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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
Marqueece: On the Record
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Marqueece Harris-Dawson becomes Los Angeles City Council President September 20. Who is he, and how does he intend to lead? In this episode, he talks at length with Mike about Los Angeles, Black politics and multiracial coalitions, unarmed crisis response, homelessness, housing, preparing for the Olympics, and a lot more!
Links & Additional Reading
Marqueece Harris-Dawson Bio
MHD Off the Record Podcast
L.A. Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson wins the council presidency, will replace Krekorian
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
In a few weeks, Los Angeles gets a new City Council president. Who is Marquise Harris Dawson and what is his agenda for the city? I talk with him on this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. Hi everyone and welcome. This is Mike Bonin, and we are back after an extended hiatus with new episodes and a new chapter for this podcast. I am proud to announce I am now partnering on this podcast with LA Forward, a great community group dedicated to political empowerment and civic education. I'll tell you more about that at the end of the show. But first, on September 20th, 54-year-old Marquise Harris Dawson will become president of the Los Angeles City Council. It is the second most powerful position in LA City government, and it is one of the most powerful positions in all of Southern California. He will literally set the legislative agenda for a city of nearly four million people. He will determine what issues get considered and when, and he will decide which council members sit on and run the various city council committees. And when Karen Bass is out of town, he will be the acting mayor. A son of South LA, Harris Dawson was a community organizer and executive director of the nonprofit community coalition when he won his first election to the City Council in 2015. He represents the 8th District, which encompasses parts of South Los Angeles and stretches from Baldwin Hills to the border of Watts. Earlier this year, he was elected without opposition to a third and a final term. During his time on the council, he has chaired committees and done work overseeing homelessness and land use, and he's been a big voice on equity and police reform and job creation. Marquis and I are friends, and when I was on the council, he and I were pretty close allies. I was one of his first and staunchest supporters when he tried to become council president in 2020. That was sort of a behind the scenes battle where Nuri Martinez prevailed. But earlier this year, the council unanimously selected Marquis to become council president, succeeding Paul Krakorian, who's termed out of office soon. As he prepares to take on his new responsibilities, I sat down with Marquis for a wide-ranging discussion about Los Angeles and city government. We discussed the nature of his new role, and we talked about unarmed crisis response, homelessness, preparing for the Olympics, where and how to build more housing, and a lot more, including how sneakerheads help save lives during the pandemic. Yeah, sneakerheads. You're gonna have to listen to the interview to figure out what that means. Anyway, here's the interview which we recorded last week at his district office on Adams Boulevard. All right, uh glad to welcome to what's next, Los Angeles, Marquise Harris Dawson, Council President elect.
SPEAKER_00How you doing, man? Good. I'm doing well. Um, you know, sun shining bright. We live in the Olympic City. We got uh LA is to me, uh, as Dr. Manuel Pastor, it says it is the best city because it has the biggest problems.
SPEAKER_01Hey, uh that's a good one. Um so I was just thinking that we tried to get you
Scandal & Crisis: What came before on the City Council
SPEAKER_01elected council president in 2020. That's right. Took a while to make this happen. Yeah. Uh and I was just imagining how different the city would be if we had prevailed back then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was uh 2019, and you know, we had a little bit of a protracted campaign uh for the council presidency. Uh I think we maybe started off with three people and then we went to two and then uh eventually Nuri prevailed. But you know, the thing with that presidency that I look back and I don't look back on it longingly, uh, because you know the pandemic started about a couple of months later.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was like right in our right in the face, and that really shaped the time more than anything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so you know, it was a lot to deal with um that you know would have been very, very it would have been very, very fascinating. It would have been um to have um to have had the presidency during that time period.
SPEAKER_01There wouldn't have been any Fed tapes either.
SPEAKER_00There wouldn't have been any Fed tapes. That's absolutely the case. Um and you know, our I think two differences, I think, you know, even if there were Fed tapes, because there's no reason why that meeting wouldn't still have happened, yeah. Uh all those players were still there and they would have had the same interests, uh, it would have had a different impact on the council. Uh, because you know, the council, the wheels almost came off during that time period, and you were there, you remember, but I but I try to remind people, so you know, it's historical context, it's like just to draw a parallel, you know, if you're in South LA, you know that it wasn't Rodney King that caused the riots, it was really Latasha Harland's. Like it was that was the that was the thing that lit the match, and it just took you know Rodney King for it to, you know, come in full fledged. And I think with the council, you know, that the council was being forced into all these debates uh that were very contentious and didn't produce anything around sleeping in cars, sleeping on side, you know, basically what to do about the homelessness problem. And there was just this real aggression about clearing homelessness that was not matched uh by uh with uh housing people, right? And so, you know, there's a way, which I think the mayor has demonstrated, there's a way to say I'm gonna have a hard line on encampments, but that doesn't mean uh being punitive, that doesn't mean punishing it, it means getting people into housing. Uh and that wasn't the case. And so we'd have these debates that you know involved a lot of bloodletting. You will remember there was one council meeting where we had to retreat to the back. This is before the tapes. We had to retreat for the back. There was another meeting where we just couldn't meet, and then weeks later, the tapes come. And so the council was in a real bad way. And you had the you know, the president of the United States showing up and saying, Hey, I think these folks ought to resign. Uh, so it, you know, it was a uh a mess, and I don't think the mess the tapes would have happened and the lead up wouldn't have happened uh if we'd had different leadership.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm sure uh once you take office you will find some huge, unprecedented, unanticipated challenge that you'll be dealing with over the world.
SPEAKER_00I'm sure it's I'm sure it's such a such a challenge is brewing now. Like I'm sure the seeds of it have already been planted and and are being nurtured. And yeah, again, you just never know what was going to, you know, happen. I mean, look, the you know, the the other thing that happened in with respect to the lead up to those recordings was, you know, all these crazy indictments we had. Yeah. Like indictments over like what? Who what you went to Vegas? Like, you know, it's just it was just it was just a really bizarre time in the city. I I talked to more than one person who uh either is a retiree and had been working for the city 50 years ago, up to 50 years ago, talked to another employee, and I guess I I should be careful because there's a this is a small number of people. Talk to people who work for the city in excess of 40 years. And they all to a person, they say, by far, 2022 was the craziest and the riskiest year that they've seen in the history of the city of LA.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, and the ugliest for the council.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right, right. Well, the council was at the center of it. Yeah. The council was at the center of it, driving a lot of it, actually.
