Los Angeles is best known for the glamor of Hollywood, the beaches of Venice, and, more recently, for hosting Super Bowl LVI in the city’s $5.5 billion SoFi Stadium. But the City of Angels is also home to one of the most militant and well-organized labor movements in the United States, led by the Latino and immigrant communities. Over the last several decades, workers in LA have established themselves as a formidable social force in the city, often drawing on radical traditions from countries in Latin America and elsewhere beyond the nation’s borders.

District Thirteen city council candidate Hugo Soto-Martinez comes from that movement. Soto-Martinez is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, born and raised in South Central. His story is familiar to many children of working-class immigrants in Los Angeles: his parents immigrated from Mexico and worked in LA as street vendors until his father suffered a debilitating back injury that put him out of work. They faced difficult working conditions and police harassment on the job, struggles that led Soto-Martinez to organize with the Community Power Collective against the criminalization of LA’s immigrant street vendors. In order to make ends meet, Soto-Martinez dropped out of high school and began working at a nonunion hotel.

Around this time, he also experienced his first personal encounter with police brutality. He was accompanying his brother as he placed a call from a phone booth after their home phone service had been cut off. Suddenly, a police officer pinned Soto-Martinez up against the booth.