Today’s guest is George Gascón, a candidate running for the office of Los Angeles District Attorney. To quote an editorial from the L.A. Times from October of last year, “There is a strong case to be made that aside from the presidential race, the most important item before voters in 2020 will be the race for L.A. County D.A.” The reasoning behind such a bold prediction is centered on the relatively high incarceration rates in L.A. county. The two-term incumbent, Jackie Lacey, has made a name for herself as being tough on crime. So when George Gascón entered the race running on a platform to end mass incarceration, the death penalty, and to enact police reform, people took notice. His platform has only increased in relevance since the death of George Floyd instigated America’s racial reckoning. Gascón has since garnered the support of progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as well as musicians John Legend and Common.
Listen in as we cover everything from how he’s running his campaign during the age of Zoom/social distancing, the difficulties of changing structural problems within policing, and how he plans to change them, and we go into the specifics of his plan to completely reform L.A.’s system of mass incarceration.
