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
ZENNON ULYATE-CROW: State Senate Candidate Spotlight
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Zennon Ulyate-Crow is a recent college graduate and housing advocate who is aiming to become one of the youngest members of the California State Senate. He joins me to talk about his campaign for the 24th Senate district seat. That’s on this episode of WNLA.
Ulyate-Crow grew up in Topanga and has been involved in organizing and public policy work since he was a student. While in college, he focused on housing issues, helping to organize around student homelessness and affordability, and working on legislation aimed at expanding student housing across California.
He later worked in public service roles including as a commissioner in Santa Cruz and on a national political campaign, and has continued to focus his advocacy on housing, cost of living, and what he describes as government accountability.
Ulyate-Crow is running in a crowded field, arguing that younger leadership and a different approach to policymaking are needed to address issues like affordability and access to housing in California.
https://www.instagram.com/zennonuc/
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
He's a recent college graduate and a housing advocate who is aiming to become one of the youngest members of the California State Senate. He's running in the Open District 24 race. Zenin Liate Crow joins me to talk about his campaign. That's on this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. Hey everyone and welcome. I'm Mike Bonnen. Thank you for joining me. As I have mentioned in previous episodes, between now and Election Day, we're doing frequent conversations spotlighting candidates for city council, mayor, the state legislature, and more. We're also going to be taking some time to focus on some of the issues impacting the city and the state. Today we continue our look at the race for state senate seat in District 24, which is currently held by Ben Allen, who's term limited. The district stretches across a wide portion of the west side and South Bay, including communities like Santa Monica, Malibu, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and down through Torrance and Redondo Beach down to Rancho Pallas Verdes. It brings together coastal cities, dense urban neighborhoods, and some of the most expensive housing markets in the country. Today's guest is Xanon Iliate Crow. He's a 23-year-old candidate and a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz. Zanan grew up in Topanga and has been involved in organizing and public policy work since he was a student. While in college, he focused on housing issues, helping to organize around student homelessness and affordability, and he worked on legislation aiming at expanding student housing access in California. He later worked in public service roles, including as a commissioner in Santa Cruz, and on a national political campaign. And he's continued to focus his advocacy on housing, on the cost of living, and on what he describes as government accountability. Zennon is running in a crowded field, and he's arguing that younger leadership and a different approach to policymaking are needed to address issues like affordability and access to housing in California. I sat down with him recently to talk about his campaign. Here is that conversation. Zenon, welcome to What's Next Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_02Really excited to be here.
SPEAKER_00Well, let's start as we as I always do with candidates running for office. Give me, give me your pitch. What do you say to voters about who you are, why they should vote for you, what you want to do?
SPEAKER_02I got started in politics because I used to walk between my local elementary school, my local library, every day. And it was on a blind turn, 50 mile an hour state highway up against a hill that was crumbling into the road. And me and these elementary school kids would walk every single day. And I saw how, in reality, our government wasn't delivering and working for people. And so as an eighth grader, I decided to go knock on some doors and ask if I could build a pathway in people's backyards so we didn't have to walk on the street. And that went about as well as you probably would expect. But I ended up also talking to some representatives from Caltrans. And what they told me is that they wouldn't ever make any improvements to that stretch of road. Because if they put up a garb rail, if they put up barriers or anything, they would assume liability for any accidents that would happen on that road. And they didn't want the liability. So the solution, in their eyes, was to do nothing. And as an eighth grader who's idealistic, who wants to believe we can take on the world, who's cared about climate change, who knows we need to do so many different things, that news was crushing. The idea that the very agencies and the people that are supposed to be providing for community in some ways were the most active detriment in stopping community improvements from happening was a whole world shift. And so that experience, I think, is a microcosm of what I've experienced my entire life of being in active in advocacy and in politics. Uh I started getting involved in statewide legislative advocacy in the 10th grade. Uh I started going to Sacramento to do lobby trips for affordable housing bills. I ended up working on the anti-recall campaign, helping do 25% of all phone calls in the campaign. Um we also ended up which anti-recall? The anti-governor's recall in 2021. Yes. There have been a lot of recall campaigns. And um through that experience, I uh ended up going to UC Santa Cruz and I founded a nonprofit. It's now fully funded and creating legislation to this day, and passed four pieces of legislation on affordable student housing and tenant protections at the state level. And when I was in Sacramento, we had a bill to