Melissa Harris-Perry: You're back with Melissa Harris-Perry in The Takeaway from WNYC and PRX in collaboration with WGBH Radio in Boston.

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Melissa: Throughout women's history month, The Takeaway has been joining with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University to bring you the stories of women leading locally. Now, I know we're not exactly in the month of March anymore, but there was just one more interview we had to bring to you. For this one, we're heading out to the West Coast.

Holly J. Mitchell: My name is Holly J. Mitchell. I'm a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and I represent the Second District.

Melissa: Holly Mitchell is not only an LA County supervisor, she's the chair of the board and part of the Fab Five. No, not the basketball team. For the first time in its 150-year history, the LA County Board of Supervisors is led by an all-woman board. I asked Supervisor Mitchell for everyone who doesn't live in LA County, explain what a supervisor is because y'all are serious.

Holly J. Mitchell: Well, it's the county level of government I say is the best-kept secret I think in the country. Some parts of the country refer to supervisors as county commissioners, but the county level of government is really the safety net. That's where your public health, your department of mental health, your public hospitals for LA County, the sheriff, our county jail, the county court system, those are all county agencies. LA is the largest county in the country with approaching 11 million people with 5 supervisors. This board is arguably one of the most powerfully elected bodies in the country because all of us represent north of two million constituents.

Melissa: That's more than some senators representing the US Senate.

Holly J. Mitchell: Well, we represent more people than all, but five governors in this country.

Melissa: That is stunning.

Holly J. Mitchell: It really is and it's only five. Unlike Congress or other elected bodies that the body will grow based on population, when the LA County charter was written, the charter said there will be five. As LA County's population has grown, the number of seats has not. That's how we come to be the fact that we represent two million people each.

Melissa: I suppose it was pretty easy to get elected by something that is basically larger than a state, especially as a Black woman.

Holly J. Mitchell: Yes, that would be no. We have term limits here in California. You can serve a 3, 4-year term for a maximum of 12 years. It's very competitive because the seats don't come available very often. I'm the second Black woman to serve since the county became a county. My election last, the November of 2020 created the first all-female board of supervisors, which was pretty astonishing. For many, many years the board was all-male, all-white male, I would say. The election of Gloria Molina is what brought the first woman to the board. It's been slow progress, but it's a very competitive seat.

I ran against a very formidable candidate, a former speaker of the state legislature and LA City Council president. It was a race that was based on the needs of Angelinos today. The Second District is one of the most diverse districts in the county. Unfortunately, as a result of COVID, we've also recognized that it's the district with, some would argue the greatest need. We were hit the hardest by COVID. We have the lowest vaccination rate, the highest percentage of residents who are unhoused. There's a lot of work to be done in this district and I'm deeply proud to represent it.

Melissa: I know that as you point to some of the real challenges that face the community that you represent, you've been doing work to disrupt poverty through guaranteed income program. Can you talk about that a bit?

Holly J. Mitchell: Melissa, I'm so deeply excited about this opportunity. Being a poverty disruptor is what led me to electoral politics, quite frankly, when I first ran in 2008. It's really the policy area and the program area I've spent my entire career. Frankly, my parents met as eligibilities workers working for LA County in the late '50s. One could argue I was born into this work.

Looking at these pilot programs across the country right here in California, former mayor Michael Tubbs in Stockton, former mayor Aja Brown in Compton, both launched programs that have been hugely successful. The premise is we want to create a culture shift where we're no longer criminalizing poverty or blaming poor people for being poor, but really acknowledging what it takes economically to be able to take care of yourselves and your families, particularly here in the high-cost county of LA.

We are looking at the research done as a result of the Stockton and Compton programs, and we've launched what will be the longest guaranteed income pilot three years. My hope is that with this research, working with the partners at the University of Pennsylvania, we'll really figure out what that sweet spot is. How long does it take for a single dad or a family or a senior to really have these additional resources, to invest in themselves, to create an opportunity where they really can pull themselves out of poverty? We can end multi-generational poverty.

