On May 14, 2025, the Los Angeles City Council held a regularly scheduled meeting. The primary focus was the debate and amendment of Item 5, an ordinance to increase wages and health benefits for tourism workers at LAX and hotels. After extensive public comment and multiple amendments, the council voted 12-3 to approve the ordinance as amended, with a second reading scheduled for May 23, 2025.
Like all workers unite, right? If you come after one community, one vulnerable community, we're gonna stand up together and show you that you're messing with all of us. One struggle! One fight! Workers! One struggle! We're standing today with all workers because we know that right now workers are under attack. Families are under attack. The Department of Education is under attack, and we're not gonna stand by that. And we want to make sure that we stand in solidarity and push back on these unfair policies that are targeting the working class folks. We have about 40 to 45% unemployment currently, right now. How many people are not working right now? That's how many people are working right now. I work for the animation guild where IATSC local 839, and our members are losing jobs, they're losing their health insurance, they're going on unemployment, they're using the social safety net programs the state has. Council Member Adrine Nazarian welcomed industry workers to City Hall as the council approved his motion to make filming in LA more affordable. We're in front of City Hall right now. We just took a unanimous vote of a motion that I introduced with several of my colleagues to make sure that we help protect filming in Los Angeles. Production has really dried up. We actually have members who haven't worked in almost two years. Two years, think about that. They've exhausted their unemployment, they've run out of health care, they don't really have money to pay bills, buy food, just do the normal everyday stuff to survive. So that's why this was really critical for us to be here in support. I think about the downtown ecosystem when I think about this problem because we've seen shuttered businesses, we have empty storefronts, we have less foot traffic on our streets. Why not use this moment to increase production in parts of our city that also need that economic boost? This was a first step to making sure that we look at how we can reduce permitting costs, how we can reduce parking to personnel usage and other permitting fees in order to make sure that we're lowering costs on all fronts and that filmmakers are motivated to continue filming and making films in Los Angeles. Those of us that come here from other states and other cities, we come here because this is the Mecca. This is the place where all of the magic happens, and the idea that in the last four or five years, it's really hard to get a job in the city. This was a first good step to make sure that we let entertainment industry know that Los Angeles is listening, cares, and what's wants to take the right steps to make sure that we protect and preserve and grow this industry back again in Los Angeles. Once this performing arts center is built, we're gonna host Shakespeare and so much more art in the beauty of Griffith Park. Over the last 14 years, we've had to build a temporary platform there. We're on a slope right now. It's kind of difficult to build that. So it can never really be that big or that high. So we had sightline problems with the audience. The sets couldn't be all that impressive. It's very hard to light from above. So this is gonna have a much bigger stage. A tall overhead grid. The lighting was sets, everything's gonna look so much more impressive. When you have art performed in nature, that it attracts families, young people in to enjoy it. Griffith Park in particular is such a beautiful gem here in the city of Los Angeles, and to have the ability to showcase art here, as is done in major parks across the world. This is something that Los Angeles is long overdue for. One of the things that I think I would love to highlight just about this space is that it's seen so many different functions. It was the old zoo before the LA Zoo opened up. Then it became sort of a picnic area. It's still a space where we congregate, really getting those family moments together. These are places where people celebrate. You know, that's what we say about our parks. They're places where people recreate, but they're also where you know spaces where people celebrate. People have been waiting for the groundbreaking of this theater for a very long time.