ABOUT MIKE
Mike Bonin is teacher, writer, activist and progressive local leader with 25+ years experience in government, politics and public service. As a member of the Los Angeles City Council for nearly a decade, he earned a reputation for taking principled stands and pushing forward-thinking solutions.
As a member of the City Council from 2013-2022, he led on the issues of homelessness and affordable housing, tenant issues, transportation and mobility, reimagining public safety, and local responses to climate change. Mike is currently a Leadership in Government Fellow with the Open Society Foundations, where he is working to advance housing justice, economic justice, and racial justice by working with elected officials and community-based organizations to build capacity and infrastructure to implement programs and policies. He hosts a podcast, What’s Next Los Angeles, focusing on politics and public policy, writes about economic, racial and social justice, and is a frequent commentator on public affairs. He teaches public policy and politics at Occidental College and the University of Southern California Dornsife Center for the Political Future. He serves as a Senior Fellow for the LA Forward Institute, promoting civic engagement, and works with Local Progress, providing resources and training for locally elected officials.
As a public official and a progressive champion, Mike Bonin fought for real solutions and stood up for what’s right, regardless of the political consequences.
Representing Los Angeles’ Westside neighborhoods on the City Council from 2013 to 2022, Mike confronted the toughest challenges head on, unafraid to advocate for bold, transformative solutions on homelessness, affordable housing, climate change, transportation, and public safety. A progressive champion for renters, low-wage workers, and the unhoused, Mike was also an accomplished advocate for his district, and force for smart, responsive government.
Mike’s key accomplishments include: raising the citywide minimum wage; crafting historic renter protections; initiating the city’s transition to 100% clean energy; providing free public transit to K-12 and community college students; jump-starting modernization of Los Angeles International Airport; restoring and expanