Karen Bass

Slow down if you're driving and plan ahead for the potential for longer travel times.

And please, if you don't have to leave your home, please don't.

I'm doing just fine.

Thank you so much for that kind introduction.

Well, I love that question because it definitely defines my life.

I grew up as a kid.

Couldn't wait to be an adult so I could get out in the world and fight for justice.

It has defined me.

And I think it's really about the time period in which I grew up.

which grew up watching the civil rights movement on TV as a child and listening to my father explain what life in the South was like.

My mother was born in Los Angeles, very different, considering it was years and years before the big migration after World War II.

And so I just always wanted to devote my life to fighting for justice.

To me, our country...

offered all of the opportunities in the world with all of the capacity, all of the resources, all of the wealth.

And I've never understood why certain sectors of our population had to suffer, had to suffer economically, had to face gross injustice.

And so to me, when you're in the land that has everything, why can't that be shared?

And that has defined my life and never, ever thought about running for office.

But when I did decide to take that step, it was with the same values and frankly, the same issues in mind.

Well, you know, it really involved flashbacks to the 1990s.

And I was at, for me, where I am now is full circle to where I started 35 years ago, when I started Community Coalition in 1990.