University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

In the eyes of L.A.'s Black baby boomers, Mayor Karen Bass makes the grade (barely): weighing in on the first Black woman's first 16 months as the city's chief executive

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In the eyes of L.A.'s Black baby boomers, Mayor Karen Bass makes the grade (barely): weighing in on the first Black woman's first 16 months as the city's chief executive

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Content IN THE EYES OF L.A.’S BLACK BABY BOOMERS,
MAYOR KAREN BASS MAKES THE GRADE (BARELY):
WEIGHING IN ON THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN’S FIRST 16 MONTHS
AS THE CITY’S CHIEF EXECUTIVE
by
MARLON L. DWIGHT
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ANNNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION AND JOURNALISM
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM)
May 2024
Copyright 2024 Marlon L. Dwight

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract…………………………………...…………………………………………………..………....iii
Chapter 1: “A Mayor Like Karen Bass”………………………………………………..………….….....1
Chapter 2: “To Get One Person Off the Street”.........................................................................................4
Chapter 3: “To Protect and Serve”.............................................................................................................7
Chapter 4: “The Entertainment Capital of the World”.............................................................................11
Chapter 5: “The Most Important Thing”..................................................................................................15
Chapter 6: “It’s a Generational Battle”....................................................................................................17
References................................................................................................................................................19

iii
ABSTRACT
When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass first arrived at City Hall in December 2022, she inherited a
mantle plagued by several well-documented bureaucratic challenges and public safety conundrums. Chief
among those matters were the four primary issues that served as the foundation of her successful mayoral
campaign – specifically, the need to address L.A.’s homelessness crisis, its myriad issues related to
policing, its affordable housing shortage, and widespread calls to make the city’s outdated infrastructure
more sustainable. Bass’ job performance as the first woman and second Black American elected mayor of
America’s second-largest city has been heavily scrutinized over the course of her first 16 months in office.
Perhaps none have paid closer attention to her work than have members of L.A.’s Black baby boomer
population – a group whose most pressing everyday concerns run parallel to Bass’ municipal priorities
and past work as a community organizer. A diverse range of views and reactions regarding Bass’
effectiveness in tackling the issues comes into focus through a series of one-on-one interviews with Black
Angelenos, ages 60 and up, along with previously existing media coverage, and insights from local
experts from the fields of academia and nonprofit services. Additional context is provided by original
coverage of the mayor’s participation in an April 2024 fireside chat in Culver City. During that
discussion, Bass, a baby boomer, herself, responds to this reporter’s questions about the importance of
intergenerational mentoring throughout L.A.’s growing network of community-focused nonprofits and her
plans for life after politics.

1
Chapter 1: “A Mayor Like Karen Bass”
“Hi, Fran Jemmott!”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass grins mischievously as she calls unwanted attention to Jemmott,
her longtime friend and fellow baby boomer.
Jemmott, a well-known community activist, had stealthily slipped into the packed room at the
Blackbird House in Culver City after arriving a few minutes late for the evening’s event, a fireside chat
about the nuts and bolts of creating and running nonprofits dedicated to serving minority populations.
“One of my mentors,” says Bass, a former nonprofit executive director herself, in praise of
Jemmott, who was now searching in vain for an empty seat. “Think you’re gonna sneak in here and I’m
not gonna call you out,” Bass says, eliciting a wave of laughter from the capacity crowd.
Tonight’s audience, which largely consists of local Black nonprofit leaders committed to serving
L.A.’s underserved Black and brown communities, skews young, a healthy contingent of Millennials with
a few Gen Xers and Gen Zers thrown in for good measure.
The extent to which Bass has been molded by her experience as a Black baby boomer is a seldom
discussed aspect of her remarkable journey. Voters among L.A.’s Black boomer population, Angelenos
born between 1946 and 1964 who share similar life experiences with the mayor, are paying particularly
close attention to her progress in making good on the lofty platform that propelled her 2022 mayoral
campaign past that of her rival, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso.
Bass’ appeal among L.A.’s Black boomer population goes well beyond a shared experience of
being Black in America’s second-largest metropolis, one with several challenges commonly associated
with megacities.