Is it allowing them to start fund a micro business? Does it allow them to get a car that really works to allow you to drive a little further for the full-time job versus relying on public transportation and get to multiple part-time jobs? Is it the tutoring for your kids? What is it that these additional resources can do for your family that will help break that cycle? The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and some partners here at a local California-based institution of higher learning are very eager to really look at that systematically so we can begin to address, I think some of the systemic causes to people finding themselves living in poverty.

Melissa: You said that being a poverty disruptor was part of what led you, that's really your pathway into elected office. Tell me a little bit more about that pathway. Why make the decision to go into elective office rather than staying in community-based work?

Holly J. Mitchell: I was running an amazing organization here in LA County, Crystal Stairs, a child development agency. We facilitated and cared about 25,000 kids a day throughout South Los Angeles. I was in Sacramento because the legislature was considerate and they ultimately did cutting $1 billion out of the subsidized childcare budget. Those were dollars that helped former CalWORKs recipients who were in school, helped grocery clerks, TSA agents, people whose number one budget item was their childcare expense, and they couldn't go to work or go to school if they didn't have this support.

I took a couple busloads of parents, two Sacramento to help educate the policymakers about what that kind of cut would do to them and their families in the micro-level, on the macro level to understand the impact it would have on LA County's economy. The childcare industry is one of the main driving industries in LA County. It ranks in some years, right behind the entertainment industry, ironically. I got there, there was no LA County representative on this budget subcommittee. Frankly, there were no women. Melissa, I just got angry. I realized that we didn't really have an audience, that they didn't make the connection about the valuable resource this was.

I understood in a deep personal way the impact that was going to have on families. Kids don't get a do-over. When they cut those childcare slots that year and we weren't able to really fund that same number of slots for another 10 years, those two and three-year-olds didn't stay two and three-years-old waiting for the grownups to figure it out. Those children missed that opportunity for early enrichment. Those working parents missed that opportunity to have their children in high-quality affordable early care and education settings. I literally sat in that budget hearing room and got mad enough to decide to run myself.

Melissa: I love hearing you say that it was in part like anger, a determination to make that change. This is one of the things we've been talking about through this series. Were there people who said, "You know what? You should run that." Maybe you've been ignoring and then while you were sitting in that hearing room you were like, "You know what? Actually, I should run." Or was this something that in some ways you had to do even if there weren't other people suggesting that you should run?

Holly J. Mitchell: The primary naysayer was myself. I have to say that I had wonderful, amazing women throughout my life who had been saying it for years, my former first boss, then State Senator Diane Watson who throughout her career went on to be a member of Congress and an ambassador. My current seek mate on the LA County Board of Supervisor, Sheila Kuehl, had said to me for many years, Holly you should run, Holly you should run. The reality was I'm a great number two.

I was great staff, great support to others in that position. I felt I can really get a lot done being in number two doing the research, doing the background. When I went to run Crystal Stairs, running the direct programs, it wasn't until that moment that I think I fully embraced and understood that I had the ordinary life experience, the perspective of running programs. I had proximity to families and childcare providers that I could take that experience and their voice with me to Sacramento and attempt to change programs from the inside out.

When I heard those policymakers and their rationale for cutting the billion dollars, I felt deeply that there was just a missing voice and a missing perspective and I knew I had that. Now, I was the naysayer because I'm a single adoptive parent. My son at the time was eight. I frankly to be completely transparent and honest had to take a pay cut from running this agency to go into the legislature.

In California you are term-limited; there's no pension. I'm a working-class, middle-aged Black woman trying to raise a son. I had to also think about the practicality for my own life of going into public service. The other issue was I have to tell you and it's interesting I wear my hair natural, I'm locked. We began to look nationwide. I said I need to find a woman single with a school-aged child who's done this. I was looking for a role model and literally called Emily's List, called the Center for the American Woman and Politics.

