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September 1, 2020 51 mins

Today we talked with candidate for city council Nithya Raman about how she went from an activist helping the unhoused to an aspiring politician fighting for the unhoused, and many other issues significantly exacerbated by a pandemic.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything. Hey guys, welcome back to Worst Year Ever,

(00:23):
the show all about the Worst Year Ever. My name
is Katie Stole, Mine's not. It's Cody Johnston and I
am Evans, Robert Evans, Roberts Um. Today we have a
very special interview with Nythia Ramen. She is a candidate

(00:44):
for Los Angeles City Council fourth District. She is really
something special, you guys. I was so excited to have
her on the show. I think we had a great
conversation and I'm just chuffed that you guys get to
hear it now. I've been watching a lot of it,

(01:06):
is um. One of the comforting things I've been doing
during the pandemic is rewatching the entirety of The Great
British Baking Show, even though I've seen it all and
they say chuffed a lot and and apparently that's part
of my vernacular. Now, no going back. We can't edit this, No,
it's impossible, but anyway, this is live. The important thing

(01:29):
is that you're about to hear an interview with Nuthia
and she rocks take it away us today. We are
thrilled to be joined by Nipia Rahman, a candidate for
Los Angeles fourth District. Hi, Nthia, thank you so much
for being here today. I'm sure you're incredibly busy right now.

(01:50):
How are you doing. I'm fine, all considered, All things considered.
Can't complain good good? Well, yeah, sure there there there
are some complaints that can be made. But we need
you healthy. Um, as we will explore how much we
need you throughout this episode. UM. It's pretty much impossible

(02:14):
to be a liberal progressive here in Los Angeles and
not know who Natia is at this point, especially throughout
the city. Yeah, you've you've been a real leading voice,
I think for a lot of us lately, um, but
for our listeners in other parts of the country, in

(02:34):
the world. Nthia is an urban planner. Uh. She's done
a lot of incredibly important work for the in housed
here in Los Angeles. Uh. You've also served as the
executive director for Times Up Entertainment, UH, furthering equality and
safety for women in the entertainment industry. UM. But you
can do a better job explaining your background than I can.

(02:56):
So could we start by just telling us a bit
about the war that you've been doing prior to running
for city council. Well, you did a great job there, yes,
you know. Yeah, I'm a mother of two. I have
twin preschoolers as well. That's probably the old twinning. Yeah.
Therefore almost five now four and a half years old,

(03:18):
and big job in and of itself. Yeah, and it's been,
you know, challenging because their school closed and their preschool
closed and now it's only partly open, and you know,
but it's been a it's been a journey with them. Yeah.
But yes, you're right. I'm an urban planner. Um, I've
spent most of my career working on urban poverty issues.

(03:40):
I spent actually the first part of my career in India,
where I was working with people who lived in slums
and informal settlements there and who were fighting for things
like running water, for toilets, and for land rights. The
way I got into that work was that I saw
that there was a huge eviction happening in the city

(04:01):
that I was living in at the time, which was Deli,
and there was a massive demolition of a community that
had about a hundred thousand people living in it, and
their homes were raised within just a couple of just
a few days, if I remember correctly, and it was
covered in the English press for just a couple of days,
and then the story just disappeared and I couldn't believe it.

(04:23):
I couldn't believe that a massive community within Delhi had
been totally demolished, and that was the entirety of the coverage.
And so I looked for organizations that were working on
those issues. I found a group that was organizing residents
in that area. Uh. And then the more I started

(04:44):
working on those issues, I realized how important local government is,
how important it is for I think, you know, cities
are a real place of opportunity, or they can be,
and so for me, the local government was the place
where you translate that into reality. And whether you're working

(05:05):
in India or whether you're working in the US. For me,
ensuring that we have eyes on local government, that we're
intervening in local government, that we're engaging with it, that
became very very important to me and my career, and
that's why I ended up studying urban planning and continuing
to work at the city level for forever after that, Yeah,
that you're you're touching on something that I was planning

(05:28):
to bring up towards the end. But yeah, we spent
a lot of time on this podcast. We we have
a pretty wide breadth of stuff that we've been covering
under the umbrella of worst year ever. Um. But the
initial outset of this was an election podcast, and we
spent a lot of time talking to people and candidates

(05:48):
organizers who feel disenfranchised, to feel disillusioned that our leaders
do not represent what we think and feel in need
um and frustrated at the people that say one thing
but do another. And it all comes back to getting

(06:09):
involved at a local level. Um And And I mean
it's just it. It can be very daunting for the
average person. But you know, I guess now the good
time to to talk on that about like the impetus
for you to say, like, you know what, I am
going to do this. I need to actually get involved

(06:30):
with this party with politics, not just the organized organizing
outside of it. Yeah, And I think, you know, Los
Angeles is one of those places where the sentiment that
you just expressed, this feeling of I have all these
values and I don't see that reflected in the governance
around me. Los Angeles is one of those places where

