More housing, less killing and other New Year’s resolutions we’d like to see
As we start a new year after a particularly brutal, troubling 12 months, we’re looking for a bit of hope. Here’s a list of resolutions — mostly for other people — that might make 2024 better than the year we just ended.
For Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta: Keep up the pressure on NIMBY cities, such as Huntington Beach and La Cañada Flintridge, that try to skirt state housing laws and refuse to make room for more homes at all income levels. California has a crippling housing shortage that is worsening poverty and homelessness because for so long, communities made it too hard and too expensive to build enough housing to keep up with the state’s population growth.
For the Los Angeles City Council: Don’t dally on major governance reforms, including strengthening the Ethics Commission and expanding the City Council. After highprofile and embarrassing City Hall scandals, this is a rare moment when there is broad public support for changing L.A.’s outdated governance system, improving community representation and empowering the political watchdog agency. For the Hollywood studios and labor leaders:
Do everything possible to avoid another strike. Contracts expire this year with two unions, the Teamsters and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, that represent crew members who work behind the scenes. Many of those workers were sidelined by the writers’ and actors’ strikes last year, which shut down production for months. Another strike would be extremely painful for people in the industry and for the individuals and businesses that depend on the Hollywood machine.
For U.S. voters: Treat the 2024 election as a referendum on democracy, and vote accordingly. That means defeating Donald Trump, who has made it clear that he wants to be the nation’s first dictator. It also means rejecting all other candidates who have attacked America’s democratic institutions — including the 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election results — and would allow our country to slide into authoritarian rule.
For Ken, er Ryan Gosling: Come back with another hilarious send-up of macho culture and a dance as full of fun as “I’m Just Ken.” America needs the laughs.
For voters in nearly half the states:
Make like Ohio and take back your states by voting for measures to ensure that pregnant women have a choice about whether to proceed with or terminate their pregnancies, and by casting ballots for the opponents of legislators who have voted to send women back to the 1960s.
For parents: Read to your kids. Reading is a disappearing pastime, with only 17% of middle-schoolers reading frequently for pleasure. That’s less than half the number in 1984. Develop their love of stories, and of fascinating information found in nonfiction, early and keep it going with regular “family reading times” in the evenings. Reading for school isn’t the same as reading for pleasure, when kids decide for themselves which books appeal to them.
For Israel and Hamas, or whoever steps forward to justly and legitimately represent the Palestinian people: Stop shooting, start talking and begin to envision and accept a future in which the state of Israel and an independent and sovereign Palestinian state are neighbors within mutually agreedupon borders.
For L.A. Mayor Karen Bass: You got a lot of homeless people into temporary housing last year. This year, concentrate on getting them (and others still sleeping on sidewalks) into permanent housing. A homeless person in temporary housing is still homeless.
For Californians: Become water-tight, by which we mean: Continue taking meaningful steps to eliminate waste of our precious liquid assets on unused lawns.
For pundits who hold forth on California: Chill. This place is neither hellscape nor Eden. Never has been. It’s a blessed and repeatedly tested chunk of America that is taking on challenges that will probably reach you in about five years. Pay attention.
For all humans: Stop sticking your head in the sand about climate change and start taking real action to dump fossil fuels. (And, no, raising the A/C to 70 degrees from 68 does not count.) Ignoring the dangerous effects of overheating our planet only ensures calamity.