make it easier to build off-campus affordable student housing, uh, which should be a no-brainer. I mean, 9% of students in the CSU system at the time. Uh, now it's up to, I want to say, uh, 12% of students in the CSU system, 22% of community college students were experiencing homelessness. It's insane. And we got this bill, we got tons of early support, everybody's on board. We got to our first committee and they said, we're gonna kill your bill because it's gonna build too much affordable student housing. And if we build too much affordable student housing, we won't build enough of other types of affordable housing, like affordable housing for seniors, affordable housing for veterans. Because the whole way that building affordable housing worked is it it relies on the fact that there is a scarce amount of affordable housing to be built, and that we can't actually solve any crisis because if we solve one crisis, then we're not solving any of the crisis. And that thinking to me was insane. And so as a Gen Z person, we did a little bit of a runaround. We put on social media, said this is ridiculous, got a ton of traction, and that bill ended up getting to that committee, and it's now signed into law, and it's building affordable housing across the state today. And the common theme that I'm I'm drawing here is that I'm running for the seat because there is a new way that we need to do politics. It is very clear that the way of doing politics over the past 40, 50 years has resulted in the exact world we are living in now. And if we continue to elect people and to think that we can continue to do politics the way it's always been done, we're gonna keep on getting the same outcome. Uh, I'm a firm believer in transparency and accountability when it comes to how we govern and how we deliver things and make them happen. And I think there's so many wonderful people with ideas and uh policies that could make our communities better, could make our communities more whole. But the question is, how do you make sure that your good idea doesn't just go to die in Sacramento? How do you make sure it actually happens? And I think that's where, as someone who's coming from a different perspective, who has the experience of knowing how to pass legislation, but also recognizes that the system as it exists right now does not work and that we shouldn't be dependent on the ways of doing politics that have always happened. That's the expertise I hope to bring to Sacramento to make sure that we can get something more, not just more of the same.
SPEAKER_00And you mentioned your Gen Z. Most of the candidates in this race, I would say, are in their 40s or 50s. How old are you?
SPEAKER_02I am 23 years old.
SPEAKER_0023 years old. Uh, would that make you the youngest member of the legislature?
SPEAKER_02It would make me the youngest member of the list.
SPEAKER_00Uh would it make you the youngest ever elected?
SPEAKER_02It would make me the youngest ever elected in the state senate, and I would be the first Gen Z legislator in the state.
SPEAKER_00Because Alex Lee was also, he was in his early 20s, I think, when he got elected.
SPEAKER_02We love Alex Lee. He was born in 1995, not 97, which is the cutoff for Gen Z.
SPEAKER_00So All right. Well, you well, you would have a lot of similarities to how he was when he got in there. Um so there's a a lot of, I mean, the people who vote in in primary elections tend to be older. And so therefore, you we could assume that some of them may be more skeptical of a of a of a Gen Z or a 23-year-old running for office. Um, how do you respond?
SPEAKER_02Look, I I think what I bring is my experience to Sacramento, right? I bring the experience of being someone who, after working on all sorts of congressional and Senate campaigns, running youth organizing programs at the national level, working on the Biden campaign in DC for the Progressive Outreach team, becoming the youngest commissioner in Santa Cruz history, running as an executive director of a nonprofit in Santa Monica, and I still couldn't afford rent to move out of my parents' house. In fact, I still live at my parents' house today. I can count on my fingers the number of friends who, years after graduating college, have gotten the income or the stability they need to actually afford to move out, let alone getting jobs in the careers fields they studied for. And we're talking about computer science degrees, economics degrees. And so when it comes to being a young person who's getting involved in doing this stuff, I've always been the exception. I've always been the youngest commissioner. I was the youngest person to ever run for ADEMs, one of the youngest people on the Biden campaign. Right. I don't see this as something where I'm doing it willy-nilly because, oh, this would be fun. No, I see it because I'm living this life where I know that if we want to succeed in the future, we have to change our politics. And rather than sit on the sidelines, you know, I've always had this philosophy that I'm not allowed to complain unless I'm doing something about it. And rather than just sit on those sidelines, I realized I have to step up and be the change I want to see because nobody's coming to save us. Right.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned uh executive director of a nonprofit in Santa Monica.
SPEAKER_02What was it? Yeah. So I was executive director of Abundance Network Santa Monica, which helped flip the city Abundance Network? Yeah, Abundance Network Santa Monica, which helped flip the city council in 2024. And then I was working behind the scenes with city staff, uh, organizations and city council members to push through and a lot of affordable housing and mobility policies, especially.
SPEAKER_00As a as a 23-year-old, as a Gen Z candidate, are you running into situations where there are either voters or organizations that do endorsements or people who put together forums who aren't taking you seriously?