(06:51):
I feel like a disjuncture between that is the greatest.
You know, we've had a city government here that has
been so narrowly serving the interests of really those people
who have already been elected to power. It's essentially been
serving their interest in staying in power, um and it's

(07:13):
been serving a group of donors who have been involved
in city council campaigns for a number of years, mostly
those who want to profit from the city. You know,
whether it be real estate, whether it be UM landlords,
whether it be UM cannabis, whether it be I mean,
there's all kinds of industries that end up donating big
to city council campaigns, billboard companies, styrofoam companies, fossil fuel companies,

(07:38):
I mean, it's you can go on and on, but
essentially people who want to influence decision making at city hall.
And that's how decision making has happened for for a really,
really long time. But in this election we had an
opportunity to really blow that wide open because for the
first time in l A where elections have been really
low participation affairs. So just to give you an example

(08:01):
of how low participation they have been in this district
in the previous general election, a total of two thousand
voters voted right, so those were split between two candidates
in my primary. Um, because our elections are not overlapping

(08:21):
with federal elections, turnout exploded, and because we did so
much work to get out the vote and to inform
people that they needed to look down ballot. We had
over seventy six thousand voters just in the prime right.
So every district that was voting at the same time
saw an increase right because just because more people were

(08:43):
just at the polls, but because we did so much
get out the vote work, and because we did so
much door knocking. We knocked on three thousand doors in
the primary with our volunteer support. It was crazy. And
Los Angeles districts are big. I mean, there are a
hundred and for Doel don't quote me on this number,
but there's like a hundred forty thousand registered voters let's

(09:04):
say in this district two residents. Just an enormous number
of voters in each district. Uh. And so we had
this opportunity to say, hey, guys, you're probably going to
be voting already, and here's something that you should care about.
Here's something that matters for you. Here's something that matters
for the health of the residents you see who are

(09:24):
living on the streets in front of your home potentially, Um,
here's something that we could change in l A that
would absolutely transform all of our lives. And inviting them
to participate in the local election. And it it totally worked,
you know, it really really worked. Just amazing. Yeah, I

(09:45):
was really exciting. It was really floored and prepping for this,
I knew it was close. But running against the incumbent,
David ryu Uh, you got the vote to his and
he outspended I'll spend you more than three to one. Yeah,
and you you go count if you count pack money even more.

(10:07):
Really well, we should dig into that in a little bit.
I want to go back and talk before we talk
about him, I want to talk about your platform and
what what you focus on. We've already been talking a
bit about it, um, but a big focus on your
campaign is on the unhoused, on rent forgiveness. Uh, just

(10:28):
as a starting point. We'll get into the other aspects
of it. But this is something that we needed to
be addressing anyway, but especially now during the pandemic. And
I would love to start off by by hearing a
little bit about your plans and about what the stakes
are here. Yeah, so let's talk about renters, because I

(10:50):
think that doesn't I talk a lot about homelessness on
the campaign trail, I've talked about it a bunch on
my website, and I would love to talk a little
bit about renters because I think because I think what
we've set up in Los Angeles right now is, you know,
we have a city where we have majority renters, right, So,
the majority of people here do not own their homes.

(11:11):
They rent, either in single family homes or in apartments.
And we've had huge increase in rents over the last decade.
We've seen a sixty seven increase in rents just over
the last ten years, just incredibly striking increase, with no
commensurate increase in wages. Right, So the wages of renters

(11:33):
are not going up, but their rents are going up
and up and up. And so we have this situation
here where renters are feeling ever more squeezed in this city,
and we have tenant protections on paper. Right. So this
is where I think there is this real sense of, oh,
this is a progressive city. We already have, we must

(11:53):
have all these rules in place already or whatever, But
in reality, we have not set up a system through
which we and actually enforce a lot of those tenant protections.
When residents are actually trying to get the help that
they need or get the get the information that they need,
it's just not available. I'll talk about one thing which
I think is incredibly important. So we don't have a

(12:15):
database of rentals here in Los Angeles, right, So in
a city that's really defined by renters, we don't have
a comprehensive database of renters and landlords. That means that
the city does not proactively send out information to both
tenants or to landlords, informing them about their rights, informing
them about their obligations, telling them about changes in rules.
So when we actually changed our evictions protections at the

(12:37):
beginning of the pandemic, council members had to go and
ask the Housing Department to send out information to the
smaller subset of units for which they did have records.
Because they don't automatically tell people about those changes, they
don't collect the kind of information that would actually enable
Los Angeles to hold landlords to account for enforcing rules

(12:59):
that are already on the books. About tenants rights right.
So we so we've set up a system where it's
very very hard for tenants to actually realize the rights
that they have on on paper. We also don't have
a guaranteed right to a lawyer for tenants who are
facing eviction. This is in a city that is defined
by a housing and homelessness crisis that has seen the

(13:24):
experience of other cities that have done this. So New
York has done this, San Francisco has done this. Other
cities that have had incredible affordable housing crises like ours
have have provided tenants facing eviction lawyer. And the evidence
shows over and over again that when tenants have access
to a lawyer, they're able to stay in their homes.

