Dear John,

Last month, the State of California was declared the fourth largest economy in the world. The seat of that economy, the City of Los Angeles, has the third highest GDP of any city in the world. Given these rankings, it can be tempting to dismiss Los Angeles, and California as a whole, as surviving, even thriving, amidst the turmoil of Trump and his billionaire enablers’ gleeful dismantling of democracy. 

But of course that isn’t the real story. 

The real story is that the City of Los Angeles has a poverty rate hovering around 17%. In 2023, Los Angeles County was dubbed the “wage theft capital of the nation,” with an estimated $26-$28 million stolen from workers every week. 80% of low-wage workers in Los Angeles have experienced wage theft, robbed of the prosperity they create for our city, state, and country. We are living through the moment in our shared history with the greatest concentration of wealth in the hands of a few – worse even than the Gilded Age – and billionaire bosses want to enshrine that power for all time. 

To echo Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Los Angeles is literally two cities: one basking in the warm California “sunlight of opportunity” and one “on a lonely island of poverty in a vast ocean of material prosperity.” 

The Tourism Workers Rising campaign has been an object lesson in what happens, and what we are capable of achieving, when the inhabitants of those two cities look each other straight in the eye. For two and a half years, our coalition worked to pass a new living wage and family health benefits for tourism workers. Corporations fought us every step of the way, trotting out the same tired warnings about mass worker firings, company exodus, and the death of small businesses that LAANE’s researchers have refuted again and again and again for more than two decades. Meanwhile, hotel and airport workers spoke out about their choices between food and rent, their four-hour daily commutes, and their need to work two or more jobs just to stay afloat. 

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council made the right decision and made history, passing the highest living wage in the country — an immediate raise for tourism workers, with an escalator to $30/hour by the arrival of the Olympics. Our two cities took one big collective step toward becoming one city for all.

Tourism, besides being one of the defining industries of Los Angeles, is what’s known as a “sticky industry:" unlike manufacturing or data mining, it can’t be moved or outsourced overseas. Los Angeles will be hosting the World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 2028. These events are coming regardless of tariffs, and corporate bosses can’t just pick up and leave when they don’t want to share, because the product they’re selling is our home.

As we face down this gauntlet of events, now is the time to go on the offensive, and to be unapologetic in our vision for an economy that works for everyone. Los Angeles doesn’t have to be two cities. Income inequality isn’t inevitable. These major sporting events don’t have to be wealth extractors further lining the pockets of billionaires. With organizing, with good policy and oversight, with bargaining for the common good, we can leverage these events to create legacy improvements that lift wages in sectors across the city, that build housing for all, and that generate revenue for lasting public infrastructure.

This historic victory for hotel and airport workers is the bellwether and the beginning, but we won’t stop there. We are going for the gold. Join us.