SPEAKER_01Well, we'll get into a a lot of that. First, though, I wanted to step back a little bit because you're about to become, in a couple weeks, the president of the LA City Council. It's the second most powerful position in LA City government, but it's not a position that most people are familiar with. Uh, you know, they they clearly knew who Nuri Martinez was by the end, but most times people aren't particularly aware of who the city council president is or what
Marqueece's Story
SPEAKER_01their story is. So tell us a little bit what's your story.
SPEAKER_00Well, uh, you know, I'm I'm a proud Angelino, uh sort of born here uh and uh mostly raised here. Um I came up in South LA when it was, you know, sort of in its heyday. I'm you know, sort of come of age during the Bradley era. You know, the sort of the height of the black community, black population in the city. It was a place that it was you know widely regarded as if you want to do something, you know, come here, you know, find rent a room for 150 bucks and go after it, and it'll happen. Uh and so that was you know, a very traditional African-American family, grew up in the black uh church. Uh, and then along comes the crack cocaine epidemic. Uh crack cocaine epidemic dramatically changes South LA. Uh bars go up on windows, alarms go into cars. Uh, you for the first time see people walking the streets in without their full consciousness. Uh and you, you know, you just didn't see that, certainly not on a regular basis. And you saw people just fall left and right, like, oh, that what happened to Jeff, who used to always play basketball with us? Oh, you know, he's on that stuff. And you're like, Jeff was gone. And either Jeff was gonna die, become homeless, or go to prison. Um, and so uh the Krakow Cane epidemic was quickly followed by an escalation of the war on drugs, which had already been going on. And so now South LA becomes a place that is both you're in danger from the gangs that are running the drug trade, and you're in danger from the police who have things like curfews and Operation Hammer and the batteram. Uh and so my family moved out of South LA uh to the suburbs. And a couple things uh are important about that. That was the first time, and I'm sure my parents didn't think of it this way because you know, literally bullets are flying. You know, it's the first time I would been in a situation where the people weren't mostly black or brown. Like I just, you know, you just didn't have and and where that was in a was going to be permanent. Um and so uh that was a culture shock, but also just living in a community where you're the minority was a new thing for me. And so it was really important to me to get back to South LA. And so I, you know, I did high school and went back, went to Morehouse College, came back to LA, you know, diddled around a little bit, applied to law school, got in, deferred. Um, and then I just one morning, like a bolt of lightning, said, you know what? I'm supposed to be doing work to make my community a place where families don't feel like they have to move. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. And I, you know, I think Mark Really Thomas is about the only person in politics that I had any kind of personal connection to. So we sought out, you know, I sought out his office. I applied for an internship. I was like, I don't even need to get paid. I just want to work, I just want to learn. And his chief, who's now the chief of staff for the mayor, oddly enough, uh, said, you know, you have a really strong resume. We'd like to consider you for staff, but it's April and we don't do a budget until July. So let's keep talking, and then you know, maybe we can bring you on in July. In the meantime, the councilman's recommending that you volunteer at an organization in the district. And, you know, his friend, you know, started a place called Community Coalition, so on and so forth. And I was kind of like, yeah, whatever, I'll call see you in July. Well three different people completely disconnected from each other, said to me, You should look into community coalition, just just meeting people. And in fact, one of them was another job I'd applied for. There was a job I applied for in Pasadena uh with All Saints Episcopal Church, the activist church in Pasadena. And they they were like, We're we really, really like you a lot. We think you're great, but the person you're up against is just so much more experienced than you. We can't hire you. But I have a friend named Karen Bash, you should call her. So finally I was like, fine, I'll look into this place. And I look into the coalition and my head explodes because they were working on the liquor store issue, which people have been talking about liquor stores my entire life. Like if you lived in South LA, like you heard people complain about liquor stores, and they had had success. Uh, and they had were becoming a center of political action post this the civil unrest. And it was a holistic approach to organizing. So it wasn't a one-off like, you know, against the 187 or against 184 without trying to deal with the problems that those things were addressing. Uh, and so I was like, I gotta figure out how to work there. And sure enough, there was a job available. And I started there and uh follow Karen and you know, very shortly into my time at Coco, you could tell that you know, the the another guard was in power in South LA at that time. People have now since retired, mostly retired. Uh, but you could tell that the center of gravity was moving uh and it was going to move in this direction. And so, you know, I think people probably started talking to me about running for office relatively early on. Uh, and then Karen Bass ran for the assembly.
SPEAKER_01I took over as a four.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 2004 uh ran for the assembly. I took over the organization in 2005. Uh, and then we just, you know, kind of waited out. There was a big push for me to run in 2011 against the incumbent Bernard Parks. Uh, and we declined uh because we just didn't see a way to do that without being really negative and divisive. Uh and we just felt like the community didn't need that at this moment. Uh and so uh when he turned out, uh, we threw our hat in our ring and ran for counsel.
SPEAKER_01Say a couple words about what community coalition is and what work at Coco you were most proud of when you were there.