2
In 2021, a poll cited by the Los Angeles Times found that nearly half of L.A. County’s Black
voters had been homeless, had recently experienced housing insecurity or had a personal acquaintance
who had been homeless at some point. The poll also found that Black residents, while representing only
8% of L.A. County’s total population, accounted for 34% of its homeless.
A national study cited by a 2018 Washington Post article reported that roughly 1 in 6 Black baby
boomers had experienced homelessness at some point in their lives. The same study found that older
Black Americans are about three times more likely to experience homelessness than their white American
counterparts.
According to a 2019 KABC report, a poll of more than 2,300 Black L.A. County residents
identified homelessness as the most important issue among those surveyed, followed by affordable
housing, transportation, and crime.
The 2023 State of Black Los Angeles County reports that Black residents are most likely among
all racial groups in the county to be rent-burdened (62%) and experience eviction (1.6 evictions/100 renter
households).
That same report found that Black L.A. County residents were more likely to be stopped and
questioned by law enforcement officers and more likely to be arrested than members of any other racial
group in the county.
In short, Bass’ municipal priorities strongly align with the issues that are important to older Black
residents in L.A. and across the U.S.
Sympathy for the mayor as she wages her uphill battle to heal the city of Los Angeles is stronger
among her fellow baby boomers than it is among younger generations of Angelenos.
Marne Campbell, a professor of African American studies at Loyola Marymount University in
Los Angeles, believes that this disparity is the result of a lack of political experience on the part of young
voters who tend to expect quick, sweeping change.

3
“She does have more support from older generations of Black Angelenos than from younger
generations,” Campbell says. “Older generations may look at the work and understand it. Some of the
younger generations may not understand it quite the same way,” she says. “It's part of having not actively
participated in politics, and having not lived through everything that would bring a mayor like Karen Bass
to a city like Los Angeles.”
Campbell acknowledges that many of the local Black community’s more seasoned voters applaud
Bass’ job performance through her first 16 months at City Hall. But she also signals that there’s a limit to
that grace.
“She's done some amazing things that I think resonate with that demographic,” Campbell says.
But, as it pertains to their ongoing evaluation of Bass’ results, “It’s one of those situations [in which older
Black voters are choosing to] proceed with caution.”

4
Chapter 2: “To Get One Person Off the Street”
By the time Bass was officially sworn in as mayor in December 2022, L.A.’s non-chronically
homeless population had swelled to an estimated 41,000. That’s according to a March 2023 report
released by McKinsey & Company.
Four months later, in April 2023, Bass announced her plan to propose $250 million for her Inside
Safe Initiative to open local hotels and motels to homeless people across the city.
In December 2023, only a year after taking office, the mayor announced the program had
succeeded in housing an estimated 21,000 previously unhoused individuals and removing 32 homeless
encampments in fewer than 12 months.
As reported by ABC-7 in January, nearly 2,000 unhoused individuals transitioned to interim
housing through Inside Safe over the course of Bass' first year in office. However, only a few hundred of
those people have moved into permanent housing.
“A-plus!!!,” says food journalist and former 94.7FM The Wave podcaster Veronica Hendrix
when asked how she would grade Bass’ first-year progress in tackling L.A.’s homelessness issue.
“People don't realize the range of services required to do that,” says Hendrix who, like Bass, was
born and raised in L.A.
Hendrix, who studied journalism at California State University, Northridge, speaks from firsthand
knowledge regarding the services needed to house the homeless. Before becoming a full-time food writer,
she worked as a manager in L.A.’s Emergency Management Department, also known as EMD. She
retired from the department in 2020 after over 12 years of service.

