People Want To Know What Mayor Bass Is Going To Do About Homelessness. Here’s What She Said During The State Of The City Address

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, in her first State of the City address, called for a massive ramp-up of a motel shelter program for unhoused people – including having the city buy motels and hotels – and separately asked for funding to hire hundreds more police officers. The mayor said her proposed budget will include scaling up her signature program offering motel shelter to unhoused people, known as Inside Safe, to $250 million. Today on AirTalk, we discuss what Bass said during her address Monday night with Frank Stoltze, civics and democracy correspondent for LAist 89.3, and Nick Gerda, senior reporter covering unhoused communities for LAist 89.3. We also want to hear from you! Call 866-893-5722 or email atcomments@laist.com.

With files from LAist. Read the full story here

According To A New Study, Latino Representation On Non-Profit Boards In LA Has A Long Way To Go

A recent study by Latinos LEAD, a nonprofit that prepares and recruits Latinos for nonprofit board leadership, revealed a startling lack of Latino representation on the boards of nonprofits in Los Angeles county. Latinos made up 12% of the boards of the over 200 LA County based nonprofits reviewed, nowhere close to matching the actual demographics of the county, of which Latinos make up roughly half. Perhaps most strikingly, over a third of nonprofits had no Latinos on their boards at all. Joining us to unpack the data and talk about potential solutions is Patrick Salazar, executive director of Latinos LEAD, a nonprofit that prepares and recruits Latinos for nonprofit board leadership.

What Are The Absolute Best LA Books To Read? Tell Us Your Favorite

The L.A. Times has released a list of 110 of the most essential Los Angeles reads, just in time for the 2023 Times Festival of Books. The festival takes place Saturday April 22 and Sunday April 23. You can find the entire list of essential books here, plus you can check out their ranking of the top 26 best L.A. books. Today, we dive into the world of L.A. literature with Boris Kachka, books editor for the L.A. Times. We want to hear your top LA books of all time! Share by calling 866-893-5722 or email atcomments@laist.com.

LAist will have a booth at the 2023 Times Festival of Books. Here’s the full list of exhibitors 

Salary Increases, Reduced Class Sizes And More – Teachers Reach Tentative Contract Agreement With LA Unified

United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and the Los Angeles Unified School District have reached a tentative agreement for a new contract. The three-year contract would extend through June of 2025. According to a release from UTLA, the agreement includes a 21% salary increase for UTLA members and reduced class sizes, improvements to working conditions and increased support for immigrant students and families. Joining us to discuss the latest and where things go from here is Mariana Dale, K-12 education reporter for LAist and Clara Harter, who covers LAUSD for Los Angeles Daily News.

We reached out to LAUSD for comment but they had no one available at the time of the segment.

Latest On Reparations In CA: We Check-In On The CA Task Force’s Efforts & Talk Palm Springs’ Reparations Efforts

It’s been close to a month since the California Reparations Task Force said it would begin to make recommendations to the state legislature, having offered a number that would serve as restitution for disproportionately being overly-policed, incarcerated, and having dealt with decades of housing discrimination. The methodology was helped set by economists, with calculations being more than $800 billion for the aforementioned hurdles the Black community has faced. Although the number was proposed in this process, the task force had noted it wouldn’t look to force the state’s hand on how much is paid by the end of this process, since ultimately the legislature decides on that.

Alongside this process there have also been other efforts for forms of reparations on the local level, Bruce’s Beach and Palm Springs being nearby examples in Southern California. In Palm Springs, housing discrimination the led to the displacement of roughly 1,000 people is now being grappled with, having taken steps to address this issue. What progress has been made, though?

Today on AirTalk, we discuss efforts for reparations on the state and local level with Leslie Berestein Rojas, LAist Immigrant Communities Correspondent, and Kamilah Moore, California Reparations Task Force Chair.

Read or Listen to Leslie’s story, “The Palm Springs Government Burned Down Their Neighborhood — Now They're Seeking Reparations” on LAist.com. 

Twin Studies Expert Nancy Segal’s Latest Book Shares Stories Of The Twin Children Who Survived Horrific Experiments At Auschwitz

The horrors that took place at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp are too many to detail, but among those who were subject to the human experiments conducted there were sets of twins who had been imprisoned. The infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who came to be known as the ‘Angel of Death’ carried out horrendous genetic experiments on what is believed to be more than a thousand sets of twins. The vast majority of the test subjects did not survive. The stories of some of those who did, however, are chronicled in Cal State Fullerton Psychology Professor Nancy Segal’s new book “The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive.” Segal, a prolific researcher in the area of twin studies, visited Auschwitz on the 40th anniversary of the camp’s liberation back in 1985, and her new book shares photographs from her trip and the stories she learned along the way and afterward.

Today on AirTalk, Professor Segal joins us once again on “AirTalk” to discuss her latest book and share some of the stories of the twins who survived Auschwitz.