SPEAKER_00So uh community coalition uh started off as a reaction to or a way to address uh and watch this, all of Mike's listeners, a way to promote a care first approach to the drug problem. So don't incarcerate first, don't penalize first, don't make new laws, give people treatment. And more importantly than even giving people treatment, take away the conditions that lead up to it. Does that sound familiar? A little bit. Yeah, yeah. So um, so trying to get the society because because uh Karen Bass and Sylvia Castillo and uh Dr. Douglas and and Ridley Thomas, all the people that that were at the beginning of the coalition were very clear like if we don't get in front of this, a generation of black young people are going to prison and they may never get out. Uh so it will be a form of re-enslavement if we don't get in front of this. Because at the time, not nearly as much was known about drug treatment. So it was it's not even clear we can get you off once you're on. So that's one problem. And then, you know, if you keep causing nuisances in the community, eventually your own community is going to turn against you. Uh, and so how do we get in the middle of that and say to people, there's a solution to this problem, and it's not that. Let's put forward. And so that's how you get the liquor store work. Because one of the things residents told the community coalition when they surveyed South LA, because that was back in the day when no one ever asked, you know, poor people or people of color what they thought about the problems. They just told them what the solutions were. Uh, they said the liquor stores are the infrastructure for the drug trade. And of course, it's obvious if you live in South LA, it's it's so obvious you don't even think to talk about it that way. But that's where people hang out. There was always a telephone there, there was always the paraphernalia there, and you know, there was usually an alley in the back. So it was a whole uh open air, you could have an open-air uh drug market, uh, fueled also by alcohol. And so the coalition did that work with. I got hired as to be a youth organizer. And uh basically the theory was that youth activism to confront the conditions that led to substance abuse, especially substance abuse addiction, was the was the better pathway. And so it's to say to people like, what's throwing kids into depression? What makes what makes young people want to self-medicate? And when you talk to young people, they would say, Would you look at this crappy ass school that I go to? Like, wouldn't this make you want to escape? Uh, and so we went after the conditions at schools. And about the time we were doing that work, the the first school bond in 25 years passed, and uh it was a a bond to repair schools. And of course, it was like someone was handing us a campaign. A writer at the time Times named Doug Smith, still there, still there, wrote an article saying here's how LAUSD is distributing the funds. And that bond was sold on AC air conditioning, because it was kind of the beginning of the global warming that we're all used to now. Summer lasts always almost till Christmas now, and the temperatures are higher in the summer. Well, you had a lot of valley schools that didn't have AC, and it was getting so hot that you couldn't use the schools in the summer. So that's how the bond was sold. Also, the valley is the part of the city that is most likely to defeat any kind of bond measure, any type of revenue measure. So uh Dick Reardon was a big supporter of it. He was strong in the valley. He went to the valley and said, Look, your kids need AC, so you got to vote for this. So in fact, some people used to say in the valley, it's not Prop B B, it's Prop A C. Um, so it passes. And Doug Smith releases the allocations, and of course, all the South LA schools, one right or the other, at the absolute bottom of the list. And basically, what they're getting is security grates for the windows.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00While other schools are getting swimming pools, air conditioning units, like all of this. Because you know, the schools in South LA didn't really need AC yet, because you know, you still get debris if you're below the basin. So even then, you Fremont, uh, all our schools, crunch all, you could use those schools without AC. Uh, so we weren't getting AC. And so it was basically security enhancements. And, you know, the kids like, have you seen our schools? Like, there's repair money available, and they can't figure out what else needs to be repaired besides security guards. Great. And so we got to organize students, uh, get them, we gave them disposable cameras. So they was, we were like, take pictures of the worst situations at your schools and write notes uh for those pictures. And so, you know, you had things like exposed wiring in classrooms where people were leading um uh supposed to be learning. You had situations where there might be 12 fluorescent light panels and maybe two of them worked and people were having class there. Jefferson High School, I shall never forget this, had one working bathroom. And at that moment, it's funny to talk about these numbers now. At that moment, they had 3,600 students. Wow. In a school that was built for 700 people. And so there was one working bathroom, and we got a picture, and there was like a black bag in the toilet, and so we asked the students like, what is this? And they were like, Oh, the janitors put a uh a hefty bag with bleach in the toilet every day because the plumbing doesn't work. This is at Jefferson High School, a mile and a half south of downtown, in the city of Los Angeles, one of the most economically productive metropolitan regions on earth.
SPEAKER_01And what year are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00This is 1998.
SPEAKER_011998.
SPEAKER_001998, yeah. So uh so we did that campaign. So we we uh organized students and parents, uh, teachers, community members. I mean, after a while everybody just got upset about it. One, that we were at the bottom of the list, and two, that you know, the administrators felt very much like these guys didn't tell us there was going to be money. Because if we knew there were gonna be money, we would have put up all these things. But, you know, every year they ask us what the repairs are. We never bother to fill it out because there's never any money anyway. Uh so we do a whole campaign, we end up winning $153 million. Uh Steve Soboroff is the chair of the committee giving out the money. So we picket him at the uh in front of his meeting with students. It was one of the it was the first time or the some of the largest student protests uh LAUSD had seen since the war, since the set, you know, the 70s. Wow. Uh so it was a very exciting time and and we won the campaign and and uh you know Jefferson now has uh over a dozen bathrooms. You know, they're all of our schools got ended up getting AC. Um uh because we were like, if that's what the money's going on, that's we want that too. And you know, Fremont High School's got their pool repaired, their pool had been down for you know dozens of years. They got it repaired and they uh were able to fill the swim team. So that was a work uh I, you know, I was very, very proud of. Uh community coalition, and it's you know, it's you know, those relationships, those kids are now in their late 30s, uh early 40s, and they're at labor unions, at you know, media companies working for electeds. Some of them are running for office right now. Um, so it's uh it's it's very it's exciting work and a great place to start a political life.
SPEAKER_01And you were there until you ran for office in 2015,
Asserting the World We Want: Running for Office
SPEAKER_01uh an open seat being vacated by Bernard Parks. What Prompted you to run? What was your agenda when you ran?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, when I ran, the thing, my my critique of I had, of course, big ideological differences with uh the chief. Uh, you know, I spent my life as community organizer. He spent his life as a police officer. Uh, but that wasn't really the driver, it was the missed opportunities uh to involve people in the processes um and to uh create a common fight in South LA. Uh I think, you know, I I what I saw was an elected official who was basically playing the game as called. This is how much money there is, this is how much we're gonna spend, this is what the limitations are, I'm gonna live within those limitations, as opposed to saying we're gonna assert what kind of world we want to live in, right? And so this is um and and we are first-class citizens of a first-class city, and we need to be treated in a first-class way. Uh, and so, and that that is not just a district by district thing, but that's a South LA thing. Uh, and so that was really the vision uh to run. And also it, you know, it's an experiment that uh, you know, progressive organizations that started in the 90s were beginning to test out. Uh and so, and now that's that experiment has gone, you know, all the way. Uh and so, but it was to see if we could leverage our contact with the voters to first win. And so we kind of established that we could win with Karen and then me and and others, but would it make a difference to have an inside outside strategy where you had someone on the inside? And so, you know, that the jury is still out on that. Uh, but um, you know, I I can say, you know, some of the benefits, you know. So I started off talking about the care first model.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know, you don't turn on city counsel now and hear these huge fights about arresting poor people. You just don't. Like that isn't the conversation. The conversation is about, and again, it's not that everybody agrees, but the conversation, at least when we're arguing, we're arguing over housing. Yeah. Like, right? You know what I mean? So we're are so the level has lifted. Uh, and as a result, you can see it's the first time that we uh lowered the number of people on the street uh by a margin significant enough to show up in data, and we did it without passing a single new restriction or penalty against homeless people.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Asserting the kind of world we want to live in. In your nine years now on the council, uh what have you done that you think has achieved some of the world you want to live in?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, I think two things. You know, one are certainly our alternatives to traffic enforcement. You know, we deserve to live in a world where you aren't confronted by a government worker with a deadly weapon when you have a traffic violation. That we deserve that, uh especially given the history of law enforcement in this country. You know, second, uh uh we deserve a first-class transportation system and we deserve a city that everybody has a place. And so Destination Crenshaw has been,
Destination Crenshaw
SPEAKER_00again, one of the big things. I, you know, destination crenshaw people will be talking about 200 years from now. Uh and it'll it'll tell the story of what people before us did and what we did, and it'll grow and and and morph and build. So those are examples of things where those are aspirational.
