dreams
I grew up in Hollywood, and so I spent a lot of my childhood politely telling people that I had no intention of going into the industry. I had seen, firsthand and up close, how it functioned: how random and unpredictable it was, and how hard that was on the people who loved it so much they subjected themselves to its whims anyway.
Then, of course, I went into publishing instead. Publishing is an industry that crushes just as many dreams, and pays you less than half as much for the privilege.
Anyway, I got this Hollywood job that I mentioned a few months ago, working as a researcher on a documentary. Anyway, production got cancelled-- yes, after we'd started shooting interviews. It's fine. It's sort of funny. I really thought it was possible to protect myself from heartbreak, didn't I?
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A better thing: I've spent the first half of this year canvassing for Hugo Soto-Martinez, who's running for City Council in LA. (Not my current district, but the one I lived in for the last seven years, and where my parents presently live.) Hugo is a union leader who believes in the things I believe in: compassionate solutions for the unhoused community, greening our city and economy. Yesterday he stood, sweating in the morning's heat, in someone's front yard, eating pastries from a Filipino bakery, with a small group of campaign staff and volunteers, before we went out to talk to voters. One of the staff members talked about organizing as a form of magic: the alchemy of having conversations that help people change their minds and decide to take action.
Then in the evening the polls closed, and Hugo got nearly as much of the vote as incumbent Mitch O'Farrell, who has overseen a 75% rise in homelessness in the district during his tenure and still doesn't have a single full-time staff member dedicated to the issue. (If you're local, he also ran the Echo Park Lake sweep in 2021, which had helicopters circling the neighborhood for hours and hours, and displaced over 200 people. Only fourteen of those people have since been permanently housed, while seven have died and nearly 100 are unaccounted for. In addition to being cruel and inhumane, sweeps do not work!)
This means Hugo has the opportunity to run again in November. This means O'Farrell has the opportunity to marshal the substantial resources at his disposal-- he's been part of LA politics for a long time, and he's a big-time status quo boy-- to try to defeat him. The California Apartments Association, which is a group of landlords, has already poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into attack ads against Hugo, and now that he's officially O'Farrell's opponent for the general, you can bet that's only the beginning.
It's gonna be an ugly one. There's also Rick Caruso's money to contend with, as well as the conversation he'll be promoting, which insists that policing is the answer to crime, homelessness, etc. (It! Simply! Is not!! Even Ben and Jerry's knows this!!! Responding to crime is not the same thing as addressing its underlying causes, and the police are piss-poor at even accomplishing that!)
I wrote about canvassing during the 2018 midterm elections, and everything I said then holds. It is one of the only things that reliably makes me feel better in this extremely falling apart world: to be with people who believe what I believe; to use my legs, my voice, my lungs. To walk through a place and try to know its sidewalks and its people. To counter capital with community.
I try not to do politics too much on this Tinyletter, but today I really feel like I have to. If you don't live in LA, Hugo's campaign is, of course, taking donations; if you do, and you would like to take a walk and talk to some voters with me at some point this summer and fall, please do let me know.
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And finally, a dream interview: I got to talk to the hosts of one of my favorite podcasts, Bad Gays, for The LA Times.