Nithya Raman
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH JAMIE LOFTUS
⤏ PHOTOS BY NATASHA RIBEIRO-AUSTRICH
⤏ PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2020
In a year where there’s little hope to be found, Nithya Raman’s City Council campaign in Los Angeles has ignited a massive volunteer coalition, direct action, and a glimpse of a future to be excited about.
JAMIE LOFTUS: I feel very lucky. I’ve met so many wonderful people while volunteering for your campaign. Everyone is so cool!
NITHYA RAMAN: People are really nice and they really care about LA. I look at this terrible state we’re in and I think, “This all has to mean something.”
JL: It seems like you and your campaign have to do a lot of double duty; you’re not just actively campaigning all the time, but you’ve put so much work into getting people information that’s not readily accessible.
NR: For the first time in LA, our municipal elections and our federal elections are happening on the same day and on the same ballot. Which means people are already going in to vote in March for their favorite presidential primary candidate, and in November they’re voting against Trump, and so the challenge for candidates has transformed this election. The goal for a City Council race is to get people who are already at the polls to look down ballot and for me. That’s one of the reasons why I ran! Because a major problem in Los Angeles for many, many years was that only a very narrow percentage of residents actually voted in municipal elections. Just to give you a sense of the scale of change, more people voted for just me in this primary than voted for both candidates in the last general run off election.
JL: That’s absurd.
NR: Yeah! So the scale of the change is enormous. For me, it was really important because so few people have participated historically, and because City Council members and City Council elected officials did nothing to invite people into municipal elections. Policy making has benefited a narrow set of needs, and has ignored the needs of the majority of Angelenos. So we have an incredible opportunity in this election to refocus the narrative. Let’s tell people about the powers of City Council. Let’s tell people about why these positions matter and why the decisions they’re making haven’t been serving you well on all the issues you care about in Los Angeles. So we see it as part and parcel of voter outreach, to educate voters on why this matters. And for a lot of the volunteers and supporters, it’s the first time they’re engaging in municipal politics. That’s what the civic education work does — it draws in people who would normally be disengaged, and I think you can build a winning coalition that way. Or at least I hope.
JL: I’ve been learning about exactly how powerful the Los Angeles City Council is. What are the reasons that the LA City Council votes together, almost unanimously, so frequently?
NR: Yeah they have had an incredible culture of unanimous voting. I think The LA Podcast did some research on [LA City Council’s] voting record, and they found — over the last five years — the Council had voted unanimously 99% of the time.
“Policy making has benefited a narrow set of needs, and has ignored the needs of the majority of Angelenos.”
The thing that I think we always emphasize is the huge discrepancy between the very progressive leanings of most residents of this city and the actual policy making that comes out of City Hall. Even if the language that comes out of City Hall is pretty progressive, the policy making is not. It’s hard to pay attention because there’s not robust local media coverage of what’s happening at City Hall. It isn’t easy to vote, or to find out who to vote for. It isn’t easy to find out about the issues, or why they matter. Because so few people were engaged in city government, small groups of organized residents were really able to control policy making. For example, police unions have had an outside influence in city politics because they were able to pay for independent expenditure committees or PACs for candidates. Or small numbers of Homeowner’s Associations were able to put their issues at the forefront of Council races. But now, because so many more people are participating, I think this gap between the very progressive leanings of LA residents and the policy making coming out of City Hall will narrow. Residents will hold elected officials accountable to make the changes that we want them to make. And the unanimous voting came out of this culture with a lack of transparency. It’s a City Council that is dominated by career politicians who aren’t just looking to be in Council, they want to have 20, 30, 40 year careers in politics. They play musical chairs going from one elected position to another. Because this is such a small group of people who have historically been involved in local politics, they’re afraid to disagree with one another because they will sacrifice their political allegiances and potentially risk their political future. No one is willing to do that.
JL: People are getting the information they need to make a change which is incredible! I feel like your campaign has a lot to do with offering sources for getting good information.
NR: And I think that process has been hugely expanded by the uprising and the recent protests, because I think people have been making connections between the power of local government and the values they saw being violated in front of them! I think we’re a small part of this change, but I think that we are part of this bigger movement that was ignited since the murder of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter has been talking about these issues for so long, but now more people are educating themselves on the local issues.
JL: You referenced this earlier, the majority of City Council members have taken campaign contributions from police unions. How is that allowed?
NR: There are so many people who are seeking to influence decision making at City Hall. Because they are able to pay into campaign coffers and spend on behalf of candidates, they have had an outsized influence on policy making.
“I think we’ve put more and more of our local budget into policing as a response to a range of issues that never required an armed response.”
