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
Bending the Arc: Shane Goldsmith
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Bending the Arc: Liberty Hill at 50
Fifty years ago, Los Angeles was run by an old-school establishment centered downtown, with an LAPD that wielded outsized power and communities of color largely shut out of institutional influence. It was in that city, just three years after Tom Bradley's historic election as LA's first Black mayor, that Liberty Hill Foundation was founded in 1976.
In this episode, we use Liberty Hill's 50-year history as a lens on the evolution of Los Angeles itself — who held power, who challenged it, and how organizing reshaped the city. From tenants' rights and labor to immigrant rights, environmental justice, youth justice, and police reform, Liberty Hill has funded and helped build the movements that pushed these issues from the margins into the political mainstream, often decades before they became conventional wisdom.
Our guest is Shane Murphy Goldsmith, President and CEO of Liberty Hill Foundation. Shane joined the organization in 2010, became executive director, and has led it as President and CEO since 2013. Under her leadership, Liberty Hill has deepened its investment in grassroots organizing and backed major campaigns in youth justice, environmental justice, and housing.
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
Every city has an official history and an unofficial one, written by the people fighting for change. Today we trace the arc of change making in Los Angeles through the 50-year story of the Liberty Hill Foundation. Hey everybody and welcome. It's Mike Vaughn and thank you for joining me. Fifty years ago, Los Angeles was a very different political city. It was still largely run by an old school political and economic establishment that was centered downtown and was closely connected to business interests and traditional political institutions. The LAPD wielded enormous power. Latino political representation was limited. And many of the communities that would eventually become major forces in LA politics had relatively little institutional power. But the seeds of a different Los Angeles were beginning to emerge. Tom Bradley had been elected mayor just three years earlier, becoming the city's first black mayor. And the coalition that elected him was beginning to change the city's political landscape. It was into that Los Angeles that the Liberty Hill Foundation was born in 1976. For fifty years, Liberty Hill has funded and helped build movements around tenants' rights, labor and immigrant rights, environmental justice, youth justice, and police reform, often long before those issues became part of the political mainstream. So today on the show, we're going to use Liberty Hill's history as a lens on the evolution of Los Angeles itself. Who held power? Who challenged it? And how organizing changed the city. Shane joined Liberty Hill in 2010 and became its executive director and has led the foundation as president and CEO since 2013. Under her leadership, Liberty Hill has expanded its investments in grassroots organizing and helped support major campaigns around youth justice, environmental justice, and housing. Shane, thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_00It's great to have you here.
SPEAKER_03I'm excited for the conversation.
SPEAKER_00I am too. I am too. And uh a lot of this is stuff that that that not only have you you lived, but uh it's stuff you talk about all the time on your podcast. What's the name of that?
SPEAKER_03My podcast. Well, it's Liberty Hills Podcast. I am merely the host. It's conversations from the front lines.
SPEAKER_00Nice. Uh available on all the platforms. Everywhere, yes. Uh so to start, let's go back 50 years. And as I said, you know, Bradley's election was relatively recent. The city's changing, but much of the old power structure is still in place. So Liberty Hill emerges. Uh, a bunch of people got together uh and uh they decided to form this organization. Uh and it had a a different approach on philanthropy. So uh who did this? Why did they do it? What did they see was was lacking in traditional philanthropy?
SPEAKER_03The story goes that it all started with a picnic in Topanga Canyon, which is the road I took to get here today. Um, and there were four young people who were in their 20s. Uh, it was 1976. They had all inherited a lot of wealth and were very influenced and grew up in the movements of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And those folks were uh Wynne McCormick of the McCormick family, um, his wife at the time, Ann Mandel, Larry Jans, whose name's all over Street Signs in Calabasas, I mean, in Thousand Oaks, and Sarah Pillsbury of the Pillsbury family. Sarah is the one who stayed involved and she continues to be an emeritus member of our board and is the most well-known in Los Angeles. So Wynne Ann, Sarah, and Larry sat down to share their commitment to making Los Angeles a better place and to carrying on the vision of the movements that they'd been part of. And a shared sense that the resources they had were not, they had not earned them, they had not done anything to make them, and understood that that, the the unfairness of that, and had a great desire to turn over not only their resources, but the power to decide where those resources go and turn that over to community. And that was radical then, and it's radical now. I think we'll talk about, you know, the progress that's been made in philanthropy, the progress that's been made in philanthropy over the last 50 years in terms of recognizing the power and potential of, you know, poor people, people of color, women, LGBTQ people. Um, but still, philanthropy is an extremely hierarchical, top-down system. And these folks wanted to change that. They there's a great story about how they sort of have the idea. So Sarah's brother had done something similar in another part of the country. And so they hired this woman and she drove around in her VW van and uh interviewed everyone she could find who was, you know, an activist and organizer on the front lines of all the issues that were happening at the time. And her question to each of them was like, Well, would it be helpful if you had a group of donors, you know, supporting your work? And apparently these the question was so obvious and ridiculous that they thought she worked for the police and she was spying on them. But in fact, she was innocently like, would this be helpful? We don't want to assume. So, of course, everyone said yes, and they began to bring more and more folks to it. And the idea was that people who had re well wealth could bring that to Liberty Hill, and Liberty Hill would assemble what we call a community funding board, which was kind of the big innovation of the time and still today. Um our community funding board helps us make our grant decisions. It's made up of organizers and researchers and people who are really on the ground doing the work, close to the ground, understand, you know, and are living the experiences of injustice and inequality and using that experience to change the world. And so by bringing donors who, you know, at the time mostly white, wealthy, um, together with communities on the front lines of these battles, which is mostly people of color, poor people, women, um, by bringing these groups together, they were really able to supercharge the work to bring folks who have been excluded from, you know, the wealth and the rights of this country since the very beginning. And I think to your point in the intro, it's really, it is a story about the people who are excluded from the Constitution fighting their way into decision making and having a voice in not just politics, but for the purpose really of economic prosperity and well-being and equality. Um, and all the ways that folks have been doing that over the last 50 years, I think that's part of that's really the beauty and power of Los Angeles is that the people who make Los Angeles work are increasingly the people who get to run Los Angeles. And that's because of this, I think partly because of this supercharging effect that happens when people who have wealth see that that not only are so many people, you know, don't have the basic resources they need to live and to thrive, but when they realize that their own, you know, our own well-being, our own happiness is is constrained by this. You know, that if if not if one of us isn't free, none of us can be free, right? And I think that's that deep sense of a shared destiny and a shared community that draws folks together to make Los Angeles better and understanding that it, that the people who are the future are the people who were excluded in the beginning. And so whatever, you know, any resource we can put towards workers, toward tenants, toward people of color, toward women, toward queer people, toward young people, that's what's gonna that what is what has created this Los Angeles and what creates the opportunities for people to build real power so we can build a Los Angeles that truly works for all of us.
SPEAKER_00So in those early days, what were the kind of things that Liberty Hill was supporting?