(13:44):
This is incredibly important again to being able to actually
realize the rights that we have on paper, right, But
we haven't done that in Los Angeles. So these are
the ways in which I think we can think about
actually providing the scaffolding for people to be able to
thrive here in l A, to be able to stay
in their homes here in Los Angeles, and the kind

(14:06):
of focus that we need to have to understand what
is wrong with our system right now that is allowing
so many people to fall through the cracks, you know, UM,
and I think it's incredibly important. Another thing that we
talked about in the primary all the time was a
rent freeze. So we don't have um rent control here
in l A. What we have is rent stabilization, right,

(14:28):
which means that certain apartments which were built before a
particular year are covered by the rent Stabilization Ordinance, which
means that rents can only rise a limited percentage every year.
That covers about of apartments in the city, right, so
that it's not all of the rental units, because there's
a ton of rentals that are in this single family

(14:49):
home UM, you know area, and so there's it's not comprehensive,
but it is a large percentage of our renter base.
So we could have this whole time been using our
control over rent stabilized units to actually help keep rents lower,
to make it a zero percent rent increase for a

(15:09):
year or two, to allow people's wages to catch up
with their rents. We never did that except when COVID
hit so right at the beginning of the pandemic, we
actually use those powers to make sure that we instituted
a rent freeze um in these units. So what that
tells me is that we had that power this whole time,

(15:29):
and we never used it, despite the fact that rents
were skyrocketing, you know. And so that's really what when
you talk about the gap between kind of the rhetoric
or people's values and the reality of what the government
is doing, um, And where I see those gaps in
Los Angeles is so clearly in how they've responded to

(15:52):
their immense powers here in l a UM, which is
mostly to look away from those powers, you know. UM.
And now, because so many more people are engaged on
these issues, so many more people are getting informed on
these issues, I think we have a real opportunity to
make sure that we hold them accountable for using those
powers to benefit us, to keep us safe, to keep

(16:13):
us housed. Yeah. Yeah, that feels like this is a
great example of so many things that we say see
happening with our government when we talk about health care
and access to it, like well, that's not possible. It
is possible. There's lots of stuff that's possible there. There
there answers to all of our problems if people are
willing to not turn away from it, and the reality

(16:35):
is is that so many of the people that we
have elected benefit from the status quo, benefit in different
ways from not changing the system. But you're right, push
comes to shove, we can make these things happen. Yeah, absolutely,
And I wanted to I wanted to talk about one
one thing, about the fact that there's a reason why
these changes haven't happened either. Right, So, last year there

(16:58):
wasn't push to actually create a rental database at the
state level, um, and there was a significant lobbying pushed
to make sure that that didn't happen, you know, and
because I think it would have made it harder for
a certain group of residents here in Los Angeles, right,
made it harder for our apartment owners, for larger corporate

(17:19):
owners to be able to go about their business the
way that they would have preferred to. And I think
we have to be cognizant of who is you know,
pushing for changes and who are elected officials have traditionally
been listening to and make sure that the rest of
us make our voices heard, the rest of us make
put our own pressure on our elected officials to do

(17:40):
the right thing. Yeah, there's no sort of database that
lists you know, who owns, what building, what rent is
being charged, and or there's a limited database which was
only created in of just rent stabilized units, and it
does not collect information about rent being charged. So even
though there's rules about how much rent increase, the city

(18:01):
actually does not collect the information required to hold landlords
accountable for following those rules. And I would guess that
most people don't know that they live in rent stabilized units. Yeah,
I will say even rent stabilization. I lived in a
stabilized place for five years, and my rent went up

(18:22):
a lot over the time I moved because it was
now reaching a point that was no longer affordable after
four and a half years, five years, you know, and
that's fine, I'll move on. Now he's charging so much
more than what I left it at. UM, but I
was grateful that it wasn't being hiked up every year

(18:45):
and an absurd amount. So it was grateful for that
at least. Well together everybody, Oh yeah, I just wanted
to um see sort of. UM. I know you have
this program sella is seller Cela Cela? Yeah, it's that

(19:09):
I started. Yeah, there's so many ways that um, people
fall through the cracks, and UM, you have a lot
of ideas on how to help people that have already
fallen through the cracks, which we see more and more of.
I just wonder if you could speak on that a
little bit. Yeah, for sure. I mean, so I talked
about renters and tenants rights and stuff, and I think
there's two other things that we need to be doing

