Posted on June 15th, 2023
Find below a complete transcript of this video.
What’s up fellow entrepreneurs. Today I want to talk about the leadership in Los Angeles. I think business owners should understand who their leadership is in their area, what they stand for, and what their thoughts are on businesses, and how they should be run in their specific districts.
So I’m not sure if I’ll make this a weekly segment or if I’ll just do it as the motivation strikes me, but I’m very interested in who the decision makers are in Los Angeles, and I hope this will be an interesting segment for you also.
To be as fair as I can, I think I’ll just go down the list by district each time that I do this segment and give it a one and give the councilman in that district a one to 10 rating based on my humble opinion about how good or bad each council member is for business businesses that are in their respective district.
So let’s start with city council person, and I hope I’m saying that right. Hernandez, who represents district one and the cities of Glassell Park, Cypress Park, Highland Park, Mount Washington, Sycamore Grove, Solano Canyon, Elysian Park, echo Park, Westlake, Angelino Heights, temple Boundary, Chinatown, forgotten Edge, Montecito Heights, Pico Union, Adams, Normandy, university Park, victory Heights, Koreatown, mid Cities, MacArthur Park, and a portion of Lincoln Heights.
So that’s quite a few cities with lots of small businesses. From my research, there are an estimated 250,000 people living in district one with more than 75% of those people of Latino descent. I was not able to find out any specifics on the number of businesses operating in district one, but Koreatown by itself has thousands of businesses just using the I test.
Now, the newly elected, council member Hernandez is a 32 year old American activist and politician elected to the Los Angeles City Council for the first district in 2022.
According to her Wikipedia page, she’s a member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. So already, this to me, is a huge red flag for businesses because the DSA has a stated goal of, and this is from Wikipedia, participating in fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people.
I think that what most people don’t know is that most businesses big or smaller corporations, and they are owned by working people. So also from Wikipedia, the DSA regards the abolition of capitalism and the realization of socialism
As a gradual long-term goal. Therefore, the organization focuses its immediate political energies on reforms within capitalism that empower working people with decreasing the power of corporations. That’s also a quote. So it’s clear to me that any form of socialism is the opposite result of capitalism, and small businesses do not exist without capitalism.
So Hernandez, well, she started her career in 2014 as a policy coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance, where she helped with the passing of Senate Bill 180 and California Proposition 64, which was the legalization of cannabis,
I would argue this is pro business. In 2018, she moved to just Leadership USA as a campaign coordinator coordinator for Justice la, where she helped with stopping the county’s 3.5 billion jail plan. In 2019, she was appointed by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors to be a community stakeholder for an alternative Alternatives to incarceration working group.
In 2020, she count co-founded La Defensa, a women-led organization that supports reducing the number of incarcerated people in Los Angeles County. That same year, she co-chaired Measure j a ballot initiative that would allocate at least 10% of Los Angeles county’s funding for community reinvestment and incarcerated incarceration alternatives.
Okay, so Ms. Hernandez is a tough one to rate fairly because she’s a new member of the city council and she’s focused on community activism in her career and not on business as far as I can tell. But I’m gonna give her a, I’m gonna be a generous person.
I think I’m gonna give her the benefit of the doubt with a solid three. I say three because I don’t see where she is actively passed or supported legislation that hurts businesses. And she did work on the passing of marijuana legislation, which is created lots of startup businesses in LA County.
However, I don’t have high hopes for Ms. Hernandez as she’s a self-proclaimed socialist and socialists advocate for laws that are not beneficial to businesses of any type, but are specifically antis small business. And for those of you that don’t think socialists and democratic socialists are the same, their mission statement is the abolition of capitalism.
So the only difference between a socialist, in my mind anyway and a democratic socialist is that a socialist at least has the courage to, to be honest about what they really stand for. All right, so that’s all for district one. Look out my next one on district two.
Until next time, be productive.