LA: Trauma vs Aspiration
SPEAKER_00And it, you know, it's I will say that it's one of the toughest things about the government that people say what's the toughest thing about the transition from the government, you know, from the the private activist sector or professional left, as um George Bush used to call us, uh um being in the professional left with being elected official. When you're on the professional left, you get to pick your work.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You get to decide what's important to you, and you get to decide, hey Melina, down with you on this protest, you know, against this police station, but we're doing something else that day. When you're in the government, you cannot do that. You you have to deal with everything. And I will say, like, when you're in ongoing active trauma, which LA is in right now, it's very hard to be aspirational.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because people feel like anything other than dealing with the trauma is not worth your time. It's not worth their time. And so uh that's been one of the more challenging things, but also one of the more exciting things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I will say one of the best parts about being out of office is being able to focus on what I choose. Right. That's right.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. That's right. You know, and I, you know, I'm a big person. Uh, you know, I'm big on historical analysis and and use it a lot. You know, when I think about the story of black people in this country, it is during Reconstruction, which is one of the hardest times for black people ever. The period right after slavery was actually harder than the last years of slavery. Because, you know, it's the backlash. It was it was Donald Trump, except in 1860, right? Um Well, that's when we that's when almost all the black colleges and universities were built. In the middle of that struggle. Uh and so I I look to that time period for instruction about what we do now.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell That that's an interesting analogy because we're in such an era of pushback now. Yeah. I mean, I I think Patrice Collins has called it the Great Regression. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_01Well, you're you're about to take a position that that has a a lot of power. You've seen
What Kind of President?
SPEAKER_01several council presidents in your time. I've seen even more going back to John Ferraro. They all do the job differently. They all have a different style, a different focus. Um effective council president.
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, look, I've seen a lot of council presidents, and so you take from them the things that you think were best, and then you try to leave the things that places where they made mistakes. And I feel like the council presidency has been at its best when the president acts as cheerleader in chief for the other 14 members of the council. Uh, and is the, you know, I I've said to people, I want to be the Don King of the City Council, right?
SPEAKER_01You gotta do something about the hair.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I want to be, I want to be the hype man for all 14 members of the city council and making sure that the apparatus moves in a way uh that helps them be successful. These are the people people have chosen. They sent them there. Uh, you know, this this council is exciting to me, and I I actually get giddy on it. You know, when I came onto the council, you were there. It was really dominated by Sacramento politicians or people who were both Sacramento politicians or like yourself who had been in the building for a decade or more. Um, and then I, you know, I really think it was only me and Joe Buscaino who were new to the government. Yeah, everybody else had some kind of experience, and that produced one set of things. It, you know, was there was a very regimented way of doing things. There was a it was a very particular culture. Well, now you have a situation where a majority of people are in their first term, and we have more people than I can ever find a record of who have no government experience whatsoever. Yeah. You know, on all on all sides of the aisle ideologically. Um, and so it's exciting because it gives us an opportunity to build a new culture uh and to uh build a new way of collaborating uh and to um deepen uh discussions uh and I think deepen or sharpen the way we deal with differences uh and move away from a transactional relation, transactional sets of relationships to actually collaborative sets of relationships.
SPEAKER_01Does it make it easier to get to aspirational through the trauma?
SPEAKER_00It does. It does, because you have people who are excited about the city. Uh, you have people who are not committed to spending a lifetime in public office and public life. Uh and so they are both still excited, no matter how angry they are about one topic or another, and different people are angry about different things, and that spurred most people to run. They all have a deep passion for the city of LA, and that comes to the fore whenever there's an opportunity for that to happen.
SPEAKER_01Cheerleader is an interesting way of describing the position. Um that that talks about what you're going to do to support the other members. I'm curious, how do you intend to wield your power to pursue uh your agenda, the things you believe in?
SPEAKER_00Well, the great thing about the the council
Setting the Table
SPEAKER_00presidency is you get to set the table, right? And so there are many things, there are many debates that I feel that the council has needed to have, but almost no council president that I've served under is willing to entertain a debate that they can't see the outcome of, right? Yes. Uh and so uh that limits what you can talk about, right? And sometimes you have, and I'm not a big fan of this, but sometimes you need to have the argument just to move consciousness along. Yes, right? Not that you're gonna win anything or anything's gonna change, just to move consciousness along. I I remember when we first started the uh alternatives to traffic enforcement work, and we had a hearing, it was on Zoom, and a woman, it was an African-American woman, called from a district where one of the most conservative members of the council represents that district. And she talked about how she felt every time a police car got behind her and that this had gone on her whole life. And the member of the council was like, What did like is this so-and-so? And he was like, I know you, like, we know each other. He's like, he's like, I had no idea you felt that, like, I had no idea you went through that. So just having the conversation gave him a viewpoint that he just didn't have. Uh, he was still at the like, oh yeah, it's annoying to get stopped. People don't like it. Like, you know what I mean? But it it did not, uh, he did not appreciate the terror that people live with every time they leave the house. Yeah, for example. And and just having the discussion let you do that. And so I, you know, I think the the issues are gonna be on the table, and we're gonna try to structure uh conversations about that and bring everybody in. This is not about a about lifting up, you know, one group of council members and sublimating another. Um, it's really let's have the conversation and see if we can't come up with something, you know, that gets enough support, that gets a consensus on the council. You know, eight is nice, ten is nicer, but a consensus is the best. Um that's that's really how I I want to use the power of the presidency.
SPEAKER_01Shit, you make it sound like it'd be fun. Maybe I left too soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no matter how fun it is, I ain't coming back.
Marqueece & The Mayor
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there you go. Um question sort of the elephant in the living room for a lot of folks is you and the mayor go way back. Yes. You're a friend of the mayor's. Yes. Uh she's sort of at the peak of popularity right now. Yeah. But you're gonna be the head of a a different branch of government in a system of checks and balances. Um and and sometimes the council isn't gonna be in the same place. Have you thought about how you're gonna navigate some of those inherent tensions?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, uh I think the tensions will be there, that the way that the thing is set up where it produces tensions. Uh I think sometimes there is I I've always had the critique that those tensions get a lot more air a lot of times than they deserve. Uh so we'll spend a lot of time arguing one small point of a larger thing between the council and the mayor. And a lot of times as a council member, I'm like, can we just pick one and move?
