This a a transcript of the speech delivered by Faizah Malik at a Campaign Rally held at Beyond Baroque on April 11, 2026. 

Oh my gosh. Well, Wow. Hi, everyone. I cannot see anybody in the audience now. I understand what it’s like to be a comic. Oh, thank you, thank you for—thank you to the light technician. Hello. Thank you. Be on. Oh, give it up for Beyond Baroque.

And, first, I just want to thank my incredible campaign team. Raise your hand if you are on campaign Faizah! Over here, Jamie Filer, for putting together—Jamie, you have to say hi. And thank you to all of the organizations that tabled outside. Did everybody sign the petition for the billionaire tax? I see Mark over here. So I was like, I have to say, talk about the billionaire tax. And thank you to Joel Kane booster for organizing this and our incredible comics: Nori, Christina, and Leslie. They drove all the way here. I heard that multiple times. They drove. They drove really far to come to Venice. So thank you. We have to really, really thank everybody.

The show… my name is Faizah Malik, and I’m running for LA City Council District 11. And, district 11 is one of 15 council districts in the city of LA—and the city of LA has the most powerful city council in the entire country. Yet not many people know that there are only 15 people in charge of the second largest city in the country. For a 4 million people. The first largest city is New York City—there’s 51 council members over there. And so this is why these seats are really, really important. So I want to thank you all for being here to support this campaign for the West Side.

And, and I am running because I want the West Side and all of Los Angeles to be a place where everyone can have a future. Our artists, our comedians, our creatives, our workers, our teachers that are about to go on strike next week—so support our teachers. Our, our lawyers… are just everybody, everybody. And I, I truly believe that this should be a city where everyone can live a good, dignified life and where we have adequate affordable housing for every single person who needs it, where we have to help our unhoused neighbors with compassionate solutions, where we invest in the things that really create a good life for everybody. Walkable, bikeable streets. This should be the most bikeable district in the entire city. Where we have city services that work, where you’re not making jokes about calling 311 and not sure if someone’s going to answer. This should be a city that works for everyday people.

And I feel like Rick Russo is out there talking about how this is a radical agenda. I don’t know if you guys saw the California Post this morning. And, and I think that that’s the—it’s funny that they’re out there calling this radical. Because are these things radical? They’re—they’re basic. And I spent my entire career fighting for the policies that improve the lives of everyday people. I’ve been a civil rights lawyer for the past 15 years, and I—for the past eight years—I’ve worked at a nonprofit legal aid organization called Public Council. Where I—thank you! All right. Public Council friends! Where I have been in City Hall, on the streets, on the front lines, fighting for affordable housing, finally fighting for renter protections.

We recently, you know, we passed the eviction protections during—during Covid. I see Mike Bonin in here and Mike Bonin was a part of that. Our former council member. And then when the landlords filed a lawsuit to try to take those out—they filed a lawsuit against the city to stop those protections—Public Council, we intervened in that case on behalf of tenants. And we fought them. And we won up to the Supreme Court twice. And recently, we fought to lower the rent cap for millions of rent-stabilized tenants in the city. And I have been fighting for things like affordable housing to be built here on the West side, in the most expensive area of the entire city. And this is where my opponent enters the picture.

I am running against the most conservative member of the LA City Council. Her name is Traci Park. And, and I, as an advocate in City Hall, have had a front row seat. So many of us have had a front row seat to see the harm she has done to our communities in that seat. In the—just in her first term, she has opposed raising wages for workers. Our LAX workers—this district is also covering LAX. LAX workers have told me that they are—their colleagues are sleeping in their cars in the parking lot because they can’t afford to live here. They can’t afford to live where they work. She’s opposed raising wages. She has opposed our status as a sanctuary city for our immigrants. It’s like anti-LA to be anti our sanctuary city ordinance. She has opposed the renter protections that I have fought for. She literally—and when the—after the fires happened in voting against more eviction protections for workers who lost their jobs in the fires called it a ”political agenda.” That’s wild to me. In a city of working people, to call fighting for those protections a political agenda. I know who has a political agenda. She has a political agenda, and that is only representing the richest people in this city.

