The Brief

Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose long political career involved representing South Los Angeles on the City Council, the County Board of Supervisors and in the State Legislature, was sentenced Monday to 42 months in federal prison and ordered to pay a $30,000 fine for his conviction on corruption charges.

While acknowledging that Ridley-Thomas has done "an enormous amount of good" for the community over three decades of public service, U.S. District Court Judge Dale Fischer said in handing down the sentence that Ridley-Thomas has shown "no remorse" and that “the entire community has been victimized.”

Fischer added that deterrence of public corruption “is an extremely important factor in this case.”

MRT's statement to the court

In a statement to the court, Ridley-Thomas said his actions — "and the fallout from those actions — have hurt my family, beginning with my wife of 44 years who should never have had to go through an ordeal like this. I apologize to her with every breath and with my whole heart. And I apologize to my sons, my daughter-in-law and grandchildren, as well as other family members whose lives have been disrupted and traumatically impacted."

Ridley-Thomas, 68, has appealed his conviction. In his statement, he said he believed it was "fair to say that this case exists somewhere between what is clearly legal conduct on one end, and clearly illegal conduct on the other. In between there is a line that distinguishes actions that are illegal — and actions that may be ill-advised, but NOT illegal."

Reactions to the sentence

On Monday, the courtroom and an overflow room at the Downtown LA federal courthouse were packed with supporters of Ridley-Thomas.

“This is a very sad day for so many of us,” said Rev. Norman Johnson Sr. of First New Christian Church, who also heads the Ridley-Thomas support group called South LA Clergy for Public Accountability. He noted sentencing came on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington.

“Mark Ridley-Thomas represents the best of that March in terms of freedom, transformative politics and the affirmation of the value and worth of every human being," he said.

Cornel West, the civil rights and political activist who has launched a third-party candidacy for president, attended a rally in support of Ridley-Thomas prior to sentencing.

“Mark Ridley-Thomas is one of the greatest public servants in the history of this state," he said. “His integrity cannot be called into question by legal proceedings.”

U.S. Attorney Martín Estrada praised the prison sentence, even though it was below the six years in prison his prosecutors had recommended. "It shows that regardless of what type of power one has, there will be consequences when you engage in corruption," Estrada said.

U.S. Attorney Martîn Estrada addresses the media after Mark Ridley-Thomas was sentenced on federal corruption charges on Aug. 28, 2023

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What's next

Judge Fischer ordered Ridley-Thomas to surrender by Nov. 13. It was unclear whether Ridley-Thomas will be allowed to stay out of prison while he appeals his case.

Speaking on behalf of his family, Ridley-Thomas' son Sinclair said, “We are deeply disappointed.” Ridley-Thomas's attorney, Galia Amram, added, “This whole case has been devastating for the supervisor.”

How we got here

In March, a jury found the former county supervisor guilty of conspiring to support a county contract for USC in exchange for one of the school’s deans providing his son a full scholarship and faculty job. The dean also helped funnel money from a Ridley-Thomas political fund to one operated by his son through the university.

In some quarters, there were harsh words for Ridley-Thomas in the wake of his conviction.

Ridley-Thomas “defrauded the people of the county,“ Estrada said after the jury handed down the verdicts in March. “Any time a politician engages in corruption and breaches his duty of trust to the public, it is a great crime that must be brought to justice.”

Hans Johnson, president of the East Area Progressive Democratic Club, wrote in the L.A. Daily News:

Johnson also likes to point out that Ridley-Thomas wasn’t always progressive — he voted to keep a Christian cross on the official L.A. County seal, albeit for historical reasons.

Looking back on MRT's career

The TV camera pans the crowd of protesters outside Parker Center, the old LAPD headquarters on Los Angeles Street. It is 1991, three days after the beating of Rodney King.

Mark Ridley-Thomas is among them.

“His time has ended,” he declares of the LAPD’s notorious leader at the time, Chief Daryl Gates. Hours earlier, Ridley-Thomas was part of a delegation that met with Gates during a “candid exchange” with “sharp disagreement.”

“We wanted to look him in the eye and make it clear that he knew where we stood.”

For more than four decades, Ridley-Thomas was in the middle of some of the biggest political battles in L.A. He didn’t limit himself to local issues.

Audio from the Pacifica Radio Archives features Ridley-Thomas at a 1980s-era protest outside a Century City fundraiser for President Ronald Reagan. He rails against Reagan’s support of the apartheid regime in South Africa and against the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government’s human rights abuses.

“We have to say no to apartheid as well as say no to intervention in Central America,” he shouts into a bullhorn.

Legacy of progressive activism

Many say Ridley-Thomas has been one of the city’s most progressive leaders, and that his conviction shouldn’t mean forgetting all he did.

Mayor Karen Bass knew Ridley-Thomas back in the 1980’s, when he was executive director of the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — the organization Martin Luther King, Jr. started in 1957.

“For decades, Mark Ridley-Thomas has been a champion for our city, a civil rights activist, a thought leader, and a policy maker who made a real impact on this city,” Bass said after Ridley-Thomas' conviction.

Los Angeles County Board Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas answers the media's questions in USC's Associates Park on Jan. 19, 2013.

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On the website of Community Coalition, the organization Bass helped found in 1991, Ridley-Thomas is quoted recalling discussions with her and others about alternative ways to approach the crack epidemic ravaging South L.A. at the time.

“It began in the late ‘80s as a conversation about how we could more intelligently, humanely and effectively respond to this crisis,” he said.

In his early work, Ridley-Thomas played an instrumental role in building relationships in South L.A. as it turned from predominantly African American to Latino, said former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who worked with him on the issue during that time.