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00But we stay stuck there because people feel like, well, the council has to have this, and the mayor feels like, well, I have to have that, and nobody comes in and leads. Um so I think um I I definitely want to move away from that. I I want to move away from evaluating our work on how much power did the council assert in relation to the mayor to what did we together accomplish or not, right? What did we produce? Because that's what matters to the people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, you know, the the I've never heard a constituent once say, don't bend to the mayor. Even when they disagree with the mayor, they would say, they would say try to move the mayor, or you know, you need to tell him this or tell him that, but they don't, they're not trying, they they weren't having an argument about who's most in power. And so, so I I think I want to de-emphasize that as much as possible. On the other hand, as I told member of many of my colleagues to the ones who, and surprisingly few colleagues asked about this, very few, there's more outside the building than in the horseshoe. I just tell people like, look, there's nobody here that's won more arguments with Karen Bass than me. So I mean, and I and I say that as a joke, but I also say it to say we the the benefit of the relationship is we're comfortable having differences. And so we don't get stuck.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um, you know, where at different points in time, I I mean, I I remember times on the council when the mayor and the council president were barely speaking.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Which is dysfunctional. And that's not something Karen Bass and I are ever going to have. So I think the city is going to see the benefit of having a non-competitive, collaborative uh relationship between the council president and the mayor. And I think frankly, that's what a the majority of the council wants. Because again, remember, people are new to government. Yep. So like checks and balances doesn't mean anything to them. Getting things done means something to them. And so you want to keep people in that frame of mind.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So it was less than two years ago when the Fed tapes came out. Uh sparked a lot of conversation about uh the nature of black power in Los Angeles. Uh less than two years later, we've got a black mayor,
Black Power & Multiracial Coalitions
SPEAKER_01gonna have a black council president, very well may have, fingers crossed, a black president. Uh what does that mean for uh black power in Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, I mean it means it means strong women and men keep coming on. Uh that's a famous poem by Sterling Brown, uh, that is the tradition of the struggle. But but it also means when you what it says is progress is rooted in struggle. So the people engaged in struggle, the people committed to struggle are often going to come out ahead or come out with some type of advantage because they got struck, you know, they've been, you know, it's like if I'm already running and we start a race, I have an advantage because I was already in motion. Uh and so I think that's what you see with happening with black people. I mean, there were a lot that was disturbing about the tapes, but you know, at a high, high level, when you get back, one of the most shocking things about the tapes was it was shocking how professional politicians, particularly ones like Gil Cedillo, who've been close to black politics, completely misunderstood black politics. Black politics has never, ever, ever, ever been about how many of us there are. It's always been about the righteousness of our struggle. When it's not as if when Bradley got elected, it was, you know, there were so many black people that he the, you know, overwhelmed the that was not the case. It was it was the righteousness of our struggle, the belief in a better tomorrow, and the ability to rally people around a better future. That's always been the case. And you didn't hear any of that on the course. It was just like, oh, it's not that many of them, they shouldn't be in power. Well, if that was the case, we would have never been in power.
SPEAKER_01Well, the other thing that was striking about the tapes, among many things, was that it was the conversation was very much against the concept of multiracial coalition building. It was against community coalition, it was it was against Karen Bass, it was against you. Um what's the future of multiracial coalition building in Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think that's one of the most exciting things about LA. And I think, you know, what's fascinating about it is, and and and one veteran activist pointed out, black activist pointed this out to me in the city. He says, you know, I really don't like the interchanging of multiracial coalition with black-brown coalition. And I and I do that sometimes too. I was like, why what the difference is? What's the big deal? And I and and the person said, Well, if I just get here today, a black-brown coalition looks like opportunism by black people. He's and and by the way, that's not how it started. It's like our first coalitions, black people's first coalitions in this city were with Asians. They were with Japanese people who were getting interned. That was the first multiracial culture uh um coalition. The second one was with, just to get the history right, the second one was with the Korean American community. Why? They were fighting Japanese occupation. And Los Angeles was the place where exiles came from who people who got thrown out of Korea. So that and so our goal as black people was to break white supremacy. It wasn't because we like one group better, you know, like it wasn't because we like Jewish people or Asian people or whatever. It was like we want to get everybody, every if you have any inkling of uh wanting to dismantle white supremacy, we want to be with you. And I think that that we have to come back to that and say the multiracial cult, uh the multiracial coalitions are really about building a better life for everybody. Um, and we're in the position to lead that because we have the most at stake.
SPEAKER_01Uh I want to ask about a few issues before the council.
Unarmed Crisis Response
SPEAKER_01Uh one of them that you've referred to earlier is is traffic stops, or more broadly, the idea of reimagining public safety. Uh in 2020, it looked like we were really on the verge of doing some big things. And then it's taken forever to move forward just on like a study of changing the way we do traffic stops. Uh how frustrated have you been, and how far do you think we'll be able to get uh in the next couple of years?
SPEAKER_00I think we're gonna be able to make uh tremendous progress for a couple of reasons. This is one of the advantages of having a new council. It's all kinds of excitement. And and in fairness, we had members that were into things, and they're parts of this discussion that have moved. So, like the circle program is moved significantly since 2020. Uh other on arm responses have moved significantly that traffic enforcement has not. I, you know, I lay that at the feet of one of my predecessors as city council president. I think they absolutely moved to hold that up because it was far the didn't understand it and it was far too uh intimidating. I think obviously that won't happen. One of the things I will do, and this uh will be a news flash. Um one of my first acts will be to set up a committee for an unarmed uh unarmed crisis response and care first models, uh, and have the council focus on that and move all of those programs into this committee. And really, because all of we have a lot of good programs, none of them are to scale, right? And so I got some great stuff in South LA that I can't even make big enough for my whole district, much less the whole city, much less, even not even South LA. So uh, and again, circle programs great, but you know, it can be in three, maybe four districts at a time, max. And I think they're stretching in order to do that. Uh, we also have the medical response uh vans coming out of the fire stations. I think they were at two fire stations. There's not much capacity besides that. So it's how do we scale up these programs so that we get to a point, which I believe we can get to in the short term, where you can pick up the phone and call somebody other than a police or a firefighter when there's some type of an emergency. And every Angelino has experienced this. You stop at some intersection and there's a person standing on the sidewalk screaming at someone who's not there or in some level of disrupt, having a crisis where if we drive to the next block and there's a building on fire, it doesn't matter that it's not our building. It doesn't matter that we don't know what happens in that building. We're gonna say it's on fire, I'm gonna call the fire department, and we'll have confidence that some people are going to come right away and they're gonna put out the fire. With the person, with the human being, which is by the way, every human being is more valuable than any building, with the human being, many of us, particularly if you're African-American or you come from a community like South LA, you're not calling the police. Because you know that person might not survive. And you know the police have nothing for them anyway. What do you do? Put them in jail? Like that's not gonna help what they're going through. But there's nobody you can call. We want to shift that so that LA is the first big city in the country where we have a care first crisis response on demand.