(19:30):
to address our housing and homelessness crisis head on. One
is to promote the construction of more affordable housing, and
that there is a you know, I have. I have
some um policies that are on my website about that already,
and I invite people who are interested in that to
take a look. And we're actually going to be updating
some of that in the coming weeks, which I'm very
excited about. But I think for homelessness, the way that

(19:52):
we respond to homelessness now in Los Angeles, I think
there's a lot of ways in which we can make
that process significantly better. And some of the ways in
which we can make it better are things that I
learned from my work in Sila. So when I was
at I actually worked at city Hall a number of
years ago, and I wrote this report about how the

(20:13):
city was responding to homelessness. And I found that the
city was spending over a hundred million dollars on homelessness
without really counting it as homelessness related spending, but that
almost nine of it was spent putting unhoused individuals in jail, right,
So that was where the bulk of the money was
going to. Yeah, it was about eighty seven million, almost

(20:36):
eighty seven million dollars was being spent on jailing people
who were experiencing homelessness, a response which is both it
is just cruel, but it also it's inhumane, but it
also does not address the reason for why that person,
uh was violating laws that you have in this city,

(20:56):
Like there were probably violating laws like sitting or sleeping
on the street, or public drinking or um, you know,
we're having a shopping cart. These are all municipal codes
which are on the books, which essentially criminalize the very
act of being homeless, of not having a home, being alive,
of being alive without a place to go and park

(21:17):
your things, exactly. And so that had been our response
to homelessness in Los Angeles for many, many years. And
so what we were trying to do in Seela was
to develop an alternative to that very punitive model and
to say, in our neighborhood, just through a bunch of volunteers,
is there a way that we can get to know
people who are experiencing homelessness and is there a way

(21:39):
that we can ensure that they're able to build relationships
with outreach workers and case managers who can actually help
them navigate a very long process of getting housing and
getting off of the streets or potentially getting help like
mental health help or addiction support or whatever it is
they may need to actually aren't their journeys off of

(22:01):
the streets. And so that's what we did in Cela.
We we started with just a group of volunteers going
out and doing outreach to encampments. And now I'm not
I stepped down from the board to run for the seat,
but now we have multiple locations across Los Angeles in
in this area and this part of Los Angeles, where
there is a shower truck that comes in, where there's

(22:21):
food that's served, and where a case manager comes in
every week um at each of these locations and works
with residents to make sure that they're moving along that process.
And this effort, like in every other neighborhood where a
group of people have come together and put outreach and
services first, it has worked to get people housed. And

(22:43):
so what we're saying in our response to homelessness in
in in the campaign is can we put services first?
Can we put outreach first? And there has been more
investment in outreach over the past couple of years thanks
to greater funding from something called measure H. What I'm
talking about is making sure that that funding is delivered
at the neighborhood level, making sure that outreach workers are

(23:06):
stationed in each neighborhood, that they get to know individuals
in those neighborhoods by name, and that actually that residents
can hold them accountable, you know, for moving people along
that long process of getting housed. The cops who don't
know what you're doing, harass them and hurt them. And yes,

(23:29):
and and that for non violent calls for service, that
you have an option to call someone who is an unarmed,
trained professional who can help uh a nunhoused resident with
whatever they may be needing at that time. So you
can you actually have somebody to call that can come
in and address the problems that you're calling about. You

(23:52):
know what I love. There's a lot that I love
about this. But the thing that jumped out to me,
and what jumps out about your campaign in general, it
is the humanity of it. How that humanizes people getting
to know having somebody that's dedicated this is their area.
They get to know the people that are there. You
get to know their names. They're not just some person

(24:13):
that's there that you ignore and and you know, call
the cops or whatever you know, and then you can
start to get to the root of what they need specifically,
because it's not one like we we tend to lump
people generalize this. They they weren't good enough, so they failed. Nope, nope, nope.

(24:33):
There are a million reasons and it could be any
one of us, especially right now, that ends up in
this situation, and we have no idea the stress of
what that is. I mean, we don't have to. This
is just something I wanted to share because it's it's
struck me. I mean, I've been aware of your campaign
for a while now, I guess over a year. I
can't believe I've been running for a year. What even

(24:56):
is this year? It let us talk about how they
make this very hard for non non incumbents to ever
run for these I do want to that, I definitely
want to dig into it, but I just want to
share based onf it just this, this conversation reminds me
of it. If you go to Netthea's Twitter page, Uh,
you have a pinned campaign video talking about homelessness and

(25:18):
you know the skyrocketing cost of rent, and it really
gets me um in it. You spoke with this man
named Jeff who's living you know, he's been on housing
nine ninety six. He's living by the l A River
and he tells a story about how he found a
place to live, paid the nine dollars, went to get
his belongings and his dog, and then the landlord said, no,
we won't let you have a dog here, but that