SPEAKER_03Immigrant issues, renters, police abuse, um, apartheid in South Africa, um, the anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons campaigns, LGBTQ work, environmental justice work, school integration. Um, those were some of the big ones and still the big ones now, but a lot has changed. So this is Liberty Hill's 50th anniversary. It's also my 50th year in the world. And I like to say Liberty Hill and I were born in the same small town of Santa Monica 50 years ago. And so there's another story about sort of how my own trajectory weaves in and out. And, you know, since day one, unbeknownst to me and my family, we were benefiting from the Los Angeles that Liberty Hill was just beginning to build at the same time that I was born. And so one of the first campaigns Liberty Hill supported was um the campaign for rent control in Santa Monica, which was led by Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights, who which was founded by Denny Zane, who fast forward 50 years later, he and I worked together on housing work right now. Um we were fellows together in a fellowship a few years ago. Um but back in around 77, um, they won rent control for Santa Monica, which it turns out was why my working class and then very poor family was able to stay in this apartment in Santa Monica because we had rent control that made it affordable for our whole childhood. And so I didn't know this then, but I figured it out later that thanks to Liberty Hill, I had a stable place to live, despite the fact that our family didn't have resources.
SPEAKER_00That's an awesome story. And at the same time, Liberty Hill was investing, you know, not just on the West side, they were investing all over the place. Absolutely. And one one of the places I understand Liberty Hill sort of really put a lot of effort into, you know, sort of going into the 80s and stuff was South LA. Uh and uh, you know, by by the late 80s, South LA was dealing with huge issues like deep economic disinvestment, unemployment, poverty, gang violence, uh that horrible relationship with LAPD. Um and Liberty Hill was funding organizations, working on those issues, trying to build power in those neighborhoods. Um then in 92, 91, we had the beating of Rodney King and 92 the trial and and all the unrest. And as I was doing my research, I was struck uh by the fact that prior to the unrest, Liberty Hill's executive director at the time, our friend Tori Osborne, was convening people about the potential of the unrest and about the issues really underlying things. So which I thought was a a pretty big dynamic for Liberty Hill. Um but 92 changed Los Angeles forever, right? In in in all sorts of ways. Uh and my understanding is Liberty Hill made a pretty fundamental decision to invest differently in in South LA around that time, um, creating a, I think it was the fund for a new Los Angeles. Tell me a little bit about that and what that was.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a turning point for Liberty Hill and for Los Angeles. And as you said, I think we can trace the the history of Los Angeles through the work of Liberty Hill and vice versa. Um, so there was a conference um in 91 that Liberty Hill put together that was addressing the very issues of LEPD and race and poverty. Um, so when the uprising happened, you know, it's like, how did Liberty Hill know that that, you know, they were the only ones talking about it and thinking about it before it happened? It's like, well, Liberty Hill's not psychic. It's that we are we are always led by the people who are closest to these problems, which makes them closest to the solutions. And so they know this stuff's coming, right? The journalist or, you know, whatever may not have known. But um, but everyday folks in Los Angeles were living, living in this Los Angeles that created the conditions for this uprising. So because Liberty Hill had spent, you know, the preceding several decade plus building these relationships, you know, and in those days, it was like the you know, north and south of the 10, right? So like folks, you know, getting to really build those relationships for the other side of the tracks, genuine, authentic relationships. I mean, and today we look at folks like Karen Bass and Paula Litt, who, you know, at the time were kind of grassroots-y folks, um, funding and and organizing. And today we've got the mayor and one of the biggest, you know, social justice philanthropists of our time. But building those kinds of deep bonds and deep understanding of other people's experience enabled Liberty Hill to be in the right moment. But until then, Liberty Hill had been funded by and all the work we did, all the funding we granted out to the community was came from individual donors. And that was a point at which large private foundations started to see that Liberty Hill being so close to the ground and truly a community-based institution, was better positioned to infuse the moment with resources than these large foundations. So multiple foundations invested in this collaborative that Liberty Hill was able to scale way up the grant size and um number of grants and um make much larger investments. And really, because Liberty Hill's um, you know, our motto is change not charity, and part of that is getting to the root cause of things. So we're not treating this as part of the new vision for philanthropy that the donors or that the founders had, is that we're getting to the root cause. And so very, you know, astutely got to the underlying economic and um racial divisions and um disinvestment and um were able to tackle those root causes, which both scaled up Liberty Hill's impact and most importantly supercharged the work that folks on the ground had been doing and continued to do. And in that moment in the early 90s, this really ecosystem of social justice organizations that are led by, you know, poor people, working folks, renters, young people, people of color, women, queer people, immigrants. Um today, you know, we look around and we're well known across the country for having the most robust ecosystem of these organizations. And many of them really came out of that moment, which I think brings us to another point about social change work in general and Liberty Hill in particular, um, and and really community organizing in Los Angeles in particular, which is that that the there's a certain, there's all this work that happens, you know, on a normal day, and many, many normal days go by, and you're building this infrastructure, and then these horrific crises happen, and there's a readiness there. There's an understanding of the underlying causes. There's already a network built of people who understand and can address them. And so in these moments of crisis, I think community organizing and Liberty Hill have been able to do extraordinary things because of that level of readiness and understanding. And I think we saw that throughout the history, but COVID was another moment when that was very clear.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it sounds like you the the model shifted from helping an organization on a particular fight to helping organizations be sustaining forces that that were there for the long haul.
SPEAKER_03Precisely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, what are some of the organizations that sort of really either uh were born then or came of age then? Just to make this specific for some of our listeners.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So there was um Anthony Thigpen's founding of Agenda, then now known as Scope. Um, we had Karen Bass's founding of Community Coalition, we had Gilda Haas' founding of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy. We had Um Amy Scher coming in and opening the Los Angeles Office of Acorn. Um, and the, I would say the other big one was the um was Lane, LA Alliance for a New Economy, which had a different name than founded by Madeline Janice. Um, those were some of the organizations that really today are widely understood to be, you know, uh made up of workers and renters and other folks who are excluded and really have a tremendous amount of power. And and what's cool is, you know, those, first of all, this is all a story about people, right? Like, like people who, I mean, we all know and love and we've all kind of grown up together and and at that, you know, just making this work happen. But um, but these folks that I just named, they've been on Liberty Hills board. They've been on Liberty Hills Community Funding Board, they've been grantees of Liberty Hills, they've been donors of Liberty Hill. So it's it's been a very beautiful community where we've all had different roles and we've all kind of grown up together and done this work together for so long.