SPEAKER_01Music to my ears. One of the things that always frustrates me about LA is we're great at creating a pilot program and then never scaling it up.
SPEAKER_00Yep, yep, that's right. I I joke because it's like we have about 10,000 pilots in the sky waiting to land somewhere.
SPEAKER_01Uh let me switch over to land
Housing: Where to Build?
SPEAKER_01use. You've been head of the land use committee for uh a number of years now. Uh there's a a lot of uh pressure from the state of California to build more housing. We've got an affordable housing crisis here in Los Angeles. Um back before I left the council, the council approved um a new sort of approach to housing back in 2022. It was gonna call for nearly half a million new units, a couple hundred thousand of them affordable. Uh and one of the things it was really supposed to focus on was uh addressing fair housing and trying to undo some of the impacts of uh segregation baked into land use policies. Uh and it looked at districts like the one I used to represent, uh wealthier areas, uh high opportunity areas, lots of jobs and stuff like that. The planning department has been sort of walking backwards on doing a lot of that, particularly in single family neighborhoods. Um how is that gonna how is that gonna play out? Is the city really gonna go through?
SPEAKER_00You know, I don't know. I will tell you, I don't know what the city is gonna do. I think the you know the single family home is the icon of Southern California and Los Angeles is. the capital of Southern California. So I think you know that resistance is going to stay there. You know, my district is weird in a way that we're we're in a low income area with people of color, but our zoning actually looks very much like the zoning.
SPEAKER_01It does. You have, I think, the only lower income district that has a single family house. Dominated by single family.
SPEAKER_00And you again I say this all the time. The most likely profile in my district is a single family house with a front yard, a backyard, and a detached garage and at least three bedrooms occupied by a single African American woman over the age of 70. That is the most common thing you're going to find. So I we get it um and and that's big. The I I will sidestep your question because I don't know where the council is. I I will sidestep your question on this and I and I would love your help with this because I'm not sure what to do about it. But but part of the problem is these housing discussions are made on the assumption that the government is in charge of housing production.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And we're only partly we're we only make the rules for it. We don't do it. The financial sector does it and I say that to say this I when I got in office I heard this line and and builders affordable housing advocates said you got to upzone your main streets so we can build and we can build density and you got to lower the parking requirements. So we did all that and you know to produce not very much why because still even after they have permission they've got to go get financing. Yeah. And we can make whatever rules they want and you know we could say we give you a gold star. Like it doesn't matter if they can't get financing. And so um you know when you look at uh ED1 for example which fast tracks districts four and five and the vast majority of 11 have produced almost no ED1 things. It's not and Katie Ursofsky and Nithy Roman are two of the most fierce housing advocates on the council. In fact I can't think of anybody who's more fierce than the two of them. But they can't make the banks give builders money to build in their district.
SPEAKER_01True although a lot of their districts are off the table now.
SPEAKER_00A lot of their districts are off the table but a lot of this a lot of their district is on the table. Yeah. And so the question is how do we reproduce what the valley had in the 70s? Like if you were you drive through the Central Valley in the SETI there isn't a major street that doesn't have density on it. I would I would be very curious on how that what the rules were and how it got financed. Because to me you could produce a lot of housing I mean just by building out the main streets in the city.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Like that is to me should be done first. And then we can talk about are people going to have fourplexes or duplexes in single family neighborhoods but I I get frustrated that there's always a lot of chatter and screaming about what the government can do. And people are completely silent about the other thing that is essential to producing housing which is financing. Well you know some of us just like to argue in order to further the conversation there's that there's that there's that but I but but I but we're completely silent. I'm like when I meet with the housing advocates I'm like you guys are completely silent. I mean why does it take three years to raise money? We did HHH the HHH units didn't take a long time because of building and safety or because of the HHH process or because of entitlement. They took a long time because it takes people two years to do tax credit financing.
SPEAKER_01It's insane the tax credit financing is nuts.
SPEAKER_00It's not I mean it's it's as one builder said to me the other day it's by far the most difficult thing we do. Like nothing else is close. Yeah. I mean my staff has done all nighters with developers because we really wanted the project to happen pull all nighters getting tax credit applications out. And and that to me is where we need to to pay some attention and and focus some of our focus some of our energy because I think if you shorten that and you shorten thing then you will get it. I mean I have in my district just give you a a number and these numbers are not exact but just give you the big number ED1 passes. There are applications for something about 18,000 units, right? So you got an application phase and they go through and then 9,000 go to the next step. You know how many have actually gone to the point where people are pulling permits? No. Less than 3,000. Wow this is nothing to do with the government nothing to do with the government. It's like they just can't make it wash e and they can't make it wash and they can't figure out somebody to do an investment.
SPEAKER_01You've been to Vienna I just came from Vienna what do you think about social housing as a model?
SPEAKER_00I think social housing is a great model but again they don't sit there and dilly dally on where the money is going to come from right that that's the whole thing that's that's the thing that makes it so fast.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And in fact I would I I'll bet you anything their building standards and entitlement processes are as stringent if not more stringent than ours. What isn't as stringent is they decide we're going to have housing they pay for it and it gets built. Yep. Like and and and we don't we don't do that. We decide well you know do these bankers or investors that we don't know who they are, what their names are, where they live decide whether or not these are worthy investments or not.
SPEAKER_01Yep. For anybody listening I'm going to do some shows about social housing in particular because it's it's something really to talk about. Want to ask about the Olympics
The Olympics
SPEAKER_01so uh we're up next when uh the 84 Olympics were here in Los Angeles uh there were a lot of negative consequences. There were massive sweeps and expanded surveillance and you know LAPD purchased new weapons that that never left. You talked at one point when I was on the council about being a a teen during the 84 games and your parents told you to stay inside after 6 p.m to avoid encounters with with LAPD when when I was still there we had a big robust discussion about sort of the security apparatus that we get put in place for for the Olympics. And you you said at the time that you had concerns about what the Olympics would mean and said when the time is right we need to take a bold and assertive stance around our public safety vision for Olympics in the city. When do we start having that conversation and what do you think what sort of safeguards do you think we need to have in place?
