed up there. Uh, but it will also go towards public grocery stores. Who doesn't love a good public grocery store? A grocery store where it's about feeding people and not about the profit they're making on people.
SPEAKER_03And that is a uh proposal that gathered signatures, which I think were just submitted. And if it qualifies, it'll be on the November ballot.
SPEAKER_01That's correct. Yeah. Hi, Ray. Obviously, you know I'm a supporter. Um, as a frequent metro rider, one of my concerns right now is the gondola being pushed out in Chinatown, which is threatening to displace thousands of homeowners and renters and small businesses. And I know there's a very small but passionate group of citizens out that way fighting it. And I know the Metro Board unfortunately voted to uh to start hearing construction plans about it. And I guess my concern is because this isn't the first time that part of town has had private interest groups come in and propose, you know, metro solutions like Elon's underground tunnel to Dodger Stadium that was thankfully, thankfully shot down. Um, but the gondola is a real threat to you know a historic landmark and the parks. So I'm curious what your initiative would be to block future private interest groups coming in and proposing solutions to the metro system. One, meanwhile, the K-Line, which is a publicly funded and publicly demanded extension, is being currently blocked by our mayor.
SPEAKER_06That's such a great question. And just to be very clear, transit should be for transit users, for the people using the transit, for the working people of Los Angeles, not pet projects of billionaires. And the gondola is a pet project of billionaires. Also, I'm in support of eminent domain. I am um in support of that when it is for the service of the city, not when it's in the service of the billionaire class. And I just want to say that we've seen this repeat in history over and over again when highways were cut through black neighborhoods to be able to make it easier for, if you will, wealthier communities to be able to get to where they want to go. That is a misuse of what the role of government is for. We need to be protecting those from these kinds of billionaire projects. Um, kind of went in a different direction that I was planning on there. But anyway, I hope that answered your question. Oh, and then how I plan on preventing this is that I get to place people on the metro board. I actually have an outsized uh influence because not only do I get to have four people on the metro board, but I also will have, you know, I that includes a seat for the mayor. And so what that means is um I will be placing people who are in the metro board who actually are transit users and also who share the same values and interests to make sure that the transit serves the working people of Los Angeles. So we can ensure that we, again, don't move in a direction where transit is just a pet project, that roads are made not for the working people, but really again, just for uh special interests.
SPEAKER_00Hi, Ray. Um, my question is also related to money and like allocation of financial resources. Um if what we're talking about for the billionaire tax is like the same 5% one-time tax that I've been seeing on like ballot measures. Uh my question is if there would be any like any thoughts of like a cap in general on how much like a single person can have as their income so that those financial resources can be allocated back into either like workers of the company, uh citywide measures, so that you know that can be used for public projects that we want. Um, because again, like I am for a cap or I am for a tax on billionaires, but I also personally think there should be a cap on just like how much a single person can make. Because it doesn't make sense to me for like one person to be hoarding like billions of dollars of wealth while we do have people dying on the streets and like not being able to afford living. So that's yeah, that's my question there.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I don't know if that's lawful in our country right now, though. So that's that is something that we could work on, but that's something that, yeah, you'd have to investigate.
SPEAKER_03But let me get to a topic that I promise to get back to because you raised it briefly, which is the Olympics. Um the mayor has said that one of her biggest tests of leadership is making sure that Los Angeles is is ready for the Olympics. Uh you're not a fan of the Olympics coming, I presume. Um, but as it stands right now, they're coming. It doesn't look like there's a lot of political will to try to find uh some way to make that not happen. Um how well do you think Los Angeles is preparing, just based on Mayor Bass's standard? But if you're mayor, you're elected, you oppose the Olympics, what is your leadership gonna look like to make sure Los Angeles is ready for the Olympics?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I'm gonna just take a poll. How many of you think our city is ready for the Olympics? Um I clearly do not think our city is ready for the Olympics. And I'm not just talking about infrastructure. I'm talking about the fact that Trump's Olympics are on its way here. We know, because we've seen this historically in many cities who have had the Olympics, and we know of these stories, where the Olympics came into their city with promises of improving their economy. And the reality was that government leaders turned their city into a Disneyland. It made it look on the facade on the outside pretty. The reality is none of the infrastructure was sound for the long term. And on top of that, the worst part of all was it caused further displacement of their own communities. Their marginalized communities were resulted in even further poverty and instability than before. We have to get serious about the Olympics. Karen Bass is right about that. But I disagree with what that means and what that looks like. Again, I keep saying safety first. I mean that wholeheartedly. What that means is we do need an eviction moratorium in Olympic zones leading up to the Olympics. We already know that Airbnbs are already trying to pass a law to be able to increase Airbnbs in our city. I had a friend who moved to Scotland for grad school. He and his partner could not find housing for three months because there were so many Airbnbs they couldn't find a normal apartment to rent. They had to live in an Airbnb for three months. We cannot get to that place. Airbnbs will raise the cost of living and of housing and of rents here in Los Angeles. We need to get our house into housing as fast as possible for their safety, for the whole safety of our city, because we know and have already heard the rhetoric that Donald Trump uses when he talks about the unhoused. He does not see them as Americans. He sees them as words I don't even want to repeat because I find it so offensive. Everybody is an Angelino to me. This is us, this is our community. We have to protect our unhoused. We need to protect the Olympic wages. We've already seen Marquise Dawson, the president of our council, try and weaken with the support of Mayor Bass. She has already stated in a previous interview with the Working Families Party that if the city council moves forward to delay the Olympics wages, which by the way, if you don't know what that is, it's an increase of hospitality workers' wages to $30 an hour by 2028 in time for the Olympics, so they can get their fair share when the Olympics come to this stage. They want to delay it to 2030 until after the Olympics. Then what's the point of calling it the Olympic wages? So I promise to protect the Olympic wages, and I in fact will work to try and increase wages in every sector in Los Angeles. I want to ban more, I want to ban surveillance here in Los Angeles. This is what we're seeing that we saw in Paris, France, and we're learning from them. And it's scary not just because we have to be careful about what's out there about us, but because we already know that federal agents and ICE has been using surveillance technology to be able to attack us. There's one example where in Texas, a Texas sheriff used footage from flock surveillance to be able to try and identify a woman who had left the borders of Texas to have an abortion. How terrifying. Do you know how many people moved to California, moved to Los Angeles for safety? Imagine if the federal government, when Trump's Olympics comes to town and they have access to our information. If you don't know, during the Olympics, while they're here, the LAPD falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government. That means our information will be made available. Our police officers will be made available to Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_03Is there anything you think we can do about it? When I asked Mayor Bass this question last fall, she said the same thing. And she said, but it's the city council's fault. They signed that agreement, and there's nothing we can do about it. Which was before she took office. She was looking at me. I mean, she was saying, Bon and blame you. Um although I voted against the security agreement, just so you know. Um but she said there's really not much we can do. Uh do you think that there's things that we can do to mitigate the surveillance state in the Trump Olympics?