SPEAKER_00In so many ways, these are much more so than anybody who's held elective office. These are the architects of modern Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_00Right. I mean, they they did more to shape the city we live in than than than anyone who sat around the horseshoe at City Hall.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Except Mike Bonnet.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Um, I'm glad you mentioned Lane because that sort of segues me to the the next area I wanted to talk about. Uh I I first learned of Lane when I was a uh a fresh City Hall staffer in in the 90s, uh when they were pushing the the the living wage, which was a huge moment in the 90s. But the the nineties overall were this period where LA was really becoming the center of a a new kind of labor and community organizing. Um the city had and has a huge low-wage workforce, uh, a lot of it in industries where workers had historically very little bargaining power, if at all, right? Uh and the living wage movement uh really began challenging the idea that a job in Los Angeles should leave you still unable to afford to live here, right? Um talk a little bit about what was important at that time uh when when I mean as I look at it, it the sort of the nature of of politics and organizing in Los Angeles began to really shift then.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And it's it's you know, it's important, I think, to hearken back to you know, the uprising of 92 and and this moment um that you just described in the 90s around the economy, because we can sometimes get caught up in our own hype, like, oh, LA's so great. And it's like, well, wait a minute, if it's so great, why are these problems? And I think it's the wrong frame. The reality is the threats against sort of general well-being, um, but whether it be, you know, police forces and racism and and um, you know, the forces of the big big real estate, big oil, um, and at the time, big labor. I mean, these have been major forces against which, you know, everyday folks have had to fight to gain ground over these years. And um, labor at the time was very white, very male, very straight. Um, and so, you know, it was represented the powers that be. And what happened in Los Angeles, and if anyone wants to go into more detail, Mike, your episode with Kent Wong, uh, yes, May He Rest in Power. May He Rest in Power Um is truly, I mean, the best, the best and most concise version of this history. I also got to interview um Vic Victor Narrow for our podcast recently, who did a similar thing. Um, but anyway, this they what they talk about is this moment when we had women like Maria Elena Durazzo and people of color like Miguel Contreras who began to take over labor in Los Angeles and the labor institutions in Los Angeles. And so it's the same story of all the work that's done to put to put folks on the margins in the center to have a voice. And so, as you know, working people of color and immigrants and un undocumented immigrants started, and women started to take power in labor. Labor had a ton of power in LA. Being able to represent a much bigger, you know, more diverse population of Los Angeles by bringing in folks of color and women enabled them to build even more power. And so now we have a Los Angeles where labor wields a tremendous amount of power, and a lot a lot of that power comes from the work and labor and leadership of um low-wage workers, people of color, women. And so that LA is known for that shift in labor power that set a model for the whole nation. And now we see, you know, over time, although labor, you know, there's a lot of forces against unionization and labor power, the growth of um sort of the these excluded communities taking power over labor has enabled them to wield a tremendous amount of power in Los Angeles. And really, even now, to the extent that community is able to win really big structural change in Los Angeles, it's in partnership with labor.
SPEAKER_00And so much of what was uh unique about that that that moment when when Miguel uh became head of the county fed and Maria Elena was head of Local 13, uh now known as Unite Here more commonly, is they really made labor much more about organizing than they had been.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and and there was a lot of organizing behind the living wage movement, um, which I think if I recall, that was like 96 or 97. I was fairly new working for uh a city council member at the time and uh uh really pushed on the council by Jackie Goldberg, but but on the outside, the organizing was was Lane and so many others. Um how did Liberty Hill engage with that and what what did Liberty Hill see as being so important at that moment?
SPEAKER_03Well, again, there were the underlying um racial issues that we saw in the uprising and and the aftermath, you know, the Korean and Latinos were really pitted against each other, as were black people and immigrants. So there's the in a moment of deindustrialization when the service economy really started to emerge, which was going to rely on the low wage labor of these folks, um it was a moment when all these folks were pitted against each other. And and that's I mean, nobody wants that. And so there were everybody wanted to be in solidarity. And so, because these organizations and leaders had been working together with Liberty Hill and, you know, on their own over these years, there was that strength in solidarity that enabled them to develop a way of approaching this pivotal moment in our economic development with solidarity. And um so, you know, some incredible organizations and leaders were were born and emerged during that time. We we saw Kiwell. The Korean Immigrant Worker Association and Danny Park, who led um who created a membership organization of Korean and Latino restaurant workers who led the fight against wage theft, which continues today, but is making progress. That's when the community benefits agreements came out of Sage. Um and um and the Living Wage Coalition and the and the Living Wage Um Ordinance was the big kind of win there. There was also jobs with peace, which folks will remember, Larry Frank and Gary Stewart were doing that work. Um so there's all these ways that sort of, you know, wealthy white donors and and you know, Korean low-wage restaurant workers were seeing their shared destiny and and building strong coalitions. Um the other thing that was happening at the time actually was also the major healthcare crisis. Yeah. Um, which, you know, I have this memory of myself in an emergency room. It was 95. So I was like home from a break from college, uh, my freshman year, and I had gotten in a rollerblading accident on the beach, as one does.
SPEAKER_00And um, so that's that's a snapshot of a period in time, rollerblading on the beach, right?
SPEAKER_03Um, so I went to the emergency room um and we didn't have health insurance, we didn't have any resources at all. Um, and so my dad sat with me in the emergency room for 24 hours while, you know, packed with people. I mean, I just had a small bone bone fracture, but these people had like gushing head wounds. And I remember seeing on the TV Governor Wilson, you know, I don't know exactly what he said, but in in my mind at the time, he was basic he was announcing the closure of the public health system and especially, you know, emergency rooms and community clinics. And I was, and that was the moment when I realized, wait a minute, you know, all the the pain and suffering of of my family's poverty is these are decisions that people in power are making.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03Um, so when I go back and sort of research what was actually happening at that moment, what was Governor Wilson really talking about? Um, you know, there was this this fall, this collapsing of the healthcare system and complete disinvestment and and closure of emergency rooms and and hospitals. And so, you know, all these fights were very intertwined and um intertwined with each other and intertwined with my life. Um, and the other big thing that was happening at that time was also the welfare rights movement, which is very connected to the changing economy as it had less room for folks. Um, and so that was emerging here in Los Angeles. And interestingly, I I did my college thesis on welfare rights um at the same time that little did I was in Ohio for college, but here in Los Angeles, Acorn and others were really building up this powerful movement around the safety net and around meeting people's basic needs, um, which I think also, you know, was an important part of the economic justice fight. Couldn't just be about sort of upward mobility, right? Because we know it's never going to be enough room for everyone.
SPEAKER_00What's so interesting about that to me is that while all that stuff was happening here in Los Angeles, right? Like this progressive organizing infrastructure uh was sort of laying the groundwork for future years, the state of California was getting more conservative. Yes, right. I mean, in the 90s, California passed Prop 187, an anti-immigrant ballot measure. They propped uh Proper 209, which was the anti-affirmative action one. Uh, like there was a series of things. And um, what was happening in LA, not only was it running counter to that, but in so many ways, it became the the roots of what changed things statewide later.