SPEAKER_00Well you know I think look I think it helps a whole lot to have the council we have and to have the mayor we have you know there was an argument our article in the Times uh around the time we're recording this that talked about the mayor saying we're not doing sweeps. And and I was struck by um uh Kevin Murray's quote uh the head of WineGuard the former senator and said mayor's not going to do sweeps like I've known her for how many years she ain't happening. So I don't think sweeps will be the happening. At the same time I do also know the mayor well enough is she's not going to have a bunch of encampments happening. I mean that will probably happen before the the Olympics because her position is anybody sleeping on the street at night night is a health crisis. Like that is just an unhealthy situation for any human being not to mention the the folks that live around them. So I think we'll continue to be aggressive on the encampments. Part of what's going to happen and I'm glad we have the Super Bowl and the World Cup, especially the World Cup, because the World Cup in some ways is going to be bigger than the Olympics in terms of the intensity of traffic over you know there'd be a shorter period of time more people different parts of the world different kinds of fans I'll just leave it at that a lot of the surveillance stuff what I've learned about it since that time is a lot of that is done by the federal government. But LAP is not in charge of it. You know so so that'll be that in terms of in terms of us I think a couple things can happen. I think one there needs we need to involve the residents in the safety plan. Like that's our best bet. It's our best asset and it's the best way to go about it. It's the best way to make sure you don't get it wrong and you're not targeting the the the uh the wrong people uh and then you know I think this this idea of a Olympics with the least reliance on the private automobile, I think it will contribute dramatically to safety. If we can pull that off I mean that takes that just takes away so many problems right um both the traffic safety uh which is you know frankly that's you're more likely to be hit by a car and die in LA than you are to be shot or get into an altercation uh and and pass away. So it takes away that or dramatic dramatically reduces but also many other crimes are committed with private automobiles.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so the more we move away from that uh the safer environment I think we create.
SPEAKER_01Last
Homelessness
SPEAKER_01policy question and you referenced homelessness earlier but I want to ask specifically about the Supreme Court Grant's pass decision. Uh the grant's pass decision is the one that basically said cities can sweep homeless encampments without offering anything. Governor Newsom has already started doing this with some of the the Caltrans properties. Long Beach as we're recording this has just started doing it today. There's certainly a lot of other cities that might start doing it and there's some pressure even among some council members to start revisiting the city's ability to do it. You talked about how one of the big shifts over the past couple years, which I've noticed is that the conversation has moved from being about criminalization to being about housing and solutions. How do you given the new dynamic with the Supreme Court decision how do you intend to set the table?
SPEAKER_00Well I think a couple things I think one we've got to turn on the accelerator on temporary housing because I do think we look Los Angeles is just not a city that's going to ever be or at least not in the near future going to be okay with shuffling people from block to block. I mean you represented Venice so you know how silly that is uh or mass criminalization. I just don't see that in the in the the tea leaves but what I do see is the demand to get people off the street increasing and Los Angeles stopping this business where we run as a matter of policy less shelter beds than we know there are homeless people. It just I mean New York City New York City keeps 20% more beds than they have homeless people. Yeah we keep about 40%. So we we just we know on any given night even if everybody raised their hand and said I didn't want to be in an encampment more than half of them we're not going to be able to house so we need to end that and end it quickly. Hopefully it can be done on a countywide basis so that you know Councilmember Costco can work with Torrance and Gardena and comp all the cities that border Hammond I can work with Inglewood and Culver City and and you know and and the valley districts can work with Glendale and Burbank and so on and so forth. Hopefully we can build regional um shelter beds so that there is a place for people to go I do think I do think the city will move in the direction to say we have a place for you to go. So you need a damn good excuse to sleep out on the street at night.
SPEAKER_01Any policies that you think are going to be central or at the forefront of your presidency I haven't asked about you know I don't you
Public Safety
SPEAKER_01you just never know what's what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00I mean the public safety is always an interesting thing and it's it's right on that teetering point.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00You know the forces that make a practice of sensationalizing crime uh particularly crime with particular victims and particular assailants um they're full throttle doing that I mean you you hear people talk you would think there wasn't crime before George Gascoum got to LA um and in and in fact crime's lower since he's been here and they sensationalize crime for the purposes of being more punitive simple even when presented with evidence that that actually doesn't make things safer. And so that uh tendency is at full tilt like we saw you know these are the things that got us 184 and the rampart scandal and all the rest of the uh ugly parts of the history of the city. So that's in full tilt. It's unclear what's going to happen. There are different players on the table uh now there's different data available there's different information available also I think you know one of the things that has changed the public safety picture is more than anything is the the phone, cell phone.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right? So you know I will go I was just in a room the other day and people say oh crime is so bad and crime is so out of call. And I just said look stop. I said I cannot sit here and listen to you do that. I grew up in the city I was a teenager in one of my teenage years there were 1300 homicides and there was a curfew. I was like it's nothing like that now. I'm sorry if there's we're gonna have less than 300 homicides this year and there's no curfew it's it's just different. Now does that mean that crime's not bad of course crime is all one person losing their life one person getting robbed is always bad. But here's the big difference a smash and grab robbery which is extremely frightening instead of reading about it once and seeing it on the nightly news once I can see it on my phone multiple times a day and then I give it to somebody and then they come and we have a conversation and then it's on next door and then it's on Citizen App. So that kind of thing understandably increases anxiety. So the question is what are we gonna do uh about that? And hopefully what we don't do and and what I will continue to push against with everything I have is we don't overreact and we don't inappropriately react. And that that we understand that you know of course the government has every right to and every ability to be punitive and the government has lots of experience with that and has almost never produced what we wanted.
SPEAKER_01Couple personal questions about the real Marquise. In addition to being a council member in addition to being an activist you are
Music, not Golf
SPEAKER_01and have been for a long time a DJ. Yes. When did you start DJing?
SPEAKER_00I started DJing um I don't know about 20 years ago I'd always admired DJs growing up and you know wanted to do and I just decided at a certain point I knew a handful of DJs and they were like why don't you just learn and so we did that and you know eventually that you know turned into gigs and the whole nine yards and it's become quite a hobby. It's it's my version of golf I guess for people who spend insane amounts of money on golf and insane amounts of time on it. That's that's what it is for me. You know we're sitting here I have a a signed record from Patrice Russian uh who I interviewed on on my podcast um uh who's from South LA went to Lock and has had it hit records but also is the chair of uh one of the music departments at USC now so it's a it's a big deal to me it's hard to do now uh you know no promoter wants to put my picture a name on their flyer because there might be people picketing which has happened outside of it about one thing or another um so uh I now mainly do in my garage or in um uh private events maybe uh spin some tunes for the Olympics oh I would love love love to do that I would love love love to do that we'll we'll figure it out we and the Olympics we're gonna have a lot of great parties I mean one of the exciting things that that uh we're cooking up is is in Paris they had these watch parties and watch parties were all over the city of Paris even the parts that didn't have the Olympics so if you can imagine you know sort of all of our big parks throw up big screen TVs you know put out blankets and chairs uh have food trucks there and so that way if you live in Southgate and this is not even that's not even Los Angeles for example if you live in Southgate you could be like there are Olympics happening really like because there's nothing happening near here but you can come together as a community and appreciate the games together so I think it's gonna be really exciting and there's going to be an opportunity for everybody to get involved. I mean I think you know at I heard the number 12000 volunteers I think we can do better than that. So I I'm excited about it and and uh music will be a big part of it.