SPEAKER_06We can end the contract with flock surveillance right now. We've done that in Pasadena. We've done they've done that in other cities. Let's add Los Angeles to the list.
SPEAKER_03Uh two last questions. Uh you're uh you're an ordained minister, uh, and I want to go sort of to that realm for the last two questions. So I want to ask one question about grace and one about faith. So uh Grace, uh you're running against Mayor Karen Bass. She's getting hit from all sides. Um with Grace in mind, what do you think Karen Bass has done well?
SPEAKER_06Uh I'm so thank you for asking that. You know, I as much as I am hard on her, uh, with her administration and her time serving our city, um, I actually genuinely believe that she has the right heart for service. I mean, she she's dedicated her whole life to public service. She started off as a radical community organizer. She was radical in a time when nobody else was. I I have such gratitude towards her for being an OG for our community, an OG for our city, an OG for our country, serving as a congresswoman for as long as she did. And I voted for her every time that I could as a congresswoman. So I am so grateful for her leadership. I am so grateful for her commitment to service. I do believe that she is doing her best with the knowledge and experiences she has. I will never take that away from her. But I do disagree with her current, with this current administration and the choices she's made. And I thank her for the time that she's given. And and I'm saying let's now make space for new leadership.
SPEAKER_03Last question about faith. Uh I like to ask this of candidates because we live in we live in really difficult, challenging times. So many things are going wrong. Our neighbors are being kidnapped off the streets. You people can't afford to live indoors. Uh and a lot of people, with everything going on in the country, everything going on in the state and the city, are feeling demoralized, cynical. They've they've lost faith. If you're running for office, you clearly have faith that things can be better and you want to be an agent of that. From where do you draw your faith?
SPEAKER_06Thank you for asking that too. I draw faith from from so many places, but I think most especially it really does come from the people who surround me. I'm a single parent. I have two children, they're 11 and 13. I've been a single parent since they were two and four. Um, and and by the way, I I co-parent with my ex. And I'm I'm proud of that. That is actually a modern family here in in LA. Um and I raise because I am a single parent, I raised my kids in a village. One is I grew up in that style. My parents moved from Taiwan to the US with no other relatives, they knew nobody else. We moved to a town where I we were the only one of two families of color. And so it was a hard struggle for my parents to raise us in the community where in a culture and a language that was unfamiliar to them. That's why I'm a pastor today, because the church became our extended family. The church was the place where when we were sick, people would drop off medicine where we hosted families who were going through hard times and needed a place to stay. We took care of each other. I don't remember like a single month growing up where there wasn't somebody staying in our home in the extra bedroom. That's just how I was raised. Today, here in Los Angeles, my I know every single neighbor in my building. And I know most of the neighbors in my neighborhood. I'm part of the Buy Nothing group. Shout out to Buy Nothing Facebook. Um, if you aren't part of one, please join one. It's so awesome. It's where you can share things for free and support one another. I love that I raise my kids in a village because I don't because we work together as a whole community. That is where I draw my faith today and what inspires and motivates the kind of culture and campaign that we are running. We see LA as a village with a lot of people in it, but really we function like a small village. We have been showing up for each other and taking care of each other. We've done that over and over again during the pandemic, then the fires, during the Black Lives Matter uprising. We showed up for each other, we stood with one another, even though at the time it was not politically, I don't know, correct to do that. We still fought for each other. We're doing that now at the ice raids. We're the ones protecting and keeping us safe. I feel that in me, in my body and soul, I have so many amazing people who surround me. And I don't have to worry, so I can show up to things like this having not slept enough, not having eaten enough. And people will come and offer me food, offer me a glass of water, offer me encouragement. That's how we do. That's where my faith comes from.
SPEAKER_03Reverend Ray, thank you. And that does it for this episode of What's Next Los Angeles. Next week we have interviews with State Senate candidate Mike Newhouse and mayoral candidate Mickey Rama. In the coming weeks, we'll have more interviews with candidates to succeed Ben Allen and Mario Elena Carasco in the state senate, and interviews with city council candidates, candidates for state office, and yes, even for judge. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, my thanks to LA Forward for sponsoring this podcast, and my thanks to Tanya Lucia, as always, for editing and producing the podcast. Please also tune in to our sister podcast, LA Podcast, where I am part of a stable of co-hosts discussing and analyzing the latest news about politics, policy, and government in the Los Angeles area. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, take good care and peace.