SPEAKER_02100%. I have, oh my God, I have so many funny quotes from from folks. Uh I got told by this one woman that um I wasn't well groomed enough to be running for office. And you know, I swear I put my deodorant on that day. But I um has she seen Joan Fetterman?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and you know, and I've been told to wait my turn. I I have been told explicitly, wait your turn. And I think that is the exact problem with our politics today, right? It's the idea that, well, once you get corrupted enough and owned by enough people, then you'll be able to run for office. And that's exactly the type of politics that I'm trying to break by stepping out there and standing up on the values of my generation and saying, hey, like we talk about the future being the youth and being the next generation all the time. Help support me to make that actually happen.
SPEAKER_00Yep. All right, let's dive into some issues and let's start with uh one of your top issues, housing. Uh so the state has a pass has passed over the past few years, past decade really, some really aggressive pro-housing laws. Well, maybe, maybe you don't find them to be aggressive enough, but the state has passed ones that local governments consider to be aggressive, and they sometimes clash with local control and sometimes with the Coastal Commission's traditional stance on development. Where do you fall on that tension? When should state housing mandates override local or coastal restrictions? And when should local governments be able to say no?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, great question. Look, we have had local control doctrine for land use for the past 60, 70 years. And, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. I think there is definitely a need for Sacramento to get involved in land use decisions, uh, especially in exclusionary communities that have often fought against uh growth and affordable housing in general. Uh however, I do have some caveats to that to say that when for SB79, which I supported, I believe there are still significant flaws of that bill. I believe that when we are looking at actually building communities, not just, you know, vertical warehouses for humans or vertical sprawl, uh, there's so much more that we need to be doing to ensure that the housing that gets built isn't just a building in a neighborhood, it's an actual community. And what that looks like is making sure that in industrial areas where SB79 is going to apply and upzone, that we are rather than developing individual properties, we're creating connected street grids. We're adding in parks, we're adding in infrastructure, we're adding in amenities, schools that come along with that growth rather than just saying the market will take care of it because it's not going to and it never has. And, you know, the whole point of uh a lot of Sacramento stepping in to do this is because cities have abdicated their responsibility to build housing, because housing operates as a reverse tragedy of the commons, right? Nobody wants to be the one person that shares the burden of building, because building has disruptions. It does. It, I mean, it's the construction impact, the traffic impacts, there are visual changes to a neighborhood. I'm not going to discount any of those things. But that's why we need the state to step in and get involved and say, no, everybody needs to do their fair share. Because otherwise nobody's going to do their fair share. And as we've seen in the past 60 years of local control, that leads to one of the worst housing crises in the entire globe.
SPEAKER_00What should the penalty be for cities that refuse to do housing?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, look, I think that there's the way that the penalties are set up right now, uh, there's uh fines for uh cities if they aren't compliant uh with certain numbers of units, things like that. Uh there's also uh the builder's remedy.
SPEAKER_00The scary, the other explain what that is for listeners who don't know.
SPEAKER_02So the builder's remedy is a law that uh permits if a city has an uncompliant housing element, aka if they aren't following the laws about how many housing they need to permit for, um that any developer can come in so long as 20% of the housing is deep restricted affordable and build something that does not have to abide by the local zoning code by them for the most part. Uh there's been some cleanup legislation on this, so it's not as extreme as it was um, you know, just a few years ago when we first saw Santa Monica, Beverly Hills. Yeah, exactly. When all hell broke loose. Um But I think those are the appropriate punishments for cities that don't do that. And you know, it's also such a silly thing the way we're phrasing this discussion as well, that we're we're punishing the cities for not building housing. Right. Don't think of these as cities. I think this is a penalty, not penalty. Sorry, sorry, my bad, my bad. Um but even the way we frames this discussion, like it's cities versus Sacramento, when we're forgetting the human component of it all, yeah, we are talking about building affordable homes for people so that they can afford to live in the communities they grew up in. Right. The state of California builds one home for every four seniors that graduate high school.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_02If we aren't even building enough housing for the people graduating high school, how can we expect to solve any of these crises?
SPEAKER_00So uh one of the questions I've been asking the candidates about housing is is this uh there are service workers in hospitality, retail, gig economy. Uh they make the West Side and the South Bay function, but they can't afford to live anywhere near where they work. What state policies are you in favor of uh that you would champion so that workers who work in this district can actually live in this district?
SPEAKER_02I think this that gets the problem of that California is not solving the issue of housing at the scale needed to solve it. Look, the state of California doesn't build housing, it gives money to nonprofits that then build housing. And that system is entirely convoluted. The funding sources mean that there are intense delays and cost overruns so that a unit of affordable housing costs over a million dollars to build. And this is where I want to step in and say, no, we need a government that delivers at the scale needed to solve a crisis. Social housing, modular housing developers. I'm so, so excited about the legislation that Buffy Wicks is putting forward this session. It is incredible on the manufactured housing front that to actually build the stepping stones we need to tackle at scale. And that's the exact type of work I want to continue to champion in Sacramento. Because what we need is we need to leverage the economies of scale of the fourth largest economy in the globe and build housing that we can then manufacture and place in different communities where it makes sense so that there are affordable options for gig workers, for our nurses, our teachers, our firefighters. Uh it's the fact that people can't afford to live in the communities that they make function is immoral.
