The answers to the questionnaire were sent to us by the candidate via email and have been edited for brevity and clarity.

There has been mounting evidence showing that Black people in Long Beach are disproportionately stopped and searched by police, whether it’s while they drive, ride a bike, or ride public transportation. If reelected, how do you plan on addressing this?

Bias-based policing is wrong. When bias-based policing is done, it’s a crime and a violation of basic constitutional rights. If elected, I would plan to address this by: 1) Strengthening policies to limit bias-based policing 2) Improving and updating the bias-based police trainings and have officers take it on a regular basis 3) Improving the relationship with police and community and increase their understanding of the community they serve by having them consistently participate in community and neighborhood events where positive interactions can occur beyond enforcements. 

We recently reported that there is little transparency and guiding policy around the police department’s use of invasive surveillance technology, such as facial recognition software and thermal cameras originally designed for the military. How will you ensure that officers are properly using this equipment and that residents’ privacy is safeguarded?

I am deeply concerned about the uses and potential abuses of facial recognition and surveillance technology. Surveillance is antithetical to a free society, and we should be very skeptical of attempts to implement mass surveillance schemes. Our default position on these technologies should be that they should not be used. Any changes to that policy should have to be carefully scrutinized and evaluated through an open and public process. 

Officers involved in killing or injuring civilians are almost never fired, even after a civil jury finds that they violated a person’s rights, according to police misconduct lawsuit data we compiled. In some cases these same officers were later rewarded with promotions and commendations. Yet police misconduct has ruined lives and cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in payouts. Do you believe officers named in these lawsuits should be held personally accountable, and if so how?

I don’t believe that any police officer who is found to have violated the rights of civilians should continue to be entrusted to serve in the police department. We have to provide justice for those who have been wronged, hurt, and oppressed and at the same time fix our systems so that these injustices stop. 

In my work on the Long Beach Citizen Police Complaint Commission, I saw firsthand that our system does not adequately protect civilians and that reform efforts have been inadequate. Police are tasked with too many jobs, many of which should be handled by non-law enforcement caseworkers and social workers. We have to improve police training, and at the same time we have to change our hiring practices to ensure that new officers both reflect the community they intend to serve and have the right temperament for this work. 

You were previously the chair of Long Beach’s Citizen Police Complaint Commission. It has been revealed this year that the commission is largely toothless and dysfunctional with one member publicly calling it a ‘farce.’ Why didn’t you speak out publicly about the ineffectiveness of the commission when you were on it?

It is widely known and often publicly shared that the Long Beach’s Citizen Police Complaint Commission (CPCC) is limited in its authority due to its charter. I agree that it can be improved to increase our authority on the outcome of the cases and that our deliberations should have more weight on decisions made in each case. 

I am glad to see that $150,000 will be allocated to help redesign the CPCC. Having served on the commission. I have insight on how it can be improved. When I am elected as the next councilmember of the Sixth District, I will be able to have input on the charter amendment and vote on it. 

Your platform, as posted online, says you plan to “promote fair and just opportunities for protection from environmental and health hazards, air pollution and blight.” Can you expand on this?

Due to air pollution from the 710 Freeway, nearby refineries, and the Port of Long Beach, many Sixth District residents suffer from unhealthy air quality. Additionally, many of the streets and business corridors are neglected, and unfortunately littered with trash and various other bulk items and waste. I want to find solutions to address those environmental and health hazards that residents and small businesses contend with. 

The only option a person has when they smell a strange odor is to call the South Coast Air Quality Management District and make a complaint. And the only option to address blight and bulky item trash on the street is to call the city or report it on the GoLongBeach app. I want to find a solution that mitigates and reduces those causes with not just in the short term, but a real lasting change. 

COVID-19 has created a grim outlook for the city’s budget in the coming years. It’s likely that if reelected you will be faced with tough financial decisions in the next few budget cycles. How do you plan to protect the most vulnerable in Long Beach—such as elderly and low-income residents—who most rely on city services while balancing budget holes?

The Sixth District has disproportionately high rates of poverty, pollution, and crime. Our communities have gotten the short end of the stick for some time.

But this is about much more than simple fairness: Dollars spent in the Sixth District will go farther to raising the standard of living in our neighborhoods than in places that have already seen significant investment. 

I’m running for City Council because our neighborhoods have suffered from a severe lack of attention and leadership. COVID-19 has had a major impact on the city’s budget; that’s a reality. I’ll work to do better and do more with the resources we have, and ensure that the money we spend is used efficiently on behalf of residents.

What lessons has the coronavirus pandemic taught you about local government’s role in public health?

