What’s happening today?
“Ever heard of Municipal code section 41.18?” asks a post by Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez’s office on Instagram
The Los Angeles City Council is set to take up Soto-Martinez’s motions to rescind 41.18 zones prohibiting homeless encampments in his City Council district that were set up by the predecessor he ousted to get into office, Mitch O’Farrell. That law had drawn relatively strong pushback from the public several years ago, and it seemed popular enough to oppose at the time. But these days, maybe not as much. And so it now seems like a miracle that these motions are even going up for a vote today. You can see the motions here, and here.
Back in 2021, while Soto-Martinez was running for office to oust and replace O’Farrell in the 13th council district, the then-aspiring council member had taken city leaders to task for their support of 41.18. He had even described that law as having “everything to do with politics.” The law was akin to “stop and frisk,” Soto-Martinez’s social media thread said, and it reminded him of the “broken windows” theory of policing that he also described as “another failed strategy.” Soto-Martinez, and other progressives at the time, readily spoke out against the law, calling it cruel and violent.
Since then, advocates have pushed Soto-Martinez to make good on his campaign promises. But in the lead-up to Tuesday’s scheduling of his motion to lift O’Farrell’s 41.18 zones – and to remove the pricey metal signs put up to give people notice about the prohibition – Soto-Martinez is muted about the fact that there is even a vote happening today. Before that, Soto-Martinez had announced the motions his council office had produced, using his personal, campaign accounts, like on Bluesky and Instagram.
And months before that, he had been skittish about personally commenting on the matter when activists did some polite flyering outside of an event where he was getting an award for his office’s work on housing and homelessness. Soto-Martinez had declined an opportunity to respond to a softball question from me to get a reaction to those flyers, and instead questioned me on whether I had purchased tickets to the awards event (organizers, who were themselves sympathetic to the concerns of the advocates, and who were impressed especially by his work on housing, had given me permission to be there).
At that event, one of the activists, Roxy, told me that “there’s a lot of people who don’t know that the sweeps are happening or are aware of the extent of harm, and so trying to activate people on what the problem is and where pressure is needed to make things better, is a lot of the work.”
What just happened?
Nithya Raman joins rally of people who want Lineage cold storage out of Boyle Heights
Since the big fire at the Lineage cold storage facility back in June, community people and groups like Eastside Padres Contra la Privatización, ACCE and the United Teachers Los Angeles have gathered several times over the past several weeks to demand that Lineage leave the area entirely. The warehouse is a hulking presence next to the homey, residential neighborhood that’s right across the street from it. Talk about being able to look into your neighbors’ back yard!
On Monday, one sitting council member who is actively running for mayor, Nithya Raman, stood scrunched up with community members and representatives from all those groups, surrounded by news cameras, and LAPD trailer that happened to be parked there at the end of the street, and against a backdrop of misters set up alongside the clean-up area to try to lessen the multi-faceted stench coming from the burned warehouse. Neighborhood teachers talked about the toll on their students, who have been pent up indoors all summer, and the generations of learning disabilities that they have seen from students living in neighborhoods that are adjacent to industry and freeways.
When Raman went up to speak to the line of TV news camera people and sweaty reporters, she said she was there to amplify two things those groups and community people wanted:
“First, Lineage should not be allowed to reopen this warehouse. And after this warehouse is cleared, we — the city must do everything in its power, not just to hold Lineage accountable and to protect this community, but to make sure that this becomes a safe space for the people who live here.
“Second, we need a full and transparent investigation into Lineage’s actions and the city’s handling of this disaster. Boyle Heights residents deserve answers about what was released into the air, when officials knew about it, what residents were told, whether the monitoring was adequate, and why families are still fighting for basic, basic things.”
This all comes after Mayor Karen Bass held a community forum last Thursday to give an update on the Lineage cleanup deadline. Bass did not attend that meeting in person. Instead, she Zoomed into the Lou Costello Community Center, where it was being held. Boyle Heights Beat reported from the community forum and interviewed the frustrated community members.
A few more things…
Los Angeles Magazine’s Michele McPhee reports that Airbnb recently paid $3 million for the services of Martin Ludlow, a former City Council member who had been wrapped up in an earlier era of scandals, to help them garner support in the community for their Save our Services campaign, which promoted loosening city regulations on vacation rentals as a way to raise revenue for LA city services. Ludlow preceded Herb Wesson on the City Council, having left his council seat early to lead the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, only to plead guilty to conspiring to embezzle union funds a year after that. Now Ludlow is in the middle of a fresh scandal, after a much-anticipated jazz festival that was supposed to be headlined by John Legend and Janelle Monae got cancelled on the day it was supposed to start. LA Material’s Julia Wick reported on that unraveling.
Karen Bass posted a video of a pothole not getting fixed, as a way to promote the city’s 311 system. This obscured the fact that the next day, the pothole did get fixed. Still, this stunt rang false to some like Alissa Walker who pointed to a massive pothole that she had submitted to 311 months ago that had yet to be filled.
As Soto-Martinez works to rescind 41.18, City Attorney candidate John McKinney has put out an ad that’s supportive of 41.18 and criticizes his opponent, Marissa Roy, a progressive. McKinney’s campaign also reports they raised $150K. Even though the last major filing says McKinney raised $3,000, that was as of the end of June. That period doesn’t cover an additional month and a half, and McKinney’s campaign says they’ve actually covered more ground since then, receiving as much as $150,000 in donations, ranging from $5 to $1,800.
Mayor Karen Bass relied on a fake poll to boost her campaign. That poll, put out by an entity called Median Strategies, announced on Monday that they were withdrawing the poll, saying that it was put out as part of an “experiment,” after LA Times reporter Noah Goldberg repeatedly reached out to them to ask about it. Median Strategies’ statement on their website described what they were doing as a “social experiment,” but some are now speculating it could have easily been a way to either intervene in an election or influence prediction markets. California Post, which took the poll as real and reported on it last week, ended up replacing their article with one about the fact that it was bogus, but they did not appear to have issued a correction.