(25:39):
dog has kept him alive. Uh. That dog is his life.
And it just gutted me. And I have no point,
I guess, other than to share that this is the
thrust of what you're focusing on and the work that
we need to be doing. Also, I always just think,
why can't we do something to allow people to have

(26:00):
dogs in there? Yeah, they're I mean they're trying, they're
trying to get more of that. You know of housing
where you can bring pets, and because they you know.
I think it's just the progress has been too slow.
I think we need to have every level of government,
at every level of the bureaucracy. You need to have
people in there who feel that urgency to make the change,
and I think unless we have that, we're just not
going to see it. There was another woman that I

(26:22):
knew who had a housing voucher. So she got a
Section eight voucher after years of being on a waiting
list so hard to get, so hard to get. The
waiting list is so long, hundreds of thousands of people
apply every time there's a window to apply. And then
she got the voucher and it expired before she could
find a landlord who was willing to take it, which

(26:43):
happens to a huge percentage of people who get those
Section eight vouchers. I think half of Section eight voucher
holders their vouchers expired before they're able to find a
landlord who's willing to take it. I mean, it's like
the system we've set up is so laborary and theme
so full of pitfalls. I mean, we have to do

(27:04):
better at making sure that people are able to access
the help that they need to navigate this system, and
that means just a faux single minded focus on making
it better. You know. Um, I definitely want to get
to running against incumbent and what this campaigning during a pandemic.
But first, piggybacking off of this conversation, I want to

(27:25):
bring up your another campaign, UH platform tenant is the
public broadband because this does go hand in hand with
solving homelessness crisis, you know, having people's access to being
able to do work, but especially I mean at any

(27:45):
point in time, but again especially now during this pandemic.
You know was is it's drawing clear lines in the
sand of income inequality. We have people kids needing to
go to school. This is all from your your website,
but I'm going to share it as you know, background
for this comment station A survey from the nonprofit Partnership
for Los Angeles Schools found that sixtcent of families didn't

(28:07):
have internet access and of families didn't own a computer
or tablet. Uh USC researchers found that one in four
families with K through twelve students in l A County
don't have access to both a computer and a broadband connection.
I mean it goes on and on, you know, some
of this information that you shared, um And yeah, I

(28:28):
would just love to to talk about that because this
is a real barrier to entry for anybody that wants
to take control of their life or just survive right now. Um,
it would love to hear about your your plans for this. Yeah.
So just as background, I think one thing I'll say
is that what the exploration that initially drew us to

(28:48):
thinking about public broadband efforts, I think came out of
a realization that under investment in proactive city services like
a rental registry, like a proactive effort to protect tenants,
like a lack of investment in a right to a lawyer,
like lack of investment in some kind of public internet access,

(29:09):
all of these things end up ultimately reinforcing kind of
racial divide socio economic divides that are already existing in
the city, deepening those divides. UM. And I think that's incredibly,
incredibly important to emphasize that when we choose to under
invest in all of these kind of public goods, we

(29:32):
hurt black and brown Angeline knows the most. We hurt
lower income working people in Los Angeles. The most, and
so I think it's really important to think about the
context for this in that in that framing because public
brond band the way we talked about it. The thing
that we kind of are thinking about in that policy

(29:53):
proposal is to invest in a public fiber network, which
only a few cities have really invested in. Chattanooga is
the most um, the example that's been held up the
most as the most successful. UM it is. Yeah, other
cities have done it through public private partnerships. They've done

(30:14):
it through partnerships with Google. Google Fiber had this big
effort to partner with cities across America to do this.
And while public private partnerships take some of the initial
financial investment off of cities, they end up not having
as positive outcomes in terms of actually access. They don't
honor sometimes their commitments to ensure access to all, or

(30:37):
they just walk away from projects if you actually insist
that equity and access be a core component of that partnership,
which is what happened in a couple of cities. But
so so the investment is up front is very high.
It's expensive. Um. Putting down a public fiber network in
Los Angeles would cost something like three billion dollars. So

(30:58):
it's in normal. It's a big, big investment right out
of we have an annual budget of only ten billion
here in the city. That's the thing about an investment,
right and and where, but where cities have done it,
they've made that money back through revenues because there's an
increase in revenues that comes about there's an increase in
businesses wanting to sit in areas where there's faster internet.