5
“I understand what it takes to get one person off the street,” says Hendrix, who is in her mid-60s.
“[It includes] providing mental health services, drug abuse services, alcohol abuse services to those
people. It takes a lot to do that.”
Like so many other Black boomers, Hendrix also has a personal stake in the fight against
homelessness. She had a close relative who had been homeless for over 30 years.
“She was homeless by choice,” Hendrix says, alluding to the mental health issues that many of
those who live on the street face. “She died recently. She was almost 60.”
The sense of urgency Bass placed on the city’s homelessness crisis during her campaign is one of
the main reasons Hendrix has supported the mayor since the day she announced her candidacy.
“A six out of 10,” says Windsor Hills resident Johnnie Thompson when asked to rate Bass’ first
year behind the mayor’s desk.
Thompson is somewhat skeptical of the figures presented in Bass’ frequently cited December
progress report. “I suspect the number is closer to 8-, maybe 10,000,” says Thompson, who is in her early
70s. Her skepticism is a byproduct of reasonable cynicism.
Thompson is a buyer for construction businesses and previously worked for companies in the
aerospace industry. Originally from the South, she spent several years in New York, Chicago, and Ohio
before finally arriving in Los Angeles in 1997.
The longtime L.A. resident has, much to her frustration, noticed an appreciable rise in the number
of unhoused individuals that have arrived in her community over the last few months, a district once
known as the “Black Beverly Hills.”
“They’re making more of an effort to stay off the main roads,” Thompson says. “They’re going
deeper into the residential districts and living [along] residential streets.” That includes residential streets
in Thompson’s neighborhood.
“Some of my neighbors allow the campers to borrow their electricity,” Thompson says, an act of
charity that she hopes will soon no longer be warranted.

6
One of the many local nonprofits that work to provide much-needed assistance to the city’s
homeless is Hollywood Food Coalition, a charitable organization that collaborates with various
government agencies and other nonprofits to provide nutritious meals to unhoused residents throughout
the city.
The organization’s executive director, Arnali Ray, has been particularly pleased with the sense of
urgency and spirit of collaboration fostered by the Bass administration.
“I think we finally have the political will and the level of urgency that is required towards the
situation,” Ray says. “And I think, prior to [Mayor Bass] stepping into office, there wasn't the level of
focus that there is now.”
Ray feels particularly hopeful that L.A.’s homeless population can be reduced to a more
manageable level in the near future.
“The reason I feel optimistic,” she says, “is because I see political leaders getting together and
saying, ‘How do we solve this [together]?’”
When asked what she would like to see from the mayor going forward, Ray readily identifies
government funding as a critical area of need.
“I know, especially for us and [other organizations] in the food insecurity world,” she says, “there
are not as many government resources for that.”

7
Chapter 3: “To Protect and Serve”
Wednesday, April 29, 1992.
A political powder keg exploded in the City of Angels when a jury in Simi Valley found four
white LAPD officers not guilty of excessive force after they were caught on video brutalizing unarmed
Black motorist Rodney King during a traffic stop in early March 1991.
Outraged by the verdict, citizens across South L.A. took to the streets in a violent protest known
as the L.A. Riots. The already-fractured relationship between city law enforcement and L.A.’s Black and
brown citizens has been completely broken ever since.
Bass was, at the time, only two years into her role as executive director at Community Coalition,
also known as CoCo. She recounted her experience on the day of the verdicts in a 2022 interview with
BET.com.
She was at CoCo headquarters, only a mile away from the riots’ flashpoint – the infamous
intersection of Florence and Normandie – when she got the news.
“The minute the verdicts happened, I got in my car and started to head over to First AME Church
because all the community leaders were going to go to the church to try to keep the city calm,” Bass says.
“But unfortunately, by the time we got to the church, the violence had already started. As I
arrived on the corner of Florence and Normandie on the way to the church, I could see people throwing
bricks.”
Surrounded by the erupting chaos, Bass was soon forced to shift her focus from consoling the
community to getting herself home safely.
Thirty years later, as candidate for mayor, the longtime community activist campaigned on a
comprehensive public safety platform that highlighted, among other things, the need to return LAPD to its
full authorized force of 9,700 officers.