SPEAKER_01With the world paying attention to Los Angeles like never before what should uh LA's theme song be?
SPEAKER_00That's a good one. I think we still need to work on that.
SPEAKER_01All right um yeah uh the other
Sneakerheads
SPEAKER_01thing that is distinctive about you that a lot of people don't know uh is you have a bit of a sneaker collection.
SPEAKER_00Yes yes yeah you know I I uh a little bit of understatement yeah I I I'm a little bit of a sneakerhead uh but not nearly as much as most of the people I know uh I you know it's in fact you're you're part of you know one of my funnier sneaker stories um someone had been to my house and and you know I had a little get together which you were there and people said oh let us see your sneaker connection I was like oh you know I don't have that many and I walk you all into the room and everybody like doubles over in laughter and is like oh my God this is insane and you know again for the record I have far fewer sneakers than true sneakerheads but uh people's reaction um uh let me know that it was it was more outstanding than anything anybody could expect and and in fact one person from that gathering uh refers to it you know at Marquis's house there's a room for the sneakers yes there are how many pairs do you have it's like sixty it's like not a lot I'm not sure I've owned sixty pairs of sneakers in my life yeah well that's that's uh and a sneakerhead tends to have how many? When you say you don't have a lot who are you comparing yourself to they have hundreds they have like full they have full like uh basements or garages full of sneakers because a lot of them are I and I see the thing is I would say of the shoes that I have I probably wear 40 50 even more percent of them real sneaker promoters have a bunch of shoes that they never wear I I don't have I think I have two pair of shoes that I've never worn and I don't intend to ever wear or I say you know so like I have a pair one of the first pair of Kobe Bryant shoes. I'll never wear it I'll never get rid I'll never sell it uh but I don't have a lot of that most most sneakerheads I have a lot of that what's your most prized pair of sneakers my uh most prized pair of sneakers is a pair that was gifted to me uh by uh the proprietor of Union clothing out here in Los Angeles he had done a collaboration with Nike on the Air Jordan 4 Guava um colorway and it was one of the first times Nike had done a collaboration with an LA designer and with a black designer and so it was really really exciting there's no way there were you know when Nike does these collaborations they make like 400 pair for the world so it's very difficult to get uh and you know he was kind enough to to gift them uh to to me um and it came out of a relationship with who we had that we developed during the pandemic uh because he had a clothing company and he had a sewing shop and um uh you know we get a call from Chris Gibbs and he says hey uh I have a sewing shop we're shutting down but I can make masks do you guys need masks and we said of course and he produced masks put them in the back of his car drove them to my district office and we were able to distribute masks at the beginning of the pandemic when there were no masks uh for anybody uh and so we were able to distribute them to seniors and and that was a big deal to me and I made a big deal of course to him it was just like whatever I'm shutting down the factory um and uh he later he said to me uh when this when those shoes came out he said you know there was a lot of panic in the world at that time he said but I had just made the deal with Nike so I knew financially I was going to survive because those sells those shoes sell on the internet they don't sell in person. So he's like I knew I was going to be fine financially so it just made me think like what can I do to be helpful and he made mask and so it was a big deal to us.
SPEAKER_01So union right there on La Brea the sneakerhead save Los Angeles yeah there you go that's right uh last question um what is it you like most about Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_00Uh you know what I like most about Los Angeles is you know again I I like the streets I like the vistas I like the beach but more than anything I'd love the people uh the the the the people are magical uh in this place and the culture of hustle uh the culture of figuring it out and the culture of working with whoever whenever uh I think is is something that you just don't find anywhere else and uh it's what makes this this place special Council President Marquis Harris Dawson about to become council president on September 20th on September 20th you'll be able to catch him uh three days a week on channel 35.
SPEAKER_01Yeah that's right that's right that's right unless the unless the council cancels a meeting every week but uh they can also catch you on your own podcast yes I have my own podcast MHD off the record uh Spotify anywhere else you get Apple music anywhere else you get um get your podcast you can find it there and you've got your own podcast studio that I'm very noticed of it it's it's uh very nice folks did a good job on it awesome thanks so much for being here thank you take care I am really grateful the Marquise for joining me for this first episode of this new season of What's Next Los Angeles we could have spent another hour talking about a whole range of issues so hopefully we can have them back and maybe we can do a crossover episode of our two podcasts. And I'm going to be doing a lot of
WNLA's Partnership with LA Forward
SPEAKER_01podcasts in the coming weeks especially as we get closer to the November elections. I'm gonna focus a lot on the various ballot questions that voters will be deciding and I'll talk with a lot of candidates for office and hopefully we'll do some lively roundtable shows about some of the issues. Now I'm gonna be doing this as part of a new partnership with LA Forward. LA Forward is a family of organizations and it's dedicated to making LA County more fair and a place where more people can live in dignity and reach their fullest potential. They organize and they educate on a wide range of issues from housing to climate to transportation to criminal justice to good government and more and I really appreciated having a strong partnership with them when I was in office working together on a lot of those issues. I am now serving as a senior fellow with the LA Forward Institute which is a 501 organization promoting civic engagement and education. Its sister organization LA Forward is a 501c4 and they do kick-ass legislative advocacy and they make political endorsements. The 501c4 is partnering with me on this podcast. It's sponsoring what's next Los Angeles but I maintain editorial control and select the topics and the guests and any viewpoints I express are my own and not the organization's. It's going to be a great partnership and together I hope we bring you a lot of lively and informative content. And we've got some other cool stuff in the works too so stay tuned for future announcements. In the meantime let me just share some love and some thanks my thanks to LA Forward for the partnership to Marquise Harris Dawson for joining me and his staff for helping put this together and to my good friend Marta Ivery for sound editing and to you for listening. Please follow or subscribe to the podcast leave a positive review and spread the word until next time thank you take care and peace