(31:20):
Right now, Los Angeles has some of the slowest and
the most expensive internet in the country. Uh, And so
it's an opportunity to push back against that right and
to really set it up so that we have this
incredible resource here in Los Angeles. So it's not so
we've called it a policy exploration because you know, I
think it was something that I think we have to

(31:42):
consider whether we're able to do, particularly at a time
when we have shrinking revenues and we may be taking
on additional loans or really issuing bonds to meet people's
very very basic needs, you know, to keep people housed,
to make sure we're able to pay their rent. But
I do think it's very very important consider and something
that I want to think about in five years when

(32:03):
the economy is back to If we don't do it now,
let's talk about it when we are thriving. Let's talk
about making investments in our future. Yeah, it's so important
to start having these conversations now. We always look to
Bernie Sanders Medicare for all, you know, especially Cody here.
I don't want to take credit for this, but you know, Uh,

(32:25):
prior to sixteen, Medicare for all was not something that
people considered possible. It's expensive, it's daunting, how do you
organize it? And now the majority of Americans there's positive
polling for this, and and it is starting the conversations
now that is really tricky and hard, but it starts

(32:46):
to pull people left. It starts to change the way
we look at a problem and how we approach it. Uh.
And that's why it's so important. Um. Yeah, And for me,
I would say, it's never been about right or left.
It's really about, like, what is the scope of investment
that we need to make to address the problem that
we're facing here. What is the role of the government

(33:08):
in making sure that X suffering ends, or what is
the role of government to intervene in this space? And
I think opening up the window, um, in terms of
what is possible, what is doable. That is such an
important part of what Bernie Sanders did. That's a part
of what Elizabeth Warren did with her campaign. I feel
like she she also made it possible for so many

(33:32):
more people to come in to a place where they
have a more expansive view of what the government can do,
you know, like Sanders of course did it so much,
but she expanded it even further. Yeah, more accessible to
different types of people with different perspective. The more people
who have some sort of power or leadership role say

(33:53):
something is possible, the more people who have been told
for so long that it's not possible, we'll believe that
it is right exactly exactly, Yeah, yeah, everything, don't let's
talk about running against an incumbent. Uh, love to hear

(34:19):
all of your perspectives. Um. You know this this race
is being framed as a runoff between two progressives. Um. However,
there's yes, definitely a question of what Rau's priorities are. UM.
I'll tea this up by saying, for example, the l
A Police union donated I believe dollars to his campaign

(34:43):
to a pack support to a pack supporting him, okay,
was and then he recently signed a pledge to not
accept money from cops, but only after you did it, um.
And and you know, I read this piece from the
l A Time Times, you know, talking about during the pandemic,
Ryu you know, pushed for putting a rent freeze or

(35:07):
you know, and ended up stopping some evictions or like
putting in new rules for how people's things can be
dealt with a public storage and whatnot. But everybody is
just kind of saying that this is um gestures that
seem politically uh convenient for him and and anyway, uh yeah,

(35:28):
that's that's my perception of David Ryu. Would love to
hear your thoughts. Just if you drive around l A
see see what houses have yard sides for him. Sure
that's a pretty good tee off. But some of our
our listeners don't live here. But yeah, yeah, I would
love to hear your thoughts on him. And again running
against an incumbent, because we know that the democratic establishment

(35:49):
probably isn't very supportive. Yeah, I mean everyone lines up
behind incumbents here and so we have you know, in
l A. We it's a nonpartisan race on paper, but
it's a blue city. Everyone who is in l A
City government right now identifies as a Democrat except for one.
There's always one Republican from the valley district that that is,

(36:09):
you know, has all historically always been in government as well. Uh.
And the real story in Los Angeles is of incumbency
versus non incumbents, right, So incumbents have always lined up
behind one another, the they always endorse one another. They
don't really allow new voices to come in, and I

(36:31):
think that results in real challenges to how governance happened. So,
for example, there's only two women in all of l
A elected leadership out of eighteen potential elected positions. So
that's fifteen council members, fifteen council members, city attorney, a
city controller, and a mayor. So out of all of

(36:54):
these positions, only two our women. And I think there's
the system is is designed to keep women out, you know,
is designed to keep people who are not traditionally in
those roles out. So, yes, the l A Times article
that you cited talked about how after the primary, RU
suddenly tacked towards a more progressive direction. He started pushing

(37:17):
for policies that are more openly progressive than he has
been pushing for in his career so far. I think
that's really exciting because what it shows to me is
that the policies that we're pushing for, the kind of
language that we're speaking has real electoral residence in Los Angeles,

(37:40):
has real electoral power here. And I it feels to
me like elected officials can't ignore that power anymore, because
we're all going to be showing up to the polls.
I mean, I think in November, I estimate that there's
going to be over a hundred thousand people voting in
the city council race, you know, and most of those
people probably voted on the more progressive end of the

(38:03):
Democratic presidential candidates, and so you really have a huge
show potential, huge show of strength for more progressive policy
making in Los Angeles. And so as hard as this
has been and as long as it has gone, I mean,
it has gone on for so so long. By the

(38:25):
by November three, I will have been running for fifteen months,
which that is a whole other thing. Everything starts way
too early and last way too long. These days so expensive,
it's so expensive. I couldn't agree more. And you know,
I have to tell you that, like, I come to
this with a significant amount of privilege, and I just
want to acknowledge that. You know, I have a partner

