Please Don't Edit or Excerpt This Recording of the Mayor's Town Hall.

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In November, the public had a rare opportunity to ask Mayor Karen Bass questions at a community-organized town hall. It's not your fault if you found out about it after the fact; her office didn't publicize it on social media nor in her press releases. And if you missed it but wanted to watch it after the fact, you couldn't. It was nowhere to be found online. What was intended as a public forum was now private. The only proof of the mayor's answers to people's questions existed as screen-recorded clips on social media.

It took filing a records request, but I now have a copy, and I'm making it available to the public. In a strange move, the city plastered watermarks across the top and bottom of it that say you're going to need the mayor's permission to share clips of it online. The watermarks and the effort it took from activists to put on the event add to the ongoing criticisms over the mayor's aversion to transparency and interacting with the public when it's not a photo-op.

A Sit-in and a Sit-Down.

The town hall wasn't originally the mayor's idea. It was put together by a group of community activists who, after weeks of trying, convinced her to sit down and speak directly to the public. They wanted an opportunity to ask questions directly to the mayor about the city's efforts to keep people safe from ICE and the LAPD's violent response to the protests over the summer.

Activist Catie Laffoon was part of the group and said she was frustrated with the mayor's lack of engagement with constituents during a time of fear and anger in the city.

“People had a lot of questions, but there was never a forum for our mayor to speak to the frightened people of the city—we just kept seeing her on TV making statements that contradicted our experience on the ground,” she said.

Their initial efforts went nowhere. They were regulars at the mayor's office, asking her staff over and over to set up a time for a sit-down and answer the public's questions. The mayor repeatedly ignored them, forcing Catie and five other activists to change tactics.

In August, they held a silent sit-in in the mayor's office lobby, refusing to leave until they spoke to the mayor. She never showed up, but her deputy chief of staff, Jenny Delwood, did and listened to their demands. The group left with the commitment from the mayor's office for a virtual public town hall.

The win was short-lived. The mayor's office made little effort to invite the public, leaving the activists to spread the word on social media and by passing out fliers. It paid off, with over 600 attendees in the Zoom meeting waiting room.

Watch What Happened Live

The questions to the mayor were unsurprisingly quite pointed, and her answers were often vague or noncommittal. Alexandria Augustine pressed the mayor on whether she supports removing Chief Jim McDonnell over the LAPD's handling of the summer's protests. The mayor was unaware people were calling for his removal and said she was unwilling to remove him. Here's the clip:

Here's Catie asking the mayor about the LAPD's increasing liability settlement payouts that, since 2019, have cost Angelenos $400 million. Catie cites my reporting for LA Public Press after the mayor pushes back against the total paid out, saying the city would be bankrupt if that was the case.

For the record, Mayor Bass never did respond to questions from LA Public Press asking her to clarify or correct her statements about my reporting.

Activist Daniel Sosa asked about the LAPD's violence towards journalists and protesters and got this response from the mayor:

Conditions Apply, but the Law Likely Says Otherwise

Her office didn't ignore my public records request, but they did conveniently wait nearly a month to release it, giving it to me the Friday before Christmas. And instead of sending me the original, they sent a copy with movie screener-like watermarks that say, “This video cannot be modified or excerpted without authorization” plastered across the top and bottom.

The unusual addition will act less as a deterrent and more as an encouragement to make memes or harmlessly share clips online to inform the public. The law may be on your side if you choose to do either.

A federal court has previously weighed in on whether local or state governments can claim copyrights in public videos of open meetings. In the case of City of Inglewood v. Teixeria, the court found the city cannot assert copyright protections on videos of open meetings to prevent a member of the public from “using portions of these videos in making his own videos that criticize the City and its elected officials.”

Even if the public is legally protected, it doesn’t mean the city wouldn’t take legal action. This is, after all, the same mayor who sued journalist Ben Camacho for releasing LAPD headshot photos given to him by the city through a public records request. Ben Camacho won, and the city learned a $500k lesson in prior restraint, paid for by LA city taxpayers.

I reached out to the mayor’s office to no response, asking what law allows them to limit how a public record is shared or excerpted. I also asked why organizers who eventually got the video were told they couldn't share it publicly, putting it under what is essentially a protective order.

“Pretty interesting that what was supposed to be a public town hall with our mayor is being censored,” said Catie. “It doesn’t look great for a mayor who keeps challenging me in public that freedom of speech will always be protected in this city, as I point out to her that LAPD does not allow people to peacefully gather and protest anywhere in the city without meeting them with violence.”

Avoidant and Absent

The mayor is going into her re-election campaign with her favorability shrinking and a growing frustration among the public with how she's handled the various compounding crises in the city. It's likely why she's avoided the public since the wildfires, keeping her appearances to podcast interviews with influencers or a well-organized photo op like her Shine LA volunteer clean-up events. She recently ducked public events honoring the one-year anniversary of the wildfires in Los Angeles, an unsurprising choice given the anger people have towards her and the city's response to the fires.

It shouldn't take never-ending pestering and a sit-in for the mayor to hold a town hall, or a press conference for that matter. There's clearly a need for a publicly available mayor when 600 people show up to an event she barely promoted.

Nor should it take a public records request for the mayor's office to cough up a recording of it. By hiding it thit,public is deprived of the important resources shared during the meeting. There was more to it than the question and answer segment. Other speakers outlined what to do if you witness an ICE abduction, and the LAPD gave a presentation about their role in immigration enforcement operations. People who missed the town hall can now hear the answers to questions they wanted to ask but couldn't.

The mayor's office did not respond to whether she'll hold future town halls, but at this point, you're unlikely to get in front of her unless you're involved with the 2028 Olympics or offering big money to support her re-election.

I've made the full recording available here since the mayor won't do it. What you do with it after you download it is up to you.