SPEAKER_00Uh environment. Uh this district has many overlapping climate threats, right? You've got sea level rise, you've got coastal erosion, you've got severe wildfire risk in the Santa Monica Mountains, uh, extreme heat in some of the inland areas. What are the top climate adaptation investments that you'd fight for specifically for your district?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, totally. Look, I'll tell you, as a lifelong topangan who has been evacuated from wildfires more times than I can even count, this is an issue that is so pressing for me. Uh the reason I actually got involved in advocacy in the first place after the 10th grade was from climate change, because year after year after year, five years in a row, at one point, I was evacuated and thought every single time, this is the last time I'm gonna see my house. This is the last time that I'm gonna be able to live in my community. And we've been so fortunate in Topanga to have been spared from uh the wildfires. Uh, but this is why we need to be tackling these issues because it is people's community, it's their homes. We need to be doing more. And so when it comes to wildfires specifically, there are so many things that we can do and so much research that has come out because of the increase in wildfires that we now can really hone in on a lot of the specific home hardening techniques that you can use to prevent your home from burning down in a wildfire. You can reduce the chances of your home burning down by 70 or 80% statistically, empirically. If you put on fine-grain mesh on your vents, if you have defensible space, uh, you know, zone zero stuff, if you are making sure that you have concrete siding, no wooden signal, wood signals, things like that. So that's the kind of thing that, you know, in the legislature, I would fund because the the thing about all of this as well is we have to talk about insurance, right? We have to talk about how insurance rates are skyrocketing, especially for wildfire uh insurance. And there is a perfect line that you can draw to reduce the risk of a home burning down. And therefore, you should be able to reduce your costs on your insurance, and there should be a rebate system. So that if you say, I'm gonna spend, you know, a thousand bucks, if you give me a thousand bucks rebate on my insurance, on putting some fine mesh on all my grates in my house, then make that improvement, get that break on your insurance costs and make an ecosystem that rewards people for doing the right thing. So there's a lot of investments that we can not only do just with state money, but also with just how the market functions and that don't require the resources that I know we are strapped for all the time in the state budget.
SPEAKER_00Transportation is one of the largest sources of emissions. Uh, and in this district in particular, you've got some corridors, PCH, 405, some major arterials. What state level changes would you pursue to shift more trips uh from emission spewing automobiles to transit, walking, biking in a district that is very heavily carodependent?
SPEAKER_02100%. Uh so one thing I'll also add to to preface the discussion: more people died due to traffic violence in the city of LA last year than people that died from gun violence. Yes. That like think about that statement in your head. We do not talk about tribe violence as the health epidemic that it is. And uh when we're talking about transportation also as emissions, you know, 50% of the emissions in the state of California come from transportation. And so uh what we need to do is acknowledge that transportation and housing policy are intrinsically linked. Look, I'm a firm believer that we need categorical exemptions from all these Sacramento bills for very high fire severity zones because we should not be putting people in harm's way. There are very real evacuation concerns. And when you're building housing out in the exurban fringes, people are going to end up driving. That's why we need bills like 79, SB 79 that allow for housing near trains that allow for housings in job-rich, dense areas. Um, and so when you talk about reducing our transportation emissions, the biggest problem that we're facing to do that is how we build our housing. As I'm talking right now, we're fighting over a 40-unit building that's going up somewhere in Los Angeles. There's another 5,000 home community that's being built on 100 plus acres out in Riverside County. Right. And those two things are not separate issues. They're linked. And so uh what I would do is I would focus on making sure our housing policy aligns with our transportation policy so it can align with our climate policy. And I would get to the root of a lot of the infrastructure issues that means we aren't solving these problems. So much of Our missions is flight travel from Southern California to Northern California. And someone, you know, long before I was born had the great idea of building a train to connect those two places. Right. And guess what? It'll probably be long after I'm dead by the time that train is done. Exactly. And that is the problem, is that we have solutions to problems. We just don't know how to deliver and make them happen. Right. And I think that again owes to the old way of doing politics that we I'm talking about here, that we aren't focused on the actual implementation and delivery of these laws on the customer side. We're just throwing things at a wall and pretending like it sticks. Right. And so I really want to focus on making it so infrastructure gets delivered. We want to focus on making sure services get delivered and making these things actually happen so that we can achieve the climate green infrastructure goals that we need to reach.