8
The mayor’s $13 billion budget, approved in May 2022, reinforced her commitment to rebuilding
the city’s depleted police force by allocating $3.2 billion to LAPD – nearly 25% of the total city budget.
In August, Bass announced that she and the LAPD had reached a deal to raise starting pay for new
officers by 11%.
In light of her history of advocacy for victims of excessive police violence, not to mention the
fact that L.A.’s police union spent millions campaigning against Bass’ mayoral bid, news of L.A. cops
getting a pay increase raised several eyebrows among the city’s Black constituents.
Thompson, who also has vivid memories of the L.A. Riots, chafes at the fact that so many
employees of the city’s police department live outside the city they’re sworn to protect and serve.
“Those jobs and the income that comes with those jobs are leaving the community,” she says.
Thompson’s concerns were recently validated by a report from L.A. City Controller Kenneth
Mejia that found that nearly 81% of the city’s police personnel lived outside of L.A. proper in 2022.
This amounts to roughly $1.4 billion in L.A. city payroll flowing to communities beyond city
limits, such as Long Beach, Whittier, Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, and Torrance.
Thompson took an opportunity to express her concerns to the mayor in-person at one of Bass’
public appearances in Leimert Park back in early 2023.
“I told her I would love to see that change for the sake of building a strong relationship between
the officers and the community they’re paid to protect and serve,” she says.
“I am so conflicted about that, being African American and having two African American adult
sons,” Hendrix says regarding Bass’ plan to hire more LAPD officers to the force.
In 2020, Hendrix worked side-by-side with members of law enforcement during the EMD’s
response to the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, she gained tremendous respect for the positive
work they do in the community. But that close working relationship has also led her to arrive at a number
of sobering realizations.

9
“They would say things that I thought were clearly prejudiced,” Hendrix says. “I'm not gonna say
what they were. But I've had a few moments where I just had to dial myself back a bit and remember that,
at the end of the day, they're police officers.”
That awareness compels Hendrix to ruminate on the stark contrast between the way the city’s
Black residents are treated by LAPD versus the way its non-Black residents are treated.
“I just want [my sons] to be treated with the same kind of respect, dignity, consideration, and I
don't always see it,” Hendrix says, pausing for a moment. “I don’t know what the solution is.”
Doreen Mills, like many from L.A.’s Black community, has had her share of questionable
encounters with members of the city’s law enforcement community, encounters that left her feeling
uneasy.
That includes an incident that occurred many years ago. While driving home from reception in
Culver City, the career hotel executive, who is in her mid-60s, suddenly noticed the flashing lights of a
patrol car following closely behind her sports car.
As a Black American, she immediately understood that guilty or innocent, there was a chance she
might not make it home that night. She was understandably afraid.
“What scared me was that one of the police officers came on the passenger side. I was alone, and
he had his hand on his gun, which I could see out my window,” Mills says.
One of them asked Mills if she knew why she was being stopped.
“I said, ‘I have absolutely no idea.’ And he said, ‘You didn't have your headlights on.’,” Mills
says. “And I said, ‘Oh, my God!’” What the officer said next still bothers Mills to this day.
“He proceeded to say, ‘Well, is this really your car?’” Mills was stunned. “I said, ‘Of course, this
is my car.’ And at the moment, I was like, ‘Oh, wow! Maybe this is what people are talking about.’”
But Mills, who has several acquaintances in the Los Angeles Police Department, manages to
remain sympathetic to the challenges officers on the force face.

10
“I understand how difficult the job is overall,” she says. “If they make a bit of a mistake, it’s
blown up. And I've heard them say they're just over it. They're tired of it.”
Since Bass assumed office in late 2022, various new hurdles related to her efforts to overhaul the
city’s approach to policing have emerged.
Violent crime was down in 2023 compared to 2022, according to the LAPD’s most recent End of
the Year Crimes and Initiatives report. But round-the-clock media coverage of smash-and-grab robberies,
street takeovers, and other high-profile crimes overshadow that fact.
In February, embattled LAPD Chief Michel Moore abruptly retired amid multiple scandals
involving, among other things, officers accused of theft, unlawful stops and searches, and inappropriate
relationships between department personnel. LAPD is now being led by interim Chief of Police Dominic
Choi.
In addition, a recent L.A. Times article reports that the city’s police department is off pace to
reach its goal of hiring 9,500 officers by the end of the fiscal year (June 30, 2024).
The number of officers employed by the department is just below 9,000.