SPEAKER_03Yes, you know. And they say, I mean, California and LA are the Los Angeles and California are generally the future of the nation and it gets here sooner. And I do think that is because we have such a powerful and beautiful population of working people and renters and people of color and all these folks. Um but yeah, I think it's so important to remember that history because number one, I mean, so much, so many of the activists and organizers we know of today were politicized in the 90s around those fights. Um, which again, you know, in crisis comes opportunity and comes this beautiful um emergence of power and leadership. But also it's just, I think there's this, you know, the the last 50 years of LA's history is very much a dialectic of, you know, the forces of concentrating power in the original we the people of the Constitution, um, are way beyond LA's control, right? Those forces are growing. As we know, inequality has widened and now we have an authoritarian takeover of the US government. So the fact that organizers and and everyday folks in Los Angeles have been able to make as much progress as they have in Los Angeles, given where we started with those really evil propositions and you know, Prop 13 and this whole climate. Um, you know, the I think there is sort of this we're we're gaining ground, you know, like both are building power. Yeah. Um, and I think in Los Angeles we're seeing that that our folks are are building power quickly. And um, I believe a tipping point is coming.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And I believe that's gonna be, you know, what will result from that is is a beautiful flourishing of Los Angeles. And those of us who who want to be part of that get to be part of that through Liberty Hill.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I'm I'm also struck by how fast a tipping point happened after Prop 187. Right. I mean, the the the immigrant rights movement, which had been, you know, doing a lot of work over decades, really sort of exploded in the 2000s, right? I mean, there was this new immigrant rights organizing infrastructure that had taken route. You know, uh they they'd been building political power for for years. And then there was this moment in in 2006 um the the the immigrant rights march. Um millions of people across the country took to the streets over immigration policy. LA saw some of the largest immigrant rights demonstrations in history. I remember walking out of City Hall, you could not hear the city council meeting in progress because the world was outside. So you could you could not see, you look down the streets, all you could see was people, as far as the eye could see, people all there demanding uh immigrants reform. Uh I mean, just extraordinary images. And um uh one of the big groups behind that was Chirla, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles, which has been very much at the center of things over the past year. But um, Liberty Hill had been investing in in Chirla and other groups as they built immigrant power over the years. Um what what was changing in 2006, both for immigrant communities and for did anything change about the way Liberty Hill was thinking about building political power in that moment as all that was emerging?
SPEAKER_03I mean, I remember that March too. I was um working in City Hall at the time as well. And um I mean, honestly, personally, I don't love meandering through a crowd of people under any circumstance. I'd rather watch it on TV. But but I mean, even I could I mean the the the power and beauty of that and the way you describe it, I mean just the sound and and you could just feel it. Um and I think part of that feeling is you can feel the potential of it. Yeah. You can feel that something is shifting in a powerful and permanent way. Yep. But then it takes many years to really see that. And along the way, it's like, whatever happened to that march, you know, like why didn't it change everything? Well, it did. It just takes time to see it. Um, but that was another moment where, you know, there's just a horrific crisis happening. The federal government's, you know, once again turning against immigrants, especially undocumented folks. And about over half a million folks, you know, marched in that immigrant march. Um and Chirla was key to that. Liberty Hill had been investing in Chirla for many years, and on Helica Salis' leadership came up in the early 2000s. Um, and the the other key thing, going back to the last conversation about the the economy, is these worker centers was another thing that's birthed in that time. And the worker centers were meant to organize workers excluded from organized labor, um day laborers and others. So it ended up being a largely immigrant and Latino base, although not entirely. Um, and so what's amazing is, you know, as as horrific as the ice raids were, fast forwarding to recently, the instantaneous response of folks on the ground to understand what was happening, mobilize into action to protect folks and to make sure the world knew and to get the powers that be involved, all of that work was done by the people, you know, by the people trained and and developed in this moment around 2006, these this immigrant and workers' rights um organizations. And um, and again, it's like, who's gonna save Los Angeles from authoritarianism? It's gonna be immigrant workers, you know, and others. But um, but that's that's what I think is extraordinary about sort of the the ability that Liberty Hill and and the social change ecosystem in Los Angeles to build this infrastructure that really is lasting. And there, you know, the coalitions and the alliances enable a passing of the torch so that you know it's not a stop and start, it's a continuous movement. Um, there's a lot of ups and downs, but a continuous movement forward with a vision that Los Angeles can work for all of us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because what what's so interesting about that moment, I mean, was very powerful and I mean, I think a defining moment in LA's history in so many ways. But the the policy those those marches were seeking didn't happen. Right. Right. I mean, Congress didn't pass immigration reform. Um uh and you know, back then, I mean, Republicans actually supported immigration reform. John McCain, who was the Republican nominee in 2008, was a huge advocate of immigration reform, had bills about it. Um uh how things have changed. And and things, I mean, for immigrants in Los Angeles, around the country are are are demonstrably worse than than they were in that moment. But that moment still has a lot of resonance for for you, for me, for so many people. Um how do we uh how do we measure what uh a a political victory is, right? Because we we do we do look at that as being victorious, but how how do we or how does Liberty Hill look at how we measure success or victory?
SPEAKER_03I mean, this is the the existential question of all time I I mean one important thing is that what we talked about in terms of this dialectic and the reality that the conditions and the forces to protect this highly concentrated power and wealth are they've just got more power, right? They've got hundreds of years of building power. Um so it's an uphill battle, and and the progress that that everyday Angelinos do make, every bit of that, is against massive opposition. And then when we do win, the backlash is even more massive and insane. Um and so, you know, I think at least from you know, technically, from a Liberty Hill perspective, um, you know, we look, we look at the sort of the snapshot of the campaign that that groups are working in. And we're, you know, we we want to be sure that we're doing everything we can to support real power building. Because sometimes what happens in a campaign, especially in Los Angeles, where we've gotten to a point, this is a whole other story about the progressive electorate and uh um involvement in elections that has resulted in a pretty progressive um set of elected officials in Los Angeles. So what can happen is that that we can actually win some good policies without having to organize a revolution, right? And so um it's it's for for the work Liberty Hill does, it really is about changing. It's about winning and changing material conditions and building power in the process because we know it's that power that's really the thing that's gonna change the trajectory in the future and people's ability to to live the lives they want to live. Um, so we look for, you know, the it did the is the campaign building power along the way? Is it winning? Right. Maybe not everything. Um, but but because part of building power is winning, right? Um but then also we have to step all the way back. And this is one thing that, you know, I've learned being at Liberty Hill, having come out of organizing and then been at City Hall and on the police commission and these other things is, you know, if you're if you put organizing under a microscope, you know, it's somewhat excruciating, right? It's like it's like you don't, I don't want to watch. You know, it's like it's hard, it's slow, it's um, you know, up against impossible odds. And um and often the tactics that are used to to gain ground and to win are things that make people uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And there's multiple times when I've gotten a call from a very important, you know, elected official, it's like, back your people off. Like, first of all, I do not have that power or authority. Uh, but thanks for the king I do. And secondly, no. Um, because you you have there's a there's a level of faith and humility that goes into to being part of this work when it's really led by the people who are most impacted and the tactics and strategies that work for them and being willing to trust in that long arc of change and that that mics, you know, we'll get to the this the oil drilling fight. But you know, these if you if you do zoom in on kind of one campaign at a time, you can trace them back many, many, many, many years. These things take a really long time and a lot of different strategies and three steps forward, two steps back sometimes. Um, but if but as we see over time, we see the markers of these folks building power, which include, you know, being able to influence elections and being able to get elected officials to do things they wouldn't otherwise do, and building alliances with unusual folks that or unusual allies that that brings even more power to these fights, um, being able to influence the narrative. You know, what and that we saw, I mean, we'll get to the tenants fight, but I mean the narrative on renters in Los Angeles and California has seen a massive shift.