SPEAKER_00K through 12 education. And then there's a lot that don't have the same resources and don't have uh the same performance metrics. Uh how would you use state policy to tackle the inequality between schools that are just a few miles apart but are vastly different?
SPEAKER_02I've had a lot of conversations with educators over the course of this campaign. And one of the things that keeps on coming back again and again is how we do our funding, especially in a post-pandemic era. Right now, our funding allocations are based on attendance, not just based on enrollment. And we see that chronic absenteeism is acute, especially in the very communities that need more resources in their schools to keep kids engaged and learning. And so I fully support changing the funding formula from an attendance-based formula to one that is based on enrollment. So we can actually give the schools that have the students the resources they need to deliver for those students. That's a huge part of it. Just to talk about education more broadly, I've been saying this over and over again, but the kids are cooked these days. They are brains are being fried, literacy rates are in the tank. We are seeing that social media has absolutely destroyed attention deficit and created a lot of attention deficit disorders. We've seen that how people are not learning to use critical thinking skills because AI has meant that younger kids don't develop the synapses don't fire the same way to develop these things. And I think one thing again I hear talking to educators over and over again is that obviously we need to fund schools. Obviously, we need to make sure teachers are getting a good wage. We have the arts programs, we have all of these things. But so much of the discussion about how well a student does in school is about what happens at home. It's not about what happens in the classroom. And that's where it gets back to social media usage. I'm fully in favor of uh banning social media usage for under 16s. Um, also thinking about how do we make sure that people are developing the critical thinking skills that they need. I think that there's a lot that we can do uh in our classrooms to try and safeguard uh how what the the use, especially in early ages when it's so key that they develop those critical thinking skills, we avoid using technology. I'm gonna go back to the basics that have worked for decades.
SPEAKER_00Higher ed. Tell me what is what's one change that you would push for in state higher ed uh or financial aid policy that would matter specifically for students who are living and commuting in the district.
SPEAKER_02So I'll tell you. So I founded this organization called the Student Homes Coalition, which did exactly this. Uh, we I was part of the UC Student Association, created an appointed officer on student housing so that year in, year out, every year there's someone focused on building affordable student housing. You talk about getting an education. I had friends in Santa Cruz that literally would sleep in the woods between classes because they didn't have a home. I had friends that would commute from Sacramento to Santa Cruz and then Tuesday through Thursday would sleep in their vans and then go back and commute back to Sacramento to live with their parents. If you want to have educational attainment, people need to have a stable living situation. And that's not even to count how much that the cost of tuition when it comes to education, the biggest single cost is not tuition, the biggest single cost is living and housing. So what we need to do for a state of California, it's very similar to our broader housing and homelessness crisis. We need to mass produce affordable student housing for every single university and college in this state. And it's that's the thing that's so doable. That especially because it is state-owned land, we have control over this, we have the resources, you have bonds that are backed against the tuition of every single college student in this entire state, some of the largest endowments in the world when it comes to public education. What we can do is we can actually build uh an agency that can deliver affordable student housing at scale and deliver these modular units to different campuses and stack them up like Legos and solve this crisis at the speed and capacity we need to make a difference. So that's what I would do for higher education, because if people don't have a place to live, if they can't afford an education because they can't afford a place to live, why are we even having all these conversations? Right.
SPEAKER_00Let me ask about mental health. Uh state law shapes how cities can use various tools like care courts, conservatorships, involuntary treatment. Where do you stand on expanding or limiting those tools?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Look, we there's been a lot of research on how you especially take care of chronically uh mental instability, homeless, chronically homeless individuals. And uh we know that a housing first model works. We know that the first step towards getting someone to have uh addiction recovery, to have mental health recovery, is they need a roof over their head. Otherwise, it's not going to get better. Uh we do see that right now the waiting list for these affordable housing units, especially permanent supportive affordable housing units, is far, far, far longer than what we have the capacity for.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02So there already is just this huge unmet need for people that are willing and want to go into permanent supportive housing, but can't. Um when it comes to the small subset of people that are have chronic mental illness and also uh refuse to be housed, we do need to have options that make it so that there's people that are compelled to do that. That that is just something that is a reality, is a tough decision. It is not one that, you know, I feel so heartbroken for the people that have to make those decisions and decide when there's that moment, because that is taking away someone's autonomy in a way that they may never know. But at the same point, we know that there are times when people are sick and they need to be taken care of.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00How do you prevent that from being abused? Someone taking advantage of a relative for money or, you know, sending a gay kid into uh uh an involuntary treatment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Uh I think that's why we need strong independent auditors and watchdogs, and we need to make sure that people are able to, in these situations, still have petitions to change, right? There still needs to be guaranteed legal representation for anybody that is facing this type of uh an act, you know, an accusation to say you got to go into a mandatory treatment. Right. Because if there isn't someone there who is of uh the mind to defend that person, then they aren't getting a fair shot at a fair trial. So I think the legal resources are where you really can step in as a state and make sure that there aren't abuses.