In the case of the police, I think we’ve put more and more of our local budget into policing as a response to a range of issues that never required an armed response. Police are now social workers and therapists, they’re first responders to domestic violence issues. Because of the influence that police unions have had on local budgets, policing has been seen as the response to so many social issues that actually should’ve been responded to with specialized care that would’ve been far more appropriate. Same thing with real estate development or with fossil fuel interests. They’ve been able to twist policy making in City Hall in ways that I think have been really detrimental for residents. We need to shine a light on these influences and the resulting decisions that have emerged from their influence. We can push to remove these influences completely! Push for publicly financed elections, push for reform of campaign finance in Los Angeles. We can have policy making in Los Angeles that actually is better for Angelenos, but we have to pay attention.
JL: What is within the City Council’s power to address homelessness and the housing crisis that is being ignored?
“We can have policy making in Los Angeles that actually is better for Angelenos, but we have to pay attention.”
NR: We need to eliminate the criminalization of poverty, take away laws that criminalize the act of being homeless; replacing what is now a system of policing and criminalization with one that is entirely focused on care and services. And I think that that is doable. Creating that system would require the same amount of resources that we’re putting toward homelessness right now, but just reconfigured towards care as opposed to criminalization.
On housing, I think we need to be doing two kinds of things. One, build a lot more affordable housing. We can invest in public housing again. We can build “First Step Housing” which is basically dormitory style housing to replace a really diminished stock of single room occupancy hotels. These are places where people can go to live that are on the brink of homelessness or experiencing hardships. We also have to strengthen the systems that keep people in their homes. We don’t have a comprehensive rental registry of every rental unit across the city. We need to use that rental registry to proactively inform tenants about their rights. We need to make sure that every tenant has access to a lawyer. In criminal court, everyone has a right to counsel. In civil court — which is where eviction cases happen — residents don’t have a right to a lawyer. So these are ways we can strengthen our system of tenants rights and tenants protections that actually enable people to stay in their homes.
JL: And all of these things are within the City Council’s scope of influence?
NR: That’s correct.
JL: How [has] the pandemic affected the priorities and immediacy of your campaign? How did you think the campaign was going to go before the lockdown? And what kind of adjustments have you had to make to accommodate the most unprecedented circumstances?
NR: In the primary, we had an incredibly joyful campaign. It felt like all of us involved in the campaign were coming together to celebrate a vision of the future! But now, because of the pandemic, we don’t really have a chance to have that kind of joy or togetherness, you know? So that’s been something we’ve missed the most. On the other hand, some people have more time on their hands than they did before, and we’ve been able to translate a lot of excitement and volunteer energy into the digital space.
JL: I miss those days too! Like being crammed into a bar? I miss the feeling. You’ve been a candidate — and person in general — who has inspired so many people to get involved in local politics. Who was that person for you? Who was your Nithya?
NR: It wasn’t really a person for me. I was living in India at the time — in Delhi, working simultaneously at a dance company and an international human rights organization. One day, I read in the paper about a massive eviction of slums that was happening on the banks of the river Yamuna. Something like 150,000 people lost their homes in the space of a few days. They were bulldozed by the government to make room for the Commonwealth Games — this big Olympics-like sports event. At the time, I was reading about these different international treaties that had enshrined people’s basic human rights in places across the world. But here I was in Delhi, looking at a situation where 150,000 people had just lost their homes because of the city government! I thought, “If we don’t change our local government and hold them accountable for protecting vulnerable residents, we will never see the realization of all of these lofty ideals.” It was this very clear moment where I thought, “We haven’t been talking about local government.” When I left India and moved back to the US, I feel like I brought that lesson back with me. I got a masters in urban planning as a result and continued to work at the local level.
JL: What are a few things keeping you grounded and sane through all of this?
NR: At some point at night my kids call my name. I usually end up in their room, and wake up on the extra mattress in the morning. They would’ve crawled into bed with me — I have 4 year old twins — so every morning I wake up with one on each side of me. And the one thing that has kept me sane through all of this is that, on the morning of November 4th, I’ll probably still wake up with them on either side of me. No matter what, I’ll have them. That’s what’s kept me really sane through this.
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⤏ JAMIE LOFTUS (SHE/HER) IS A COMEDIAN, WRITER, AND ANIMATOR IN LOS ANGELES (IF THAT'S OKAY), ORIGINALLY FROM BOSTON (WITH YOUR PERMISSION, OF COURSE). JAMIE IS A NATIONALLY TOURING STANDUP COMEDIAN, TV WRITER, AND HAS BEEN FEATURED NEARLY EVERYWHERE, INCLUDING THE NEW YORKER, VICE, MOTHERBOARD, THE BOSTON GLOBE, SPLITSIDER, FAST COMPANY, MAN REPELLER, PLAYBOY MAGAZINE AND PASTE MAGAZINE. JAMIE IS A FREAK BITCH AND HAS ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION OF DYING.