I was like help me find someone and at that time we couldn't. Melissa, I got mad again because I thought this is like a systematic approach to keeping someone like me out. If I can't figure out how to make it work, no one else will. People have their opinions about term limits but the California term limits initiative, like I said, created this salary cap and ended our pension. How many women are people of working-class means can carve out 12 years of their life where you don't earn a pension. Again, I got pissed and decided I have to figure out how to navigate this because, in all good conscious, I can encourage other women to run for office if I'm not able to figure this out and do it myself.

Melissa: Now, of course, the next middle-aged, single mama, natural hair-wearing extraordinary woman who is looking for a model has one. She has you.

Holly J. Mitchell: She does and that makes me deeply, deeply proud.

Melissa: I think of Toni Morrison saying that she wrote because she needed to write the book that she wanted to read. It sounds to me a bit like you ran for office because you needed the representative who you are.

Holly J. Mitchell: I realized that my truth was the same truth as so many other women and working families. It was literally sitting in that budget hearing when I heard the conversation around cutting that childcare budget that I understood that I too had a story to tell and that while I wasn't naive enough to think that I could have prevented that from happening, but I also knew that I wanted to be in that space that when the economy turned around and California wasn't in the red, that I wanted to be able to rebuild those systems and those programs in a way that was strategic and smart, and family-centered. That's what I spent my 10 years in the California legislature doing.

Melissa: As you talk about the locks and I have two locked daughters, of course, I've been wearing braids forever. One of the things that you did while you were in the legislature, was to help pass the CROWN Act which has now been passed at the federal level. Of course, we just saw that at the core of this moment, at the Oscars with Will Smith and Chris Rock is actually a story about a Black woman and her hair. Talk to us about the CROWN Act and why it matters.

Holly J. Mitchell: You know Melissa, I carried the CROWN Act here in California. I introduced the bill, Senate Bill 188 and California was the first state to pass the CROWN Act. We jump-started this, the CROWN Act movement here in partnership with the members of the CROWN Coalition. It has taken off like wildfire and it's amazing. In one week's time, just speaking very personally, to see the CROWN Act be introduced again and passed off the floor, to hear those Black women members of the house of representatives tell their own stories and why it was so important, to see a locked Black woman, a legal scholar of historic measure be presented in the judiciary committee and attacked so viciously. To then again and later that same week see a Black woman humiliated.

Frankly, I think that's what the joke was, humiliation. It just for me reminded me that our hair is political. Our hair is personal. We are expected to stand and fight and defend our right to wear our hair as we choose. For me, the CROWN Act is about a culture shift. We change the law. The law is a backstop. It's a safety measure to give one the right to sue and the right to defend themselves. My ultimate goal and the goal of the CROWN Coalition is for people to not have to rely on the law. For us to affect a culture shift because Black women are the only group of women, the only group of people who have been told your hair isn't good enough for the workplace or school or the Oscars.

That's what the CROWN Act is about. This is a movement I am humbled beyond measure to play a small role in it but the issue is not going away. It is a fundamental issue of discrimination. It's a fundamental issue of we will be seen how we choose to present ourselves in whatever setting we are in, be it the US Supreme court, be it the entertainment industry, be it the board of supervisors

Melissa: Our conversations today is part of this series that we've done throughout the month of March, women leading locally. When I say to you women leading locally, what does that mean to you?

Holly J. Mitchell: It means women like Lillian Mosley and Sweet Alice Harris here in LA County who have led policymakers for decades in understanding the basic core needs and rights of community. It means women on school boards. It means Karen Bass, a Black woman running for mayor in the city of Los Angeles who in every conversation is bringing life and meaning to what government must do to house our unhoused family friends, and neighbors.

It means women in leadership. Dr. Elaine Batchlor at Martin Luther King Community Hospital leading the fight around health disparity. It means women in labor. We can define local any number of ways but it means women I think at the community, at the ground level, who are clear about why we do what we do every day and fighting for the rights and the needs and bringing services to the sisters who look like us, who are relying on us to give voice to both their pain, their needs, and their successes.

Melissa: Los Angeles County Supervisor, Holly Mitchell. Thank you for joining us.

Holly J. Mitchell: It has been my pleasure. Thank you so much.

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