11
Chapter 4: “The Entertainment Capital of the World”
Critics have decried the mayor’s lack of glossy initiatives and tangible results in the wake of her
pledge to refurbish and revitalize what many view as the city’s overloaded, eroding infrastructure during
the first year of her administration.
Most notable among knocks against the mayor in this area was a Los Angeles Times article
published in October 2023 detailing City Controller Mejia’s call for a retooling of the city’s Green New
Deal.
In response to her detractors, Bass issued a press release in December listing all of the substantive
achievements her administration had quietly notched in Year 1.
They include, among other things, eliminating single-use plastic water bottle sales at Los Angeles
International Airport, introducing the nation’s first 100% electric full-size street sweeper, and grant
programs to fund the installation of solar arrays and electric vehicle charging stations across the city.
The mayor’s announcement also touted the fast-tracking of a new stormwater capture project as
well as the imminent construction of a new water purification facility in Van Nuys.
For Candice Dickens-Russell, President and CEO of the local nonprofit Friends of the L.A. River
(FoLAR), news of the mayor’s progress on initiatives related to the region’s water levels couldn’t come at
a better time.
“A healthy, vibrant, thriving L.A. River creates a more sustainable Los Angeles,” DickensRussell says. “It cools the air, regulates temperature, makes the entire city better and healthier and
greener.”

12
Dickens-Russell applauds Bass for her role in securing $2 million in funding last July to revitalize
the Taylor Yard, an abandoned rail yard situated along the L.A. River that had been contaminated by the
petroleum industry.
She and her team at FoLAR hope that the mayor’s continued focus on issues affecting the city’s
water supply will lead to an even higher level of engagement from her administration as it pertains to
L.A.’s most important waterway.
“We'd like to hear the mayor talking [more] about the river,” Dickens-Russell says.
As promising as Bass’ infrastructure initiatives may be for organizations like FoLAR, boomers
with whom we spoke are primarily concerned with more ordinary issues involving the city’s
infrastructure.
“My main concern is traffic,” says retired entertainment industry costume designer Gregory
Upshaw.
An L.A. transplant, Upshaw has lived a life that most could only dream of. “My last client was
Stevie Wonder,” boasts the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising alumnus. “I worked for him for
over 20 years.” The veteran costumer, during his decades-long career, also designed couture for Michael
Jackson and Lionel Ritchie.
Upshaw, who’s originally from Ohio, lived in Detroit and Atlanta before moving to Los Angeles
in the early 1970s. Now in his 70s, he has voted in almost every major election since he turned 18. A
lifelong Democrat, he voted for Mayor Bass in 2022.
“The traffic is seven days a week now,” he says. “It's not just Monday through Friday.”
Upshaw is an avid cyclist who’s particularly concerned about pedestrian safety across the city.
But, as important as that issue may be to him, the active retiree can’t help but wonder if the city has overprioritized the installation of new bike lanes along major thoroughfares.

13
“I understand having bike lanes,” he says. “But I don't understand putting bike lanes on a main
street. I would be scared to death to ride my bike along Figueroa or any place downtown where there's
heavy traffic.”
Upshaw’s safety concerns extend to those who navigate Los Angeles on foot, as well.
“We've had a lot of cases of people walking across the street and getting hit and killed because,
previously here in L.A., if you stepped out [into] a crosswalk, cars would have to stop. Now, they don't.”
On the matter of hazards ordinary pedestrians face while out and about in L.A., Upshaw is not
just speaking hypothetically.
“One of my co-workers had a housekeeper. Lovely lady in her 80s. She got hit as she was leaving
church, believe it or not. Over in South Central. They hit her and killed her and kept riding,” he says. “So,
now, I don't step out [into the street] anywhere – not even at a crosswalk.”
The City of Angels will host several globally-televised sporting events over the next few years –
among them, eight World Cup matches in 2026, a Super Bowl in 2027, and the Summer Olympic Games
in 2028.
Some observers doubt whether the local infrastructure will be up to the task of providing the
services and support needed to accommodate the demands of such a loaded events calendar. Local Black
business owner Michael E. Washington is not one of them.
“I actually applaud Los Angeles for the infrastructure that we have,” says Washington, who is in
his early 60s.
Washington is CEO of Cato Hospitality Group, an investment firm he founded in 2022, and
president and co-owner of Palazzo Concessions, a food, beverage, news and gifts concession service
company he co-founded in 2009. Palazzo currently operates stores at Los Angeles International Airport,
Hollywood Burbank Airport, and San Francisco International Airport.

