Fil-Am activists back Karen Bass for mayor of Los Angeles

Second Virtual Meet & Greet with Karen Bass (foreground) via Zoom: targeting communities in the Los Angeles South Bay area, including Wilmington and San Pedro held March 13, 2022. INQUIRER/FL Ibanez

LOS ANGELES – A core group of local Fil-Am activists launched a community drive to help Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass to become the first progressive black woman mayor of Los Angeles.

Meeting weekly, members of group say that among the many mayoral candidates none have the political experience or activist roots as Bass. She was among Democrats whom President Biden considered for his running mate in 2020.

Bass created the Community Coalition in the 1990s, when she was an emergency-room physician’s assistant at USC-LA County Hospital. The coalition was founded intentionally to bridge Black and brown communities and to address the crack cocaine epidemic at the time.

Members of Pin@ys for Karen Bass have been doing political organizing for decades and were successful in getting Fil-Am support when Karen Bass ran for State Assembly (2003) and then for US Congress (2010).

“We are confident that we will get her elected to be the first African-American woman Mayor of Los Angeles,” Carmen Ojeda-Kimbrough said in an online interview. Rose Ibanez added, “We’ve known Karen for over 40 years when we joined each other’s demonstrations against the Marcos Dictatorship and apartheid in South Africa.”

Pin@ys for Karen Bass has organized successful virtual community Meet & Greet events to introduce Bass to Filipino communities of Historic Filipinotown, LA South Bay and also but also their broader public.

It will soon reach out to the San Fernando Valley and host a fundraising concert featuring jazz singer Charmaine Clamor and friends on May 7. Congresswoman Bass was delighted to be meet Clamor at a Fil-Am home reception-fundraiser held last February 26 in Los Angeles which raised $10K for the Bass campaign. To find out more, check out Pin@ys for Karen Bass – Facebook Page.