SPEAKER_01True.
SPEAKER_03And so these things are all related and they're all important kind of indicators that we're moving forward.
SPEAKER_00But you mentioned um you mentioned the oil drilling, and I want I want to get to that because it it gets us for part of that story, it gets us to the decade where you joined Liberty Hill, uh decade when I got elected and started working with Liberty Hill. Uh and you know, this is really a story about you know the environmental justice movement in Los Angeles. And, you know, for years, really since the beginning, right, Liberty Hill had been supporting EJ organizations in communities where there was pollution, industrial uses were disproportionately concentrated. Hello, Well Heights. Um, you know, uh and one of the issues that was emerging was urban oil drilling. A lot of folks, you know, in neighborhoods like the West Side don't know that you know there there are oil drilling sites in Los Angeles next to churches, next to schools, next to homes. And um, you know, it it's it's it's really very present and and noxious in a lot of neighborhoods. Um and uh eventually a group of neighborhood organizations came together, Stand LA. Uh stand together against neighborhood drilling. Very good.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh and they built this coalition that ultimately helped win the phase out of oil drilling in Los Angeles. I took tons of meetings with Stand LA. One of the main forces behind that, the person who organized every meeting with me, was Michelle from Liberty Hill Foundation.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um for someone who doesn't know Stand LA, uh, now that they know the acronym, what the acronym stands for, uh, explain how that coalition worked and and how a bunch of neighborhood organizations that were, you know, fighting their own individual battles came together and became a citywide political force.
SPEAKER_03Well, that was very well told there. Um and you, of course, on the city council were a huge champion and ally that helped get that passed, one of the few that we could count on. Um, and this going back again, because these stories always have a long history behind them, is one of the amazing things Michelle Pritchard did as part of Liberty Hill Foundation was really kind of create this environmental justice political analysis and movement. And as with the story of labor, the environmentalists, you know, the environmental organizations were very, you know, relatively large and powerful and white, you know, led by white, wealthy men. And so part of what so environmental justice is distinguished from traditional environmentalism.
SPEAKER_00Traditional was Santa Monica Bay air quality, right? Exactly.
SPEAKER_03Um and what environmental justice does and what Michelle helped people to see is that there are unique and multiple impacts on in neighborhoods where people historically didn't have the power to prevent these kinds of um pollutants from coming into their neighborhoods, um, and then get the disproportionate accumulation of all those toxins. And um so so that environmental justice, you know, building those organizations, building that analysis, um, helping people to see these larger structural causes of their health, you know, issues in these neighborhoods, um, building community organizations made up of these residents over time, and Michelle and Liberty Hill's work to get philanthropy to understand that this was a key thing to invest in. And it's always been, I mean, it's always hard to get money for social change work and environmental justice has always been a challenge to fund. Um, and you know, we're always just like, give us another year. This campaign's almost the finish line. It's scheduled on the city council agenda, you know, and then years will go by and it's still. But getting philanthropy to see that this was a particular fight. And so getting um what environmental justice advocates and and Michelle did at the time is to get the mainstream environmental movement to see that they could not be successful without broadening to include others, people of color, low-income people, which shaped, helped to shape the environmental movement, helped to shape Los Angeles. Um, and so fast forward to, you know, folks, you know, start getting sick and they start talking to each other about, you know, oh, did your kid's feeling that symptom, my kid's feeling that symptom, and start to start to figure out that it's coming from oil drilling, build this coalition, um, and um, you know, figure out that what they've got to do is uh eradicate neighborhood oil drilling. And, you know, that involves, like you said, nobody even knows it's happening. So we have to make sure people see it and are aware of it. Meanwhile, the folks on the front lines of this fight are their health is being affected by this, right? We had one young woman who started this work when she was just a little kid and is now a global activist, Naeli Kobo. Um, but you know, she's her, she was, I mean, it was very, very dangerous to her health and to many others. So you've got folks who are figuring out how to organize their communities, figuring out all the science and technical stuff behind it, um, and then coming, you know, standing toe-to-toe with um powerful elected officials and big oil, who is, you know, um coming at us with equal and uh force at all times. Um, and that was another one of those where some of along the way, like elected a lot of elected officials were like, yeah, we agree with you. Like, can't can't you just be nice and like do trust us and we'll get it done, you know? And um organizers know and communities know that, like you said, it's not the elected officials who who can or do make the big changes. It's the people and the people who who create the vision, the people who create the power behind it and raise the stakes so that elected officials really have no choice. And so finally, um, they won a ban of neighborhood oil drilling and a phase out, a ban of new and then a phase out of old, which then got returned, and then we had to go again for multiple years of lawsuits and advocacy to get it passed again in the city and county. Um and then the beautiful thing, it's like, oh God, what a miserable, long slog of a fight that's been. And now there's there's gonna be all of this land in Los Angeles that can be turned into community assets. And that is beautiful.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And the the local work that was being done in Los Angeles on that, that that spread, right? The state then started doing something on oil setbacks. Um, you know, uh uh in in Culver City and and other communities, they managed to shut down stuff. I mean, it really became something that grew into a into a movement that wasn't confined just to uh the city of LA. Um and that really is one of the the the long arc issues of of Liberty Hill. Uh another long arc issue I want to talk about is is um is police accountability.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh uh Liberty Hill had been working on that. Um, you know, that was something certainly at play in in the 80s and uh in about underlying the unrest in in '92. Uh and I want to hear a little bit more about what Liberty Hill was doing on that. But I I there's a little context I I want to give or suggest for the conversation is that uh Liberty Hill had been doing that for a very, very long time. And um things started changing, right? In 2014, Ferguson happened, right? Um and in 2020, George Floyd was murdered, uh, millions of people took to the streets. And suddenly an issue that the that Liberty Hill had been working on for decades was like for for a period of time, for for that year, was the national uh issue. Um so I want to know what Liberty Hill had been doing, but I'm also curious how that moment and sort of that national spotlight impacted either positively or negatively what you were doing.
