Revolution required.
Los Angeles’s capitalists have gone missing from political action. San Francisco offers a telling contrast: capitalist-backed lawmakers now dominate City Hall, and voters recently rejected a socialist revenue measure. In LA, the picture is reversed: socialists field viable candidates for mayor and city attorney, and they just won a revenue measure of their own.
As Noema Magazine observed in a recent essay on America at 250, elections are won by whoever bothers to organize. San Francisco’s capitalists took that lesson to heart, building robust networks of political activists and channeling millions of dollars into ballot measures, opposition campaigns, candidates, and political organizations. LA’s capitalists have done none of this. The socialists are organized. The capitalists are asleep.
Socialists have capitalists on the run in LA. The question is who will answer the call. Two organizations — Thrive Los Angeles and Vibrant LA — are trying, but they need far more support than they’re getting. As the country marks the anniversary of its founding revolution, Angeleno capitalists would do well to remember Tocqueville’s warning: everything starts with local political engagement.
