Okay, uh, hello listeners. It's me, Will Menecker. Uh, if you've been listening to this show for a while now,

you will know that we are one for one on our, uh, LA City Council guests joining the Los Angeles City Council.

And it is my distinct pleasure to announce that we are doubling down on this strategy and to welcome to the show candidate for LA Los Angeles City Council District 13.

It is Hugo Soto Martinez Hugo. Thank you so much for being with me.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm very happy to be here.

Uh, Hugo, I want to talk a little bit about your campaign, but before we get into that, I was just wondering if you just talk a little bit about, um, the Los Angeles that you grew up in and, uh, like what led you into politics.

Yeah, sure. So I was, um, I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. My parents were immigrants.

Uh, when they came to this country, they became street vendors.

And so they sold fruit, you know, in Los Angeles, all over the city. And when I was 16 years old, I got hired at a non-union hotel and worked there through college and.

Uh, right as I was going to graduate, there was an organizing drive to bring the union in.

And it was the most transformational experience I've ever had as a, as a person of color in the city, because we literally took power away from the company. And in the process, one incredible union contract.

Uh, you know, just really, it was really transformative. We, we, we took control of our own shop, our own workplace.

And it's something that I've wanted to do for a very long time. And so now 15 years later, here I am, the city has changed a lot. We see grassroots candidates fighting and winning such as Nithya Raman.

And so we want to continue on that amazing work that's been at the grassroots level. And I think we're going to win another seat here for the people in city.

Yeah, it's just here. I mean, you spent the last 15 years with Unite here, local 11, like what, what, what did you, like what did you learn in your experience of organizing that.

Like, maybe you want to take the next step into like a different, a different arena.

I always say that it's, you know, there's a sort of mantra that one of my mentors taught me. He said, what you win depends on the power that you built.

Right. And so I think that in the city of Los Angeles, we see so much activity happening across the city, where I think we've built enough power where we can start taking, you know, city council seats.

So I look at my district that has a ton of DSA members. A lot of people are active in the community.

You know, I come from labor and so, so you know what, I think we can bring all these coalitions together and take that seat for the people.

So that's a lesson that I learned as an organizer. When workers come together, you know, they beat a corporation.

And so it depends on the power that you build. You build enough power. You can take as much as you want. You got to keep building our power.

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