SPEAKER_03I could talk for hours about this one. So one of the first grants Liberty Hill Ever gave out was uh to an organization led by Anthony Thigpen that uh who was a Black Panther at the time uh around police abuse. So, so, and of course, there was the work in the 90s around the uprising. So, so Liberty Hill and the work in communities um around police abuse, and particularly, you know, the the abuse and incarceration of people of color, especially black boys and men, um, you know, is deep in our bones for the communities we work in and Liberty Hill as an institution. Um so yeah, there are these moments when all of a sudden something that nobody pays any attention to is suddenly gets the spotlight, and it, you know, we have to be ready. Um so at the same time, I was serving on the police commission, which oversees the LAPD, as you recall.
SPEAKER_00God bless you. I don't know what you did to piss off Eric Garcetti to get that assignment. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. Um, but so let's see, I served on the police commission from 2016 to 2020, um, which turned out to be, ooh, gosh, just about the craziest period of time to do that work while I was leading Liberty Hill. Um and so there are a couple of things there. You know, what did Liberty Hill do? So before that, we had been investing specifically in boys and men of color and specifically in what uh we called the school to prison pipeline, where we figured out that a key intervention point was black and brown boys mostly would get expelled, suspended, and then expelled for something called willful defiance, which is an undefined teacher gets frustrated, they're gone.
SPEAKER_00Rarely a charge leveled at the little white boys.
SPEAKER_03Right, exactly. So that's what we figured out is like, oh wow, this is how we're suspending and expelling boys, um, black and brown boys is with this willful defiance. So we were able to win um an elimination of willful defiance, which what we figured out is once a black or brown kid gets expelled from high school, pretty much that's determines the rest of their lives, right? They're probably their chances of being unemployed, their chances of being homeless, their chances of going to jail, um, all those things get so much worse. And so if you can interrupt that. So we had done a tremendous amount of work and really gotten people focused on the importance of keeping kids in school and educating them while they're there and and pun not punishing them when things go wrong, but teaching true, you know, accountability and learning. And so that, you know, the youth justice work was forming and the school board was, you know, seeing the power of students and parents. Um and so in 2020, so we have and then it's COVID, of course. Yep. So we have COVID, and then we have George Floyd, and then we have the uprising. And it was one of those moments when, you know, now most of us have been doing this work for a really long time. It's like we see it. Oh, this is one of those moments. This is one of those moments where we hit bottom and hopefully, you know, and this is the opportunity to turn this crisis into something powerful and beautiful. Um and this was the when Black Lives Matter, you know, was emerging and Liberty Hill had had funded, you know, we had created a rapid response fund for racial justice, you know, earlier in in the awareness of um black, unarmed black men being killed by the police. Um so we'd already done a lot of work uh with our donors and with funders and with community. Um and we had also launched our campaign to end youth incarceration as we know it, um, because the most 95% of kids who are incarcerated are big black, brown, poor boys. Um so many details here. So um let's see. So we'd been doing the work around youth incarceration and the work around schools. And um there really wasn't, though, at that time a lot of organizing happening around police accountability.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, which was kind, I guess sort of surprising to me, even though I'm all steeped in it. But when I got on the police commission, I think I expected there to be more of sort of a strong movement behind police accountability and um police abuse. And um there really wasn't. Um there's a lot of activism and a lot of kind of lifting up of issues, but not a lot of really thinking about like what needs to change specifically.
SPEAKER_00Um and we should say, you know, so much had changed about policing in Los Angeles. Right, right. I mean, people who are looking at it now see all the the various problems with LAPD and they they see LAPD's sort of hold on politics, but it's nothing compared to what it used to be.
SPEAKER_03Exactly, which is so important to remember the context that we're in. Um but yeah, it was one of those moments where and I and I remember it like you know the day a rose grows from the concrete when Measure J became a real possibility. So Measure J ultimately ended up um riding the the momentum of this. Yeah. So Measure J um sets aside a million hundred million dollars a year from the county budget to to do prevention, community safety, kind of the more upstream issues that lead to that altercation between the police and the community. Um and what was amazing is so it's COVID. So we're running this. We like none of us know what the hell's going on. We're like if we're gonna, if we can take our mask off or not. And this amazing opportunity emerges to take the momentum of the moment where everybody was at least saying, like, oh my god, this is terrible, and we need to do something about it, and everyone was posting on their social media anti-racist stuff, which was beautiful. Um, although many folks knew that that would be short-lived. But um, but measure I think across the country, I think Measure J was probably the most the most successful vehicle for channeling the momentum of that moment into lasting change. Yes. And what's crazy is I mean, it's a massive win, $100 million a year into the upstream stuff.
SPEAKER_00And it wasn't controversial.
SPEAKER_03Well, yeah, it was it was a ballot measure. So it won, it it really um accelerated, you know, Isaac Bryan and Ionisus Hernandez into the public spotlight and to elected offices. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_03Um and Liberty Hill's donors were super excited. So Liberty Hill and our donors did a ton of work to support the campaign. Um, and then of course, you know, it gets contested in court, then we have to spend a bunch of money defending it for many years, and then it gets deleted from the charter, and then we have to accidentally, and now we have to now we're basically voting on it again.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Uh which is a lesson in organizing is that no campaign ends, it just it just takes on a new life and a different form.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. And I do think that is where some of the the learning is and the power building is figuring out that implementation side of things, which um the in the housing work we'll get to is happening too. But that is part of the sophistication is really learning like it's not just about winning. You've because the people who now have to implement it are the people who were trying to stop you in the first place.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_03So um I think folks are getting more sophisticated about that, and Measure J is an example.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um the other thing that I just want to say about Measure J, because I think it's so significant, is one of the the the biggest uh policy shifts, probably nationwide as a result of that that that moment uh was overwhelmingly approved by voters. And I think part of it is because unlike a lot of the way people have framed uh reinvestments from that issue, it focused on where the money was going as opposed to where it was coming from. It's it's the same thing, but the way it was talked about, I mean, it it it it got people excited about the possibility of what we would be doing as opposed to what we wouldn't be doing.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Because the at the time it was the defund the police that was kind of the big tagline, and that you know uh the backlash against that justified their backlash by saying, well, you gotta have police. And but the point of it was always that we've defunded everything else. Now we need to reinvest in in the very upstream solutions that that reduce crime in the future. Um and so that that's really what Measure J was able to do is to take that, you know, defund the police and turn it into does nothing to do with the police. It has to do with investing in all the other things that make communities safe and strong.
SPEAKER_00So 2020, I mean, for me, I think of it as such a pivotal year. Um is that's a moment where we're where new life also came to organizing around another issue that that Liberty Hill has been on since day one, which is tenant organizing. Um six years ago, uh COVID crisis, it just brought a whole new urgency to the issue because millions of renters suddenly felt like they were at risk of losing their homes. And uh I I looking at it from my perch at City Hall, the tenant organizing that exploded at that moment was like it was one of the most inspiring things to see. It was really, really incredible. Um and Liberty Hill was deeply, deeply involved in that response, uh, including uh a major initiative that became one of the most important pieces of the tenant movement um in Los Angeles, uh Stay Housed LA. Tell me about that. The smile on her face when I said that, wow.