That we must provide leadership at the local level. And that we must work in partnership with communities, neighborhoods, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, faith-based organizations, and many other groups to ensure we are reaching out to everyone to provide education, resources, and support in multiple languages.

The high rate of underlying health conditions and social problems faced by people of color are factors that may be contributing to disproportionate rates of coronavirus infections in these communities. The Sixth District has some of the highest rates of coronavirus in the city. If reelected, how do you plan to ensure your constituents are safeguarded against health threats like COVID-19?

The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services have worked hard with county and state leaders to protect public health, and their approach is driven by data and the best available evidence. The Sixth District has the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the city, and it has the highest percentage of households living in poverty. 

Our community has a high concentration of low-income seniors, who are particularly at risk of not only contracting COVID-19, but of dying from it. We have an obligation to those seniors to do more. The Sixth District is home to many essential workers who are low income, and who often live in multi-generational homes with extended family. When one person in the home contracts COVID-19, many people are suddenly at extremely high risk. 

In addition to Project Room Key, which provides rooms for people experiencing homelessness, we should also have a program that will enable essential workers who test positive to quarantine themselves, protecting their family, friends and community.

According to the county’s homeless count, an average of 207 people exit homelessness every day, while 227 people become homeless. How will you help create affordable housing in the midst of a recession with public funding being curtailed due to budget deficits?

We are in a homeless and housing crisis and we need to focus on solving this issue. I believe that we must look for all possible options to increase the supplies of affordable housing, transitional housing, and emergency shelter beds. 

I hope to build bridges and have conversations with everyone on the issue and focus on dialogue that explores solutions. Wherever we build, we have to ensure that the community is fully bought-in from the start, because projects fail when the community doesn’t have a voice.

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[1] Militarily demobilized. Since WWII—which was both the death knell of European colonial empires as well as the starting shot of the American neocolonial era—Europe has had notoriously scant standing armies, and has been able to consistently slash government military spending domestically and as a percentage of their contributions to international diplomatic bodies such as the UN. This is because nowadays European nations very rarely find themselves in situations where they need to independently send their militaries abroad in order to secure trade routes, foreign resources, or privileges within markets overseas; the U.S. has been fulfilling that hard-power obligation for them for over half a century. The social results of Western Europe’s decreased militarization are striking, especially when contrasted with the U.S.: there is not a single country in Western Europe without universal healthcare, labor rights and welfare systems are strong, value is placed on corporate and financial regulation, environmental policy is lightyears ahead, and, not least of all, there is a robust governmental approach to curbing digital surveillance and reining in tech monopolies. Japan enjoys a similar arrangement with the U.S. in which it, too, is militarily demobilized yet is given full access to, and prominence in, the global economy. In the last decade there has been a reversing trend of remilitarization in some of these nations. That trend was hastened during the last four years as a result of Trump’s ultranationalist politics, but is likely to continue even after his departure in large part due to the growing bipolar geopolitical climate of competition between superpowers.

The “owner” bit of home-“owner” appears in scare quotes throughout the text for reasons that will shortly become apparent.

Nothing signals trouble quite like consensus.

More on them later.

And, anyways, what exactly remains “obvious” in an era “post-truth”?

I take as my starting position that even the “obvious” must be won.

It’s like Lenin said, you know…

Whether directly, or through a chain of investments, or through the wider speculative market in real estate.

I use “banks” in this piece as a stand-in for several sources of income that derive partly through the mortgaging of property and/or investment in institutions that have the power to mortgage property.

That is just its “ideology.”

The Ricardian “law of rent” explains that any location with an advantage over another location, can accrue an economic value, called “rent,” to the owner.

This happens without the owner needing to pitch in to create the advantage.

If the owner does pitch in, then the value accrued from that advantage cannot be called “rent.”

“Rent,” in economic terms, is only, precisely, the value accrued from that portion of the advantage for which the owner is not responsible. That is what we mean when we say, “Rent is theft.”

This does not mean places with lower property taxes ipso facto have higher property prices—and that is because the property tax is only one of the contributing factors. You could have zero taxes on land in Antarctica, for instance, and it would still sell for $0. This is why the introduction to the analogy controls for such variables.

This is the logical conclusion of believing two premises:

(1) All humans have an equal right to the Earth.
(2) Vaginal birth is a lottery system

Prop 13 is rent control for home-“owners.” You can learn more about its history and impact here.

“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Act 4, Scene 5

This is why the lobbyists who spend the most money to support the mortgage interest deduction are bankers, mortgagers, and realtors.

Term

Definition