SPEAKER_00Right. Immigration, a big issue everywhere in everywhere in the country, particularly in California, particularly in LA. This coastal area that you're seeking to represent, it has a a large population of immigrants and mixed status families. Um, what changes, if any, do you support to state laws governing cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and how would and how they show up in this district?
SPEAKER_02So last summer when the ice raids first started happening, I went to downtown LA and I was there with thousands of people peacefully protesting, and I got shot in the face by rubber bullets by LAPD who are in violation of a federal injunction saying they couldn't use that type of force against protesters. What we saw literally just last weekend was LAPD again violating that injunction against off against protesters that were peacefully protesting. That is the systemic problem. To me, and this is one of the main reasons that I ran is because it was literally a getting a hit across the face moment where it was like, oh my god, we have a masked Gestapo that is out there terrorizing our neighbors and friends and community members. And our community police safety force is not standing to defend us. They are pushing a crowd, kettling a crowd, they are actively shooting tear gas and rubber bullets into the very same community that they are supposed to be protecting. In essence, they are protecting ice from people, not people from ice. That is the exact wrong mentality of how we approach these things. And so, as a state look, we even saw this past weekend with the protests that happened in downtown LA, ICE at DHS and LAPD were coordinating on the kettling that happened. DHS threw secure uh threw tear gas into the crowd, pushing them away while LAPD pushed on from the other side. And then protesters had nowhere to go. They weren't even allowed to leave. They were kettled in.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_02And sorry, for terminology, kettling is when um uh police officers will block off either end of the street and slowly close in so that protesters aren't able to leave, and then they arrest and mass arrest all the people that are in that.
SPEAKER_00Often for refusing to leave.
SPEAKER_02Often for refusing to leave. And so what the state can do, I mean, for the first off, the fact that LAPD is coordinating with DHS on these things is insane. The fact that LAPD is continuing to act as an aggressor and an escalator rather than a de-escalator in these situations is insane. Uh, the other thing is also making sure we are taking care of the immigrant families that are having many cases their breadwinners deported, right? You're seeing kids that are left without a parent.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02And there's so much that we can do as a state to right now fund the legal representation that we need to protect people that are facing deportation and also fund families in a temporary manner when they're they're lose their person, right? They lose their main person. And and we do this as a state right now, but we don't fully fund it. And we need to fully fund it. It should be a guarantee for anybody that experiences this that they get that representation, they get that financial assistance.
SPEAKER_00Elections. Uh Ben Allen, the current state senator who's termed out, he's focused a lot on elections, on constitutional amendments. Uh this district also contains uh sort of the um the political ATM machine for the entire country, right? It's got a lot of big political donors. Um what reforms, Ivanny, do you support on campaign finance, independent expenditures, transparency, uh, and how you're gonna deal with the pressure from the big donors in the district?
SPEAKER_02Look, our campaign takes no corporate PAC money and it never will. All right. Our our company campaign is never gonna take any money from oil executives, our campaign is never gonna take money from medical insurance executives because these are the issues of our time. And, you know, taking a step back and looking at the national picture, this is why the Democratic Party is falling apart at the scenes. It's because it's not a party that's representative of people and the interests and what they need supported in their lives, that is more than anything representative of their backers and their financial backers. And I'm not someone that's gonna be taken hold by those financial backers because I believe that my independence to act on behalf of the people of this district is more important than anything. Uh, in terms of things that I support, we need public financing of elections. You want to know something crazy? To get on the voter information guide in California for my district, I would have needed to pay $38,800 to be included in the voter guide. $38,000? $38,800 to be included in the voter guide. That's ridiculous. The fact that the voter guide, which goes to every household in the district, which objectively is supposed to tell you what candidates to look at, costs $38,800. You're already putting a price cap on democracy just from the get-go. Right. And that's that's a perfect example of how our system is structurally set up to benefit wealthy candidates, to benefit people with wealthy benefactors and wealthy donors. Um I support public financing. I think that the city of LA's public financing rules are fantastic. We need public financing at the state level for state campaigns. Uh I also uh, you know, if I could, you know, maybe wave a magic wand and kill Citizens United, you know, I'd do it in an instant, right? Uh and I think there's a lot of interesting ways that people are trying to constitutionally challenge that, which I wholly support.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh the in the end, though, it all comes back to how much money and power the wealthiest individuals wield in this country right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Right. Uh we are seeing untold amounts of wealth for very, very few people. And they are able to spend that however they want, whenever they want, and especially on elections. And if we want to tackle the problem of elections being bought, we have to tackle the issue of politicians actually having to, you know, grovel at the feet of these people to get donations. And so we need to actually make it so these people don't have the resources and the money that they have at the extremes amount that they have to then influence these elections. That's why I'm, you know, one of the only candidates in Los Angeles that supports the billionaires' tax. We need to be cutting back on this stuff. It is not only eroding our economy, but it's eroding our democracy.