SPEAKER_03Do we have another few hours? This is another one of my favorite subjects. So again, kind of going back a little bit in history, um had the housing work happens to be what I've spent most of my career working on, among other things. But um I did it as an organizer, I did it in City Hall. Um, I also ran an affordable housing development organization for a period. And so I came into Liberty Hill very committed to the housing work and to particular tenant organizing. Um, and I share that because along the way, and before I became CEO especially, I was running our programs. And so I was very, you know, focused on where the the fights were and where the communities were organizing. And honestly, one of the the saddest things for me was to see that tenants were not making progress for so many years. And it, you know, and Liberty Hill has faith, right? So we know that tenants are the majority of Los Angeles and that the organizing will pay off, even in in a time of years where you don't see progress, where you see tenants organizing in their own building just to get repairs to their building.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03Um, and that I did that work um at many years ago in legal aid. I was working in slum housing. And so I spent a lot of time, you know, in bathrooms where the ceiling had fallen down, and all these folks wanted is a patch over the ceiling so I could take a shower. Um so right before COVID, um, well, I think I think that I think the pivotal moment might have actually been Prop 10, where statewide proposition that would have strengthened rent control across the state, which was a bruising, losing battle. Um, but it was that moment. Like I remember we went to speak with the LA Times editorial board about it. And it was like literally like Robert Green, you know, these folks who are now just a hundred percent right on these issues. Then they were like, well, I mean, it just wasn't really a thing. It wasn't something they really thought about or understood, um, and just saw it through this very sort of uninaccurate lens. Um, but it just I think the work for Prop 10 really, it just everybody upped their game and had to really get people to see these issues. And so I think that was kind of that seed that planted. And then right before COVID, the State House LA organizing had started where people started to realize that evictions were really key. It's not the most upstream solution to focus on evictions, but kind of like the suspensions and expulsions, it's that moment when everything changes. If someone gets evicted, they may never be able to get another apartment. They may be homeless, their kids may be homeless. Um, and so rather, you know, Liberty Hill's work is not about directly serving homeless people, right? It's about going upstream to the root cause and evictions are one of those. Um, and so that focus started to come into light. Housing is a human right, all of that was happening. Um and then COVID hit, and suddenly it was like, and we were all talking about, we're like, what can we win during COVID that we can keep when COVID's over? Like, how can we let COVID reveal these issues and this and the solutions that folks have had all along? Yeah, just waiting for the political opening, um, which I think came with COVID and the understanding that that um we needed to keep people housed. And so Stay House LA was born, um, which is um um a project of uh about 12 community organizations. We all, including Liberty Hill, we we co-govern it together.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_03The community organizers fought for and won millions and millions of dollars from the city and the county to fund Stay House LA, which sends community organizers out knocking on doors to talk to tenants who um, you know, most really most, if not all, tenants are really at risk of homelessness. I mean, in in Los Angeles, given their their incomes and the stability um of their incomes and then the ways unscrupulous landlords and corporate landlords can push them out. Um, and I think too, I was also thinking, you know, when I came to Liberty Hill, it was it was in 09 around that recession and crash, when a lot of people went from homeowners to to renters. So I think that also shifted the political kind of understanding of what was happening. So anyway, we won Stay House delay, folks started knocking on, well, at the time it they had to do it virtually because of COVID, but eventually now today they knock on doors. And interestingly, I mean, another example of something that's pretty basic. It's like make sure the tenant knows her rights. And during COVID, this was particularly important because you could over or end them underestimate your rights to your peril, because every jerk jurisdiction was passing laws around renters. And so, you know, we what we didn't want is people thinking, oh, there's a rent freeze, I don't have to pay my rent. They had to know how it worked.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03We also didn't want them self-evicting, which is a problem I'm familiar with because when my dad died uh when I was 19, our landlord said you gotta go. And if Stay House LA had been around and knocked on my door and said, Hey, you don't have that's not how it works. You have rights, you have protections. What an asshole. The landlord. Oh, yeah. Don't get me started. Yeah. And he was my dad's best friend. And the only reason he knew we couldn't pay the rent is because he was very, very close to our family. Um, so within days of my dad passing, he's like, Oh, gotta go. So, of course, my little brother and I were like, Okay, and we packed a suitcase and moved out, you know. But that's happening, you know, in the thousands, right? People, especially people who are vulnerable for other reasons like undocumented immigrants, you know, either they they self-evict because they're scared or they put up with the worst kinds of conditions and abuses. And so that so um sales delay was meant to to make sure folks understood their rights, had access to services, and in particular could be linked up with legal services, because what we also knew is that going into eviction court, 90% of landlords had had um lawyers, and only 10% of tenants did. That's pretty fundamental.
SPEAKER_00The landlord has a lawyer and the tenant doesn't, the landlord is almost always gonna win.
SPEAKER_03Of course. And just the fact that it's a landlord evicting someone, they're probably gonna win, but the lawyer helps. Um, so connecting these folks with lawyers and often um, you know, it's very expensive. And so only the the sort of worst cases get get the lawyer, um, which is an all the way downstream emergency. But but what can happen is once people get understand their rights and get access to services and each other, right? They start understanding it's not just me, it's not something to be ashamed of. You know, it's something we can we can join together and do something about. Um, these problems can actually be stopped before they get to court. Because, you know, once a landlord figures out you got a lawyer and you know your rights, chances are there's good negotiation to be had. And this, you know, maybe the person leaves, but they get a few months, or maybe they pay down the debt they owe, or whatever the issue may be. Or maybe the tenant, I mean, the the landlord is forced to make repairs. Um so, you know, State House LA has since um, you know, worked with over a million renters in Los Angeles and has won multiple um really amazing policies in in LA to both protect um renters and to improve their conditions and to build more affordable housing. Um and because evictions are a, you know, with the homelessness, what I think some people don't realize is that, you know, we're making as many people homeless during the year as we are housing, and in most cases more.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_03So we're always sort of making a little bit more homeless people than we're housing. And it's not like these are the same 60,000 people who've been homeless all this time, right? Yep. It's constantly inflow. Um, and and evictions are a big source of inflow. So so being able to stop those evictions prevents homelessness and ultimately can decrease homelessness over time.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's all very important points to make because people forget that. One of the things that that sort of struck me about what was happening uh with the renters movement, you know, in in 2020, 2021, pushing for you know uh you know eviction. It actually wasn't a moratorium, but it was it it was it was it was referred to an eviction moratorium, but uh it was a stronger eviction protect uh prevention protections. But it really struck me then that um the the public need and the public appetite was a lot bigger than uh what uh the government was uh prepared to do. And it took a lot of effort to uh to organize and mobilize what the public really wanted to widen the aperture of possibility at City Hall to meet the aperture of demand, right? Um how how how aware of that in the organizing were you that that what you were doing wasn't just an issue, but in so many ways, by bringing all those tenants into uh the the process, you were sort of laying the groundwork for a a big sort of leap in LA politics overall.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I mean beautifully said. And again, these are this the very same organizers and organizations that we Kiwa, Sage, you know, um Ace, which is the new form of Acorn. Um they they were ready.