(38:47):
of my husband is working right now, and so I
had to resign from my job. I was the head
of a nonprofit Times Up Entertainment uh and and I
was not able to do that nonprofit work and be
running for office at the same time. It just was
not possible given the work that we did at times Up.
So I had to leave that job. And I haven't
had a paying job since August of last year. And

(39:12):
the only reason I'm able to do this is because
my partner is able to support me through this. Is
it fair that we are limiting political activity and political
you know, people who are able to be involved in
politics to that kind of um, you know, two people
who are able to have that kind of support to me,

(39:32):
strikes me as incredibly problematic for the future of Los Angeles,
you know. And and while so it's incredible that there's
a bigger electorate coming to the polls, and that is
an undeniable good thing for Los Angeles. Like I'm so
glad that our municipal elections in our federal elections are overlapping.
I think the challenge is that now you also need

(39:54):
to raise a lot more money to be able to
get out to all of those residents now, particularly during COVID. Right,
So in the primary, we were able to get volunteers excited.
We had over six d unique volunteers go and knock
on thousands, tens of thousands of doors across the district,
and we were able to get the word out. In
some ways, we were able to substitute volunteer energy for money. Right,

(40:18):
so for every five mailers that he would send a
knock on the door from an excited volunteer telling you
how cool this candidate was, was way more effective. Now
in COVID pandemic um pandemic organizing pandemic constituent outreach. We
can do phone banking, we can do text banking, we
can write postcards, which all of which we're doing. But

(40:41):
it's just not you know it, it's not the same.
It's not quite the same as being able to knock
on someone's store and to have a real face to
face conversation with them and to convince them. And this
is something that progressive candidates across the country are struggling
with right. And this is why I think the push
for publicly financed elections half to be at the core
of every single platform across America. The fact that even

(41:05):
I spend a lot of my time fundraising, you know,
means that I end up speaking to people who have
money yeah more, Um, I actually don't. I don't know
that it's more than other but you all spend a
lot of that energy. Yes, but I have to do
it right. I have to do it. And I feel
like other candidates I've seen do it way more, um,

(41:27):
and other politicians I've seen do it way more, you know.
And it's like, how do we make sure that our
priorities are not being shaped by the need for fundraising
and they need to make sure that your your your
campaign dollars are still flowing in the only way we
can do that is through publicly financed elections. Yeah. Just
it's not a skill that I think we should require

(41:48):
of our leaders to have. That's not that shouldn't be
involved at all. That shouldn't be a thought to be
had when we don't want is to help people. People
that are good at soliciting money and giving promises. That's
not that's not what we need. We need people that
have values that are showing up to do a job.

(42:09):
They're very different skill sets. Um that creates a huge
obstacle for anybody that wants to just get involved and
and start making a difference at the local level. Do
we have term limits for city council? Yes, three terms,
so about twelve years. Okay, that's that's a long time.
But it's still a long time. Yeah, shorter than forever. Yes, yes,

(42:34):
that's right, that's right. But but yeah, but I do think,
I mean there is I think having done nonprofit work
for a really really long time, having been an activist
who's protested and blocked roads in India from the very
beginning of my career, I have tried to influence policymaking

(42:57):
in so many different ways throughout my life, and I
will say that this effort of getting into the campaign
and pushing policy dialogue in a particular direction in Los
Angeles has been really, really fulfilling. And to anyone who
is thinking about running, to anyone who's thinking about who

(43:21):
is questioning the value of being involved in electoral politics,
I would encourage you to reach out to me, preferably
after November three, But to talk to you because I think,
no matter what happens in November, this has already been
an incredibly positive campaign for Los Angeles, you know, And
that's that's what I hold onto on a day to

(43:43):
day basis. We have these volunteer on boardings, so we
have tons of volunteers who are still getting involved in
the race, and so we do zoom introductions to all
of them to invite them into the campaign. And initially
it was all people who had already in engaged on
municipal policy for a long time. And as we've moved

(44:05):
ahead in the campaign, as more people were made aware
of the power of local government through the uprising, through
the protests, by making connections between police brutality against against
Black Americans, but racial injustice as a broader question and
the role of local government in perpetuating inequity and violence,

(44:28):
the people who started getting into those volunteer on boardings
started to change. And it was people who had never
engaged in local politics before, you know, who had never
really engaged on politics at all. And that is that
to me, is durable change. I mean that had nothing
to do with this campaign. We just happened to be
a place where they could put their new activist energy.

