Madeline Janis and Hector Tobar in conversation

This conversation is the second in the spring 2009 Liberty Hill Foundation sponsored series of talks between artists and civic leaders.

Madeline Janis, executive director of LAANE, and Hector Tobar, LA Times columnist and journalist, have been working, writing and organizing in Los Angeles for close to two decades. They will talk about their own projects and then engage eachother on writing and organizing people in the City of the Angels.

BIOS

Madeline Janis is co-founder and executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. In 2002, she was appointed by Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn as a volunteer commissioner to the board of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, the country’s largest such agency and then reappointed to that position by L.A.'s current Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in 2006. She is also a Senior Fellow at the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Ms. Janis led the historic campaign to pass L.A.'s living wage ordinance, which has since become a national model. Over the past decade, she has provided training and assistance to community organizations and unions in dozens of cities across the country and is widely regarded as an innovator in the fight against working poverty. Under Ms. Janis' stewardship, LAANE has become an influential voice for the working poor and for the need to strengthen and rebuild the middle class in L.A. Combining research, organizing and legislative advocacy, the nonprofit organization has spearheaded numerous programs to create quality jobs with healthcare and a better quality of life for Los Angeles workers and communities. For more info on LAANE see here.

Hector Tobar, a native of Los Angeles, grew up reading the Los Angeles Times. He devoured the sports pages, especially, but never thought he'd work at a paper his immigrant father occasionally delivered to make a little extra cash. He remembers being 11 and buying the Times' extra announcing President Nixon's resignation. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Hector is an LA Times columnist and author. Most recently he was The Times Mexico City bureau chief. He's fluent in English and Spanish, and can get around in Portuguese. He is the author of two books, Translation Nation and Tatooed Soldeir.
Hector has a Master in Fine Arts from UC Irvine, has written two books and is the father of three children.