“He thought early on that it was important that we come together and focus on our commonalities while also discussing differences,” said Villaraigosa, who co-chaired the Latino-Black Roundtable with Ridley-Thomas. He said at one point the two appeared together on the cover of LA Weekly with the headline, “The New Progressives.”

MRT's City Council career

Ridley-Thomas was elected to the City Council representing South L.A.’s eighth district. He served from 1991 to 2003.

In one of his first major acts, Ridley-Thomas established what he called an Empowerment Congress to encourage community participation in governance and connect people to city services. The group has endured. Its annual meetings attract more than 1,000 people. It helped inspire the city’s neighborhood council system.

Portrait of Councilman Mark Ridley Thomas, taken at an NFL News Conference held at Macy's Plaza, downtown Los Angeles on Aug. 9, 1999.

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Jaime Regalado, the former head of the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State L.A., recalls how Ridley-Thomas supported a controversial gang intervention training program that used former gang members to help young people.

“There’s a whole history of things that he supported that very few politicians would touch,” said Regalado.

Ridley-Thomas was ahead of his time when it came to funding programs to combat sexual and domestic violence, according to Patti Giggans, executive director of the nonprofit Peace Over Violence.

“Mark was very committed to the issue of preventing violence against women and girls way before #MeToo,” she said. “He was one of the few men who stood up for survivors at the time.”

'Consummate tactician and strategist'

Ridley-Thomas played a crucial role in the building of Staples Center, now called Crypto.com Arena, said John Semcken of Majestic Realty. At Majestic, Semcken was responsible for the development of the arena in the late 1990s.

Ridley-Thomas helped win the support of reluctant fellow council members, including Joel Wachs, who made a name for himself by making ever-increasing demands of the developers, according to Semcken. “Mark sat me down and said, ‘You need to give him a win because he can’t back out,’” he recalled.

They cut a deal.

“Staples Center never would have been built if it weren’t for Mark Ridley-Thomas,” he said.

Semcken called Ridley-Thomas “the most effective politician I have ever met in my life, and I have met a lot of them.”

“He’s the consummate tactician and strategist,” said Villaraigosa.

A pivotal seat: the L.A. County Board of Supervisors

Ridley-Thomas spent four years in the state legislature before returning to L.A. to run for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors in 2008. He served the maximum of 12 years.

On the board, Ridley-Thomas fought to reform the Department of Children and Family Services, authored the county’s minimum wage ordinance, and for years was the lone voice in favor of the creation of a civilian board to watchdog the Sheriff’s Department.

Mark Ridley-Thomas Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors attends the BAFTA LA opening of the Helen Keller Park Screening Room at Helen Keller Park on Dec. 10, 2014 in Los Angeles.

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“He was our only champion,” said Mark-Antony Clayton-Johnson of Dignity and Power Now, a nonprofit that advocates for changes at the department and in the jails. “He was the only one that was willing to push for independent civilian oversight.”

Ridley-Thomas patiently waited for the election of two new members of the five-member board who would support the proposal — then successfully pushed it through.

But perhaps Ridley-Thomas’ crowning achievement as a supervisor was the 2015 reopening of a vastly improved Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South L.A. It had been closed for nearly a decade after the federal government pulled funding over a series of problems, including controversial patient deaths that earned it the nickname “killer King.”

“He made it clear that he was simply not going to rest until that institution was resurrected,” said Robert Ross, CEO of The California Endowment.

It wasn’t easy. Ridley-Thomas had to maneuver over myriad bureaucratic and political hurdles. He also wanted a project labor agreement that would give job preferences to people who lived nearby and from low-income zip codes. But he couldn’t get anyone on the board to second his motion, according to his longtime chief of staff, Vincent Harris.

Ridley-Thomas convinced the board’s arch-conservative Mike Antonovich to second the motion — just to initiate a debate.

“He did not let ideological differences get in the way,” Harris said. “It illustrated his ability to reach across the lines.”

Ridley-Thomas ended up winning two more votes for an agreement that provided jobs to people who may otherwise never have worked on the project — even though Antonovich voted no.

“He’ll be remembered as one of the stalwarts of not only the African American community but of progressive communities around L.A.,” Regalado said.

Regal — or roughshod?

Over 31 years in public office, Ridley-Thomas almost always wore a tie, was deliberate in his speech, and tended to lecture when he spoke. He could be in love with his own words — more than most politicians. He could be hard to work for, say former staff.

What was to some Ridley-Thomas’ regal and thoughtful stature was to others pompous and arrogant.

“What is viewed as confidence and boldness in a white male is often viewed as arrogance in an African American,” said Ross, who is Black. He noted Ridley-Thomas “didn’t suffer fools gladly.”

An anti-boycott protester (L) confronts Los Angeles County supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas (R) after they voted 3-2 for Los Angeles County to join a boycott of the state of Arizona, in Los Angeles on June 1, 2010.

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Ross declined to comment on the guilty verdicts handed down to Ridley-Thomas, but lamented his loss from the political scene. After his conviction, Ridley-Thomas was required to relinquish the city council seat he won in 2020.

“The injustice to me is Mark Ridley-Thomas being removed from the playing field of civic leadership and civic engagement,” Ross said.

Rabbi Steven Jacobs worked with Ridley-Thomas on numerous issues over the decades.

“Mark has made L.A. a greater city,” he said.

Jacobs said Ridley-Thomas must now figure out a way to contribute in a new capacity, recalling how the legendary violinist Itzhak Pearlman once played on during a concert despite losing one of his strings.

“It's his duty to continue to make music with what remains,” he said.

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.