14
Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Washington has lived in greater Los Angeles since 1990.
Whereas others might see cause for concern as it relates to the city’s infrastructure, he sees reasons to be
proud.
“We don’t put enough energy into combatting all the naysayers about Los Angeles,” Washington
says. “Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world, and we don't take advantage of that.”
Washington is, in part, alluding to the fact that city developers have already spent decades and
billions of dollars on projects that reinforce L.A.’s allegedly crumbling infrastructure and enhance the
city’s long-term viability as a host destination for global entertainment and sporting events.
One of the more notable projects on that front has been SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. Much of the
public discourse around the construction of SoFi has been centered on gentrification and threats to the
ecosystem. But Washington sees Inglewood’s new notoriety as home to one of the world’s premiere
sports and entertainment complexes as a momentous achievement, one that should be celebrated.
“Oakland is losing all their professional teams,” Washington says. He is, of course, referring to
the Oakland Raiders relocating to Las Vegas and the Golden State Warriors relocating to San Francisco,
both in 2019.
“[Meanwhile], you got Inglewood that's gaining, creating a very nice environment," he says.
“You got the NFL headquarters there. You got the two professional football teams in a beautiful stadium.
You got the Forum for concerts. And you got the Clippers,” who will call Inglewood home beginning
later this year.
“You have all types of entertainment options there,” Washington says. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

15
Chapter 5: “The Most Important Thing”
In September 2023, Bass announced Executive Directive 1 (ED 1) – a mandate to simplify and
expedite the approval and construction processes that had, in the past, served as a barrier to more
affordable housing in L.A.
Among ED 1’s most substantive features are the waiving of the discretionary review process for
affordable housing projects, shortened timeframes for the city’s processing of affordable housing
construction clearances and releases, and timely completion of all reviews, inspections, and approvals for
affordable housing projects that have submitted completed applications.
According to a recent CalMatters report, more than 13,770 affordable housing units have been
added to the city’s development pipeline under ED 1, nearly as many as the total number of affordable
units approved in L.A. from 2020 to 2022.
Veronica Hendrix counts herself among those most encouraged by Mayor Bass’ commitment to
more affordable housing throughout the city.
“For me, affordable housing is the most important thing,” Hendrix says. “Affordable housing
impacts all of those [other issues].”
During the time she worked for the EMD, Hendrix went out into communities to conduct
workshops called Map Your Neighborhood, which outlined ways neighbors can work together to survive
disasters until the city can provide aid. That experience strengthened her bond with affordable housing
residents across the city.
“One of the biggest accomplishments we had with that program,” Hendrix says, “was working
within public housing sites.”

16
Working knowledge of the stumbling blocks that oftentimes exacerbate the affordable housing
issue also helps Hendrix maintain a realistic expectation regarding the extent to which Bass or any
politician, for that matter, can devise and implement a comprehensive solution to the problem.
“There's only so much the government can do when it comes to housing, because they don't set
the prices or the rates,” Hendrix says.
Like former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti told radio station KCRW in a 2022 interview, “There’s no
cavalry. The mayor of Los Angeles is not some all-powerful being.”
Upshaw has a similarly practical view when it comes to the city’s affordable housing shortage
and the pressure it places on L.A. residents, albeit from a slightly different perspective.
“The housing situation is unfortunate,” says the Baldwin Hills resident. “Like I said, the city’s
grown tremendously and I think the landlords have gotten very greedy here.”
Recent data supports Upshaw’s assessment. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development reports that Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles has risen from
an average of $766 in 2000 to an average of $2,544 in 2024, an increase of over 230%.
“It used to be very cheap to live and rent in L.A.,” Upshaw says. “Those days are over.”
Bass’ progress on the affordable housing front continues to move at a snail’s pace, but there are
some signs of hope. For instance, in early April, L.A. County Supervisors approved more than $100
million for affordable housing projects in Downey, Santa Fe Springs, and El Camino Village.
Meanwhile, Bass has announced her desire to make ED 1 permanent.

