A Los Angeles urban planner who made homelessness and housing the central issues of her campaign and condemned the Los Angeles police department for “responding to protests against police brutality with more police brutality”, won a crucial local race this November.
Nithya Raman, 39, joins the list of Bernie Sanders-endorsed progressives who have beaten Democratic party incumbents in closely watched races. Her opponent, David Ryu, had been endorsed by Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.
Raman’s Los Angeles city council victory won’t change the balance of power among Democrats in Washington. But her win does show the impact progressives can have by organizing at the local level, and the intensity of enthusiasm she prompted among Angelenos has earned her comparisons to the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Raman’s campaign was powered by local advocacy groups, including the Sunrise Movement and Democratic Socialists of America, and she has endorsed a swath of bold progressive policies, from backing a Green New Deal, to arguing that some of the Los Angeles police department’s budget should be diverted to pay for unarmed community crisis specialists and outreach workers. She is pushing for a rent forgiveness program in response to the coronavirus crisis, and opposes all policies that criminalize people who are unhoused.
Raman spoke to the Guardian the week after her victory. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How significant were the George Floyd protests to the progressive victories in LA this year, including voters choosing a new, more progressive local prosecutor and supporting a measure to devote more taxpayer dollars to community prevention services, rather than incarceration?
After the protests began happening, people began making connections between what they were protesting in the streets and the decisions made by our county supervisors, our city council. They were finding out the name of their city council person. They were learning about what we spend on sheriffs and policing. Many groups in Los Angeles, like Black Lives Matter LA and the Youth Justice Coalition, had been doing the work around these issues for a long time. This election in Los Angeles was a result of that existing work on the ground, plus this widespread engagement.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