Have you guys heard about this project called Venice Dell? It’s a saga. It started over ten years ago. Ten years. Why should it take ten years to build an affordable housing project in the city of Los Angeles? It’s a tragedy and it’s an outrage. And this is an affordable housing project that is slated to be built on a public parking lot here in Venice, literally down the street. And it’s so underutilized. The Venice Run Club meets there every Wednesday. It is so underutilized that I’ve been there multiple times, and every time I’m there, some bicyclist is using it as a cut through path. We don’t have the bike lanes, but we have this empty parking lot that you can just bike through here. And, Mike, when he was a council member, started to say we should use this affordable, this public parking lot for affordable housing and went through all the public proper channels and went through all the city council meetings. There’s a contract for it. There was public comment against it. They filed a lawsuit, as they always do NIMBYs do, to try to kill this project. Those lawsuits were defeated. And yet our current council member campaigned in 2022 on killing this project, killing 120 units. For people who are on our streets, it’s the only way we’re going to help solve the homelessness crisis for our workers, our airport workers, our grocery workers. She campaigned on killing it. She campaigned on killing another shelter also across the street from her. And I had a front row seat to this because this is the work I’ve been doing.

So in 2024, I filed a lawsuit against the city of LA to hold the city accountable to its promises, and it got so bad she wasn’t listening. So and people were, you know, looking around, we’re trying to decide who is going to what are we going to do about Tracy Park? How are we going to how are we going to take out Tracy Park? And finally, I was so mad that I said, I will run for office. It was I, I was so mad. Don’t get me mad, don’t get me mad. Los Angeles and so I’ve been, we’ve been we’ve been running this campaign. And what I’ve learned in my career in the last 15 years is that we, all of us, it takes all of us to organize and demand change. All of us. I’ve been in so many hard fights with so many of you. It’s not just the people in those elected seats that are going to change the system, but those people in those seats are so, so important. You can show up at City Hall every single day at public comment and not be heard. You can show up. You can demand the changes that need to be made to LAPD, the housing that needs to be built, and if those people in those seats are not listening and are not willing to take the risk to actually enact that change, then we’re screwed. So we really do need it really does matter.

And in this city it only takes eight people. That’s the majority in this city. And right now we have four people that are consistently fighting back against this institutional machine that we have in Los Angeles, but we need more of us in there. We need more of us. We have more support. We have so many friends running this cycle. I’ll just shout out a few. My friend Marissa Roy is running for city attorney. My friend Estrada Diego is running and she denies South Central. My friend Aaron Hernandez is running a tough reelection in CD1. Ruben Martinez is running again and CD 13. We’ve got. So we have we have Nithya, Ramon and Ray Wong running for mayor. We’ve got our comptroller running for like an amazing reelection campaign. Shout out Kenneth. And this is amazing. This is l.a. You guys like we’ve been changing L.A. This way and that’s how we’re going to win council district 11 back.

And when we started this race. Thank you. When we started this race, people were like, that’s crazy. You’re going to take Tracy Park on. You’re going to take on the police union. That’s insane. And and yes, we are taking on the police union. They put in $300,000 or more in trying to defeat us. The firefighters union has put in money. I’ve got real estate coming after me, obviously, because I challenged them on the eviction protections. And I think I still think it doesn’t matter, because what we know with wins here in the city is all of us showing up. It matters when all of us are doorknocking when we’re talking to our neighbors. Grace. Grace Doyle, my field director here. Like that’s it. This is how we fight back against this right wing media machine and this misinformation, the fearmongering they’re throwing at us and all the lies, all the bullshit and all the all the scare tactics. Like, this is how we win. And we are weeks away from ballots coming out. Ballots come out May 5th. Well. It’s so soon.

And I just I just really appreciate all of you guys showing up to support this important fundraiser. Please get involved with our campaign. Donations are really important. They pay for my staff and my. The largest field team in the entire city is here in Council District 11. So pay your the money that you give to our campaign. We are not spending it on ugly things that are go in the trash. We’re spending it on people that are investing all of their time because they care so deeply in the city. And so please volunteer. Please donate. Please tell your friends. Please tell your friends that live here, everything west of the 405 except Santa Monica and Culver City and unincorporated. Please tell your friends to vote for me. This race is over on June 2nd. Other races go to November. This one is done. And this is our chance to show the rest of Los Angeles that we won’t really stand for people that block housing here on the West Side. We won’t stand for people that are going to vote against immigrants. We’re not going to stand for people that vote against workers here. This is the West Side where everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody should have a future and can deserve to live. Thank you to. Keep it going for Faizah everybody. Well, and thank you all so much for coming out. That is our show.

Please give it up for Faizah Malik.

Disclaimer: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) community arts organization. This event was a private facility rental and does not constitute an endorsement of any candidate or political campaign by Beyond Baroque. The Beachhead, however,  is all in for Faizah.