SPEAKER_00Uh, I want to talk a little bit about LGBTQ plus issues. Um being significantly older than you, I have I've I've lived through a period of sort of dark ages during the AIDS crisis when the idea of gay marriage was unimaginable to a time where things changed dramatically. And uh, you know, I'm married, right? Um uh we are now in a an era that we're rolling back to to a times from before you were born. And for the trans community in particular, it's it's it's absolutely hateful. They're being demonized and and and turned into villains and and persecuted and made into non-people. Uh as a state senator, uh, what can what what can you do to help uh advance LGBT rights and to expand safety, access to care, full inclusion for trans people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I I think yeah, that this is in some ways what makes California such an incredible place. We have social justice in a way that no other state has, right? People are allowed to be themselves here and be supported in being themselves. And that is one of the most incredible things to behold. I mean, that's what makes LA so incredible. In particular, people can come here and they can be whoever they want, wherever they want, however they want. And it's cool. I love it. It's fantastic. What gives us culture and meaning and so many tangible things that make us human? And that is what California needs to lead on. And as a state senator, I'll lead on is making sure that people have access to that. Because right now, you know, we may have social justice, but we do not have economic justice. And so long as rent costs $2,500 for a one bedroom, we're effectively gatekeeping that social justice and inclusivity to only the richest among us. And as a state senator, that's exactly what I can tackle. I can tackle the cost of living, I can tackle housing crisis, I can tackle the cost of groceries, utilities, things like that. In fact, we can tackle it in ways that are bigger than can be accomplished at the local or the federal level. And so when it comes to really being an ally for the queer community, what it needs to be is not just saying if you can afford to be here, you can be an ally. No, every single person who is escaping persecution right now, it is a moral obligation as Californians that we give them a place to stay.
SPEAKER_00The this district is an interesting one. Uh it runs from really affluent communities like Pellos Verdes Peninsula, Malibu, uh, goes through Santa Monica, uh, West Hollywood, coastal LA neighborhoods. The the district has uh renters, it's got homeowners, it's got entertainment workers, service workers, gig workers, students, retirees. As you've been campaigning and as you've lived in the district for your life, which communities do you think are most underrepresented? And how will you hear and address their concerns?
SPEAKER_02Great question. Great question. I mean, it's it's communities without the money to have influence in elections, right? Like that that is the sad truth of it. It's it's the squeaky wheel. And more often than not, the squeaky wheel is whoever gives out the most cash and gets people's time. And I think as a legislator, what I see my role being is being a representative for the entire district, not just one part of the district. That means being transparent, accountable, and hosting events in the communities that have been historically ignored, right? It means going to people, not expecting people to come to you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02One thing that I'm really proud of with this campaign is even in just the past week, we've engaged nearly a million people online. Uh and that is bringing down the barriers to entry for so many folks and saying, look, where are people these days? They are online.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We are actually going to talk to them and meet them where they are because that is how I can get feedback. I can hear about these things. I read the comments. And, you know, although sometimes uh the comments can be a little too much, but tell me about it. But the point is that uh to counter a lot of the problems with communities that uh aren't being represented, the way is to actually go where they are and be where they are.
SPEAKER_00Right. In these interviews, I have tended not to, in fact, I've made a point not to ask sort of horse racy campaign questions, but I I I want to ask you one just because I'm fascinated by the changing nature of campaigns. Like people ask me who are running for office now about stuff. I'm like, I have no fucking idea. Like I I know how to run a campaign in 2017. I have no idea how to run one in 2026. Entirely different world. What is your strategy? How are you engaging with voters?
