Karen Bass

And I'm like, well, okay, that's a noble thing to do, but that's on the other side of the world.

Fortunately, though, it coincided with Nelson Mandela becoming liberated and apartheid ending.

And I said, I have to turn my focus to the domestic issue.

I had to leave my faculty position and jump into trying to solve that problem.

So my motivation in everything that I've done has really been the same.

It's the same issues I've been pursuing.

It's the same motivation.

So coming from a city like Los Angeles, again, it has everything in the world to offer.

We have so much wealth and opportunity in the city.

And for a segment of the city to not be able to access that, it's the same problem of injustice in the world of plenty.

And so that's what led me to wanting to leave the city at this point in time.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Well, it was most important that we address the crisis that was facing Los Angeles.

So the day that I was sworn in the next day, instead of going to city hall, I went to our emergency operations center and I declared the city to be in a state of emergency.

And that state of emergency was over the fact that we had 40 plus thousand people on our streets.

And we set out a campaign to reduce the number of people who are living on the street, street homelessness, to address that situation and to involve people in the process.

And I think one of the most important things that we were able to do was disprove the notion

that people were on those streets willingly and didn't want to leave the streets.

By the way, I must say to you that the African-American population of Los Angeles is 9%.