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And um they had been they knew the solutions, yeah. They had the organized people, um, and it was this political moment of opportunity. And you know, I when I was looking back at at LA, I mean at Liberty Hill history, I learned about this new majority something or other. It's called New Majority Alliance or something that I think it was like Anth Anthony Thigpen and Manuel Pastor and others formed in like the 70s or 80s. Um, but it was this recognition that we are the majority, right? Right? Like the very people that are excluded from all the rights in power are the majority. And that they're not, you know, viewing their slice as a minority was part of the sort of politics of of disempowering folks. Um and so and we know renters in Los Angeles are the majority. And so it is really about it's like the fact that City Hall, you know, wasn't ready for that. I don't know what to tell you. But but Los Angeles was ready for it, and the many, many renters, and not just people who've, you know, of maybe are of the renter class, whose families have always been renters. There's also, you know, upper middle class people whose kids are going out into the world and they can't even afford a place to live. So it was because of the larger forces of the economy, I think more and more people were able to see themselves in the plight of renters in Los Angeles than just the lowest income renters. And you know, now we've got people on city council who are renters. And, you know, it really, it really was one of those moments where it caught fire and the whole narrative shifted and the policy started shifted. And, you know, it was because these tenants have been organizing for decades, literally, and building institutions and learning the intricacies. And honestly, I think the like the folks who ended up winning um State House LA and then United to House LA, you know, they are the true experts on all the you know technical details of everything about, you know, what is needed to make housing affordable in Los Angeles and keep people housed way more than anyone in City Hall, way more than, you know, elected officials. There's just no comparison.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so um I think folks are very ready. And I think, you know, you tell me, but I think elected officials saw that. You know, there was a readiness and there were some solutions just ready to go. Um and yeah, I think again, you know, we're gonna continue to see that bear fruit and and we're gonna continue to see the backlash and you know, even State House LA, just a program that people know their rights and can be protected from being homeless. Yeah. It came under massive attack by the powers that be in Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00Uh final question. We've we've gone back 50 years, we've gone up to today. What's next for LA and what's next for Liberty Hill?
SPEAKER_03You know, and I think part of the story here over these 50 years and the story of Los Angeles and the story of Liberty Hill is really the, you know, the sort of the owning class, the, the, the, the corporate owners, the um property owners, you know, that's that's what residents of Los Angeles are chipping away at. And I think the new, the wave of the future is really what are these models of community ownership, whether it's you know, community land trusts where where renters own the building collectively and or have um governance power over it. Um and um co-ops, you know, worker co-ops, and just generally workers having more power in the workplace. We're seeing this um communities be able to take more control and ownership of of the assets in communities. And and that I think is, you know, and in even um, you know, like LA Community Action Network has a, which is in Skid Row, has a community garden on their roof, and Social Justice Learning Institute, which is in Inglewood, is building a vertical farm in their backyard. And all these ways in which I think people are seeing the opportunity to build the good for ourselves, to not wait around for elected officials to do it, even though we know that it's larger structural issues. That part of the solution is just taking control and taking that ownership and doing it for ourselves and showing electeds and others, um, the owning class, you know, what is possible. And I think what what what's so beautiful about libert the spirit of Liberty Hill and the people who have been part of Liberty Hill over all these years is that true. Sense of seeing our shared destiny and seeing that it's not just that I'm gonna be sad if you're sad because I don't want you to be sad. It's that it's that the Los Angeles that is diverse and vibrant and alive and a place we want our kids to grow up in, and um the food and people and all that that is that is um you know that is the Los Angeles that we will all be better off in and that our kids will be better off in. And it's not just about you know a small segment of people um doing a little bit better, you know, at the expense of others. It's really about all of us being better off by making Los Angeles work for all of us. As part of Liberty Hills 50th celebration, one of the things we've done is we've been using the 50 years of our history and the community and love and power that's been built over 50 years and really letting it help us think about the next 50 years. And that's super inspiring for me. Um, in a way, you know, and I'm not actually I'm not particularly good at like literally imagining something in the future that I haven't experienced. But here's what's been amazing. So I was introduced to this futurist, Trista Harris, who you can listen to on our podcast from last year. Um, and so futurism, what the heck is that? That's for a different show. But the idea is you you we have an opportunity to imagine the future we're trying to build. And by really, and it's and in some ways you're like, isn't that what we all do? Don't we all have a vision statement for our organization? Don't we all say we want a better future? Yes. And I think our work, if you just kind of observe the work, as Trista says, we we love the problem, right? So our work becomes all about the problems, which is true and demoralizing and stressful. And um, after many, many, many, many, many, many years, you start to feel really burnt out if all you're noticing is the problems. And so the opportunity with looking ahead 50 years into the future is to say, what is the Los Angeles we want to build? What is Los Angeles, what do we want Los Angeles to be like 50 years from now, and how do we work backwards from there? And I think there that changes the way we engage in the work today. For example, when United House LA was being threatened and will be threatened again, um there, you know, understandably folks are like, okay, well, what's, you know, what can we protect? What's the the little, you know, the peace we can hold on to? Um, and it's understandable given that the other side usually has more power than we do. Um, but if you are really thinking about what is Los Angeles we want to build, then we need all of ULA and more. And so it doesn't become about what little bit can we protect. It becomes about we know this is good and right, and we know it is contributing to the Los Angeles we all want for all of us. And I think that kind of faith and just holding on to the vision and making it as real as the problems we're facing today are gonna are what is going to enable us to continue to march forward and we can look back at history and see that these things take a long time and that the fruit that they bear is always just so much more beautiful and powerless, beautiful and powerful, really, than we even imagined in the first place. Um, and you know, 50 years from now, in 2076, um I will not be here. Uh likely. Who knows? I mean, I could be 100 years old. You probably won't be the CEO of Liberty Hill.
SPEAKER_00Um But if you're like the former executive directors of Liberty Hill, you'll still be involved with Liberty Hill.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, absolutely, not going anywhere. Um yeah, we're gonna be able to look back and tell tell a story of the seeds we planted today in in in with full faith that they would bear fruit later. Um and we'll get to look back and see what a difference we made. And I hope that the Los Angeles that you know my grandkids inherit um is one where everybody gets to thrive and everybody gets to have joy and love and freedom and um, you know, democracy's fun. Going to see you can get to City Hall from here, you know, and you don't have to go through the police to get there. And you can be part of decisions that impact your lives. And um, you know, and I think that's possible, but but we really have to believe it and invest in that future.
SPEAKER_00Shane Murphy Goldsmith. Thank you for the conversation.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00And that does it for this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. My thanks to LA Forward for sponsoring and promoting this podcast. My thanks to my team at the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs for helping me research and produce it. And my thanks to Tanya We see us for producing and editing this podcast. And of course, thank you to you for listening. Until next time, take care and peace.