17
Chapter 6: “It’s a Generational Battle”
During the conversation at Blackbird House, Bass is passionate about the vital role that nonprofits
play in the battle against homelessness and the other societal issues facing Black and brown citizens in
Los Angeles and across the country.
“The nonprofit sector is critically important,” the mayor says. “When we move people out of
tents into motels, it’s the nonprofit organizations that take care of the people once they’re in the motels.”
Bass also speaks adamantly about the important role that she and other senior members of the
nonprofit community play in shepherding those who are newer to the field. Reiterating her commitment to
mentoring younger generations of nonprofit founders, the mayor shares a project that she plans to launch
after she retires from politics.
“What I really would dream to do is to create an incubator,” she says, “especially for nonprofits
that are Black-led, Latino-led, but in South L.A.”
The idea came to Bass after seeing smaller nonprofits pushed to the side by major nonprofits after
she left CoCo. The incubator that she has in mind would largely focus on providing smaller nonprofits
with administrative support that would increase their chances of succeeding.
“The model that I’m interested in is a model that provides much more hands-on technical
assistance to help people learn how to be administrators,” she says.
“After a while, you recognize that social change is something you’re always going to have to
fight for,” Bass says. “If you really believe in fundamental social change, you have to be as invested in
who comes next and who else is there [as you are] in what you’re doing.”
The chat’s young host, local nonprofit founder Kaci Patterson, is particularly enlivened by the
mayor’s observation.
“It’s a generational battle,” Patterson adds.

18
“Yeah,” Bass says. “So, you want to make sure that you do everything you can to pass that baton
and make sure that those coming up are fully prepared.”

19
References
Bass, K. (2024, April 8). Personal communication [Personal interview]
Bass, Karen. (2022, April 29). Rep. Karen Bass remembers the 1992 Los Angeles Riot – and the work it
took to heal a community. BET, Retrieved from: https://www.bet.com/article/ljn7nq/la-riotanniversary-karen-bass-community-healing
Campbell, M. (2024, April 16). Personal communication [Personal interview]
Christopher, Ben. (2024, February 7). CalMatters. Los Angeles’ one weird trick to build affordable
housing at no public cost. Retrieved April 17, 2024, from: https://calmatters.org/housing/
2024/02/affordable-housing-los-angeles/
City of Los Angeles. (2023). 2022 City of LA payroll employee residence analysis. Retrieved from:
https://controller.lacity.gov/landings/2022-employee-residence-analysis
City of Los Angeles. (2023, December 4). Mayor Bass highlights steps towards building greener Los
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass first arrived at City Hall in December 2022, she inherited a mantle plagued by several well-documented bureaucratic challenges and public safety conundrums. Chief among those matters were the four primary issues that served as the foundation of her successful mayoral campaign – specifically, the need to address L.A.’s homelessness crisis, its myriad issues related to policing, its affordable housing shortage, and widespread calls to make the city’s outdated infrastructure more sustainable. Bass’ job performance as the first woman and second Black American elected mayor of America’s second-largest city has been heavily scrutinized over the course of her first 16 months in office. Perhaps none have paid closer attention to her work than have members of L.A.’s Black baby boomer population – a group whose most pressing everyday concerns run parallel to Bass’ municipal priorities and past work as a community organizer. A diverse range of views and reactions regarding Bass’ effectiveness in tackling the issues comes into focus through a series of one-on-one interviews with Black Angelenos, ages 60 and up, along with previously existing media coverage, and insights from local experts from the fields of academia and nonprofit services. Additional context is provided by original coverage of the mayor’s participation in an April 2024 fireside chat in Culver City. During that discussion, Bass, a baby boomer, herself, responds to this reporter’s questions about the importance of intergenerational mentoring throughout L.A.’s growing network of community-focused nonprofits and her plans for life after politics.

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Creator Dwight, Marlon (author)

Core Title In the eyes of L.A.'s Black baby boomers, Mayor Karen Bass makes the grade (barely): weighing in on the first Black woman's first 16 months as the city's chief executive

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 05/17/2024

Defense Date 05/17/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag affordable housing,baby boomer,California,city politics,gender,Homelessness,Infrastructure,inside safe,Karen Bass,L.A.,L.A. county,L.A. river,LAPD,Los Angeles,Los Angeles County,Los Angeles Police Department,Los Angeles River,mayor,nonprofit management,OAI-PMH Harvest,Police,Politics,race,Southern California,sustainability

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Castañeda, Laura (committee chair), Kahn, Gabriel (committee member), Pecot-Hébert, Lisa (committee member)

Creator Email marlon.dwight@gmail.com,mldwight@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113940197

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