Power to the people cd4/8/2023 ![]() ![]() The evidence clearly shows that a mix of housing, services, and tenant protections get people off the streets, and keep them in their homes. But rather than confront decades of failed policy, our city wants to double down. ![]() This community deserves a trauma-informed approach. 60% of folks experience homelessness for the first time because they simply cannot afford rent. Black people comprise 8% of LA’s population but almost one third of the unhoused population are Black. More than 50% of unhoused women are survivors of domestic violence, because our system pushes them into homelessness. Unhoused people in our communities aren’t choosing to be homeless – decades of City Hall corruption, lack of urgency, and poor planning has resulted in housing being so unaffordable for working people that we have the worst homelessness crisis in the Western Hemisphere, with five people dying on our streets every night. There is no single issue in Los Angeles more urgent or devastating than our housing and homelessness crisis. It starts by showing up for each other and standing together, so I’m asking you to join me - we have a city to win. I’ve been an organizer with UNITE HERE Local 11 in LA for the past 15 years, and I know how to win material gains for workers, immigrants, the unhoused, people of color, young people, all of us who have been neglected by our city officials and the bosses they serve. Shortly after being the first in my family to graduate from college, I joined the labor movement. I realized in that moment, this is power, this is what it looks like when we build it, and this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Although many of us were scared, when my co-workers and I made our demands, my bosses reacted by doing something they’d never done before: they treated us with respect. ![]() But I chose to fight, because I also knew that this was the only way to be treated with dignity at my job. I knew that if I joined this struggle, I could be fired and lose the money I needed to finish my degree. At 23, right before graduating from UC Irvine, one of my co-workers approached me about forming a union. I worked there through high school and college. After my dad became disabled, I started working at a non-union hotel at the age of 16 to help out my family. My parents immigrated here and worked as street vendors for most of my life to give me and my five siblings more opportunities than they had in Mexico. I'm proud to say that I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. ![]()
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