SPEAKER_02That's a great question. Um The way that our team is engaging with voters is we understand that how politics has worked in the past is it's not it's not the way it is anymore. Especially when it comes to voter engagement. Sending a mailers to people's houses does not do it. And it is a lot of money that you're spending for not a lot of good reason.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh same thing goes in some ways for door knocking, which is crazy to think. But especially post-pandemic, people are a lot less willing to come talk to someone. There are people that are less willing in general to volunteer for these kinds of things. Social media is where you get awareness. Social media is where you're able to meet people. And rather than, you know, with with especially with the increase in spam calls, with the increase in just spam and untrustworthiness in general, the strongest form of communication is personal communication. One thing that we're really heavily emphasizing in this campaign is leveraging friend networks, leveraging organizational networks, not of democratic clubs, but of, you know, I was at the Malibu Composer uh Breakfast Club meeting, talking to people that were facing, you know, issues with AI and the music industry, right? Uh we we've really made a concrete effort to step out of the political bubble and step into the real bubble. Yeah. Uh and as a campaign, that's how we're we're looking to shift it. And in many ways, it's great because it doesn't require the same resources that make you accountable to the billionaires that give you the money for these things. We can do these things in a way that are efficient, that are authentic, that are real, and get this engagement from being a person that people want to see in office, not just because, oh, I saw this person had three TV ads. Right. And so therefore I gotta vote for this guy.
SPEAKER_00Uh I haven't asked you about uh healthcare. Um, huge issue for people. Um first of all, what are your thoughts on Calcare single payer and in general, what sort of your healthcare priorities are?
SPEAKER_02100% support. 100% support. We need a public option for healthcare now. And if we're the fourth largest economy in the globe and we can't do it, then what the hell are we doing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Let me let me go back to another campaign question. I'm curious, what is um what's the most difficult or challenging audience that you've faced as a candidate?
SPEAKER_02I I actually, you know what I'll say is that I've actually been so shocked. At how common the issues and the concerns of people are. Not so much that any one group or individual has been difficult, but so much that everybody says the same things to me over and over again, no matter what their political ideology is, no matter what part of the district they're from. It's the same issues at their core of the government doesn't work. We don't fill the potholes. I mean, the city of LA hasn't repaved a street in a year. Yes. Right. We don't fix the street lights. Uh hey, where's my train to San Francisco? You know, oh my God, gas prices are insane. Utility prices are insane. Insurance costs are insane. And I've actually been so excited and heartwarmed about how much every one of these different folks say we need a new generation of leadership. Common again and again and again. Everybody's like, I'm so happy that you're doing this and you're running to make this happen. You have my support because the way that's going right now does not work. And we need someone new to come in here and step up and save us. Like, and you know, it's a lot of responsibility. And it certainly isn't, you know, me. It's a whole movement of people that are getting behind this idea that we can do something better. We can have something better. We don't have to settle for what it is. And I I think it's it's really exciting to see just how much, especially among average folks, that is something that resonates with something. It's something you want to see happen. Right.
SPEAKER_00Last question There are lots of young people who are disenchanted with politics. Uh they think that it really doesn't make much of a difference, that there's no point in engaging. And and generally speaking, you know, there's a lot of people societally with the the ice raids, the economy, the sort of the caving in of democratic institutions who are feeling very demoralized. Um what gives you faith?
SPEAKER_02These conversations that I'm having with people. Genuinely, you know, I I was at uh a friend's Passover last night. Uh and uh it was we all went around the table and we talked about uh one thing we were frustrated about and what the solution was. Uh and you know, half jokingly, a bunch of the T we know we went on the table and everybody was talking about like this political thing sucks. I'm tired of the division, I'm tired of uh the next inequity, I'm tired of all this stuff, and the solution is, and they all like pointed towards me. And they were like, I said it. I was like, okay, okay, sorry. But what I am seeing across this country right now, where there is a new wave of people and generation that is being supported and winning and changing the discussion and making things happen that have not happened for decades and decades. That is so exciting to me. I mean, I gotta, I'm a bit of a Zodron fan girl, you know, like I'm a bit of a Zodron phone girl. I was like so stoked when that happened. And like the positivity, you know, I actually managed to make it out to New York for the inauguration. And just being in the crowd and around all these young people, people from every different walk of life and creed, all like, yes, we can do this. Oh my God, we're doing this. That was incredible. That energy was incredible, and that's why we need an LA. Yeah. Right? We need to, you know, make export those good vibes uh in the capital of vibes itself. Uh and try and bring about that positivity of saying, you know, not only is the old system bad and we should change that, but also the new system can be good and it can be better. Zenon, thanks for joining me. Yeah, thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00That's it for this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. My thanks to Zenon for joining me. My thanks to Tonya Listi for editing and producing, and my thanks to LA Forward for sponsoring this podcast. And to the team at the Patron Institute for helping me research and prepare for. Please also tune in to our sister podcast, LA Podcast, where I'm part of a stable of co-hosts where we discuss and analyze the latest news about politics, policy, and government in the LA area. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. And stay tuned for more episodes of What's Next LA. We're going to be talking with more candidates running to succeed Ben Allen on the West Side, to candidates running to succeed Marielna Dorasso on the east side, and to candidates running for city council in the West San Fernando Valley, and also some candidates running for governor. Until then, thanks for joining. Peace and take good care.