🎧 New Episode with Lauren Meister

🎧New podcast episode Welcome back everyone. Our guest this week is Lauren Meister, my neighbor and friend and the first elected official to appear on the show. She’s a current city councilmember, serving her third and final term, and a two time former mayor of the City of West Hollywood. Lauren is someone I see just about every day. As she’s walking her beloved dogs through the neighborhood, I’m usually headed out the door to pick up my kids from school. And in these little daily moments, we’ve managed to become good friends.

I wanted to have Lauren on the show to highlight her inspiring story and showcase her commitment to practical progressive politics. West Hollywood is this little 1.9 square mile place, just one of LA County’s 88 cities, situated right in the heart of LA. Even though small, with only 35,000 or so citizens, Weho packs a big punch when it comes to culture and political influence.

As you’ll hear in this episode, Lauren is someone who didn’t set out to become a politician but became one, almost by accident, by taking responsibility for her community and standing up for what she believed in and cared about. In other words, she answered the call to service.

What I respect and admire so much about Lauren is her fierce commitment to practical and independent politics. While she and I don’t agree everything—for example on rent control—I know when I talk with her that what’s behind her position is serious, independent thought and not just the borrowed views of the party or what’s convenient by the standards of the day. This is a quality that is so very rare, especially in the often rough and tumble world of municipal politics, and makes her a great advocate for her diverse constituency.

In this engaging conversation we get into the debates around police and public safety, housing and homelessness, state interference with local control over zoning, and much, much more.

As always, hope you enjoy.

Links

https://twitter.com/meister4weho

https://meister4weho.com/

https://www.weho.org/city-government/city-council/councilmembers/councilmember-lauren-meister

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

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🙏 Thank you!