(44:50):
I would say it does have a lot to do
with your campaign, but yes, but we're a part of
a bigger, much bigger change. We're a tiny little piece
of that, and I'm very proud of the fact that
we're able to be a tiny little piece of that.
You know. Yeah, thank you so much for saying that
this is hard. This is a really hard year. That's
the name of the podcast. Where hard year year. Whereas

(45:14):
your ever um And it's a lot, it's all a lot,
but it's hard to find the silver linings and the positives.
But you are one right that there are big strides,
uh that are happening, just the fact that your opponent
is going to the left, the fact that people are
having there are more and more places throughout the country

(45:37):
where people can can can put their progressive energy, put
their donate their time and their energy and their money
into um you know, people like you paving the way
and and and showing people the power that we have.
This is all. It's not going anywhere, regardless of what happens.
And sometimes I could I look at every think that's

(46:00):
happening and worry about how it's going to get twisted
or what steps back we're gonna take. We're not going
to take steps back. It might look like that, but
there are more and more of us and and we're
more and more empowered, and I I think I need
to at least focus on that in my life to
stay positive and stay and keep going for the next
few months, you know, take us through the home stretch here. UM,

(46:24):
I do want to dive in a little bit about
how how the campaign process has worked. Oh, during COVID,
we have just tried to move as much of the
voter contact online or digital as possible, so we're really
expanding our We did some phone banking in the primary.

(46:46):
We've really expanded our phone banking this time. We started
texting much earlier, so we did one round of texting
to the entire district. We're going to be doing another one.
We are investing more in digital outreach this time, so
we're in testing more in kind of UM. I do
remember getting a test from your campaign saying Hi, do
you need anything? And I was like, what from somebody

(47:11):
running in politics asking if we need anything? Like? Are
you joking? You're treating us like we're people. I'm glad
that you responded that way, that's great that it was.
You know, it was hard too, because we didn't want
to put at a time when people were struggling so much.

(47:31):
We really did not want to put the campaign first.
But we also did feel like we wouldn't be able
to know what to do in response to people's needs
unless we reached out to them first. And actually, you know,
so it was like it was, it was a hard
few months trying to figure out, Okay, how do we
how do we do this outreach in a way that's

(47:52):
really respectful of where people are in their lives right
now and at the same time this is vitally important. Yeah,
I think it's only made it more important that we
have people in there whose primary focus is on making
sure people are thriving in l A, that every resident
is thriving. That. Yeah, I just think it's it's become

(48:14):
the energy and the urgency that I felt has only
intensified over these last few months. And I'm impatient for
change me too. Um So, how could what what's the
best way for people to support you? I know, going
to the website and everything, but are you specifically looking
for more volunteers? Um with the phone banking, the text

(48:37):
message stuff. Yeah, we definitely need more people on phones.
We're writing postcards. We have a huge postcard writing campaign.
That's only if you're in l A. But if you're
outside of Los Angeles, you can phone bank, you can
spread the word on social media, follow us, share our posts,
lift our platform. You can always donate to our campaign.
We use every dollar really efficiently. And yeah, I think

(49:02):
those are really the ways. If you live in the
district and you know a lot of your neighbors, organize
a digital event, bring your neighbors in, tell them about
the campaign, tell them about the change that we can
have in l A. You know, there's all kinds of
ways to get involved. We actually it's on our website
India for the City dot com. We have a list
of ways you can help me win and and yeah,
so it's all your website on socials and in our

(49:24):
episode description. Yeah, definitely check it out. Definitely follower. I mean,
everything we can do to support this campaign. But like
I said at some point earlier, just your voice in
general during this time has been really special and powerful.
So I I think you guys should definitely check her out.

(49:45):
She does very very thoughtful threads about issues that are
very informed, incredible source. You feel like you're really getting
the actual information and not something that's been twisted and
turned to show to you to influence you. It's it's authentic,
it's real. It's what you're you're showing us, what you're seeing,

(50:05):
not something that's been manipulated or Yeah. Well, thank you.
I appreciate that you guys are enjoying that. We put
a lot of work into it. Behind the scenes. There's
a whole team of people who are doing research and
citing everything and putting it together and so I'll I'm
so glad that it is received well and that people

(50:26):
are enjoying reading it. Yeah. I mean, I've shared several
and I will continue to. Um. Thank you again so
much for for taking time to chat with us today.
Thank you so much for having me. It's been such
a pleasure. Good. We will be following closely and doing
everything we can to support you. Thank you, Thank you again.

(50:48):
Thank you so much again to nthia uh. If you
enjoyed that, You're cool, go check out her website Nitti
for the City dot com. I believe it is. It'll
be linked in our episode description and posted on socials. Also,
please follow her she posts aw some stuff and you
can also follow all of us on Twitter and Instagram

(51:11):
at Worst Your Pod. You can follow Katie at Katie's Stole.
You can follow Cody at dr Mr Cody. You can
fall Robert on Twitter and I right, okay, it's a
public store. Oh, I'm Sophie Hey, and she is at
why Sophie Why um. Thanks again for listening. Guys, you
have the very best chance in all of the world

(51:32):
that ever were who was oy? I'm done talking now
everything everything again. I tried. Worst Year Ever is a
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my

(51:54):
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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