Karen Bass

The challenge of today is one, there's incredible opportunities to communicate, which is why I appreciate this opportunity.

But on the other hand, there is so much noise that people can easily be confused by all of the information that is put out there because you don't really have a way, unless you're really attentive, to distinguish fact from fiction.

You need to do your homework a little bit to see.

that Los Angeles is 500 square miles and what took place happened in one square mile.

You need to do a little bit of work versus just look at the pictures of one area and assume that that spanned it and impacted a population of almost 4 million.

Well, by staying connected to the people and by never isolating myself, you know, in the ivory tower of City Hall.

And I believed that when I was in Congress and I believed that when I was in Sacramento.

I have always maintained strong ties within the community so that my purpose is never confused.

But, you know, when times are hard, I do look to history.

I mean, I'll never forget, by the way, when Trump was first elected and we were all so traumatized.

You remember that time.

I mean, just in disbelief for a while.

And I remember going to the African-American Museum and spending three hours in the basement

reading every exhibit, watching every video about what happened during the time period of enslavement.

And you just think about all that the African-American population has been through.

And it's like, how dare I not fight?

You know, because I don't care how hard we're having it today.

Nothing, nothing compares to prior moments in our history, whether you were talking

enslavement, Jim Crow, which I also called apartheid, US apartheid, because, you know, the South African regime, when they were setting up apartheid in the early part of the last century, they came to the South to study what was happening in your state and in other states to set up their system.

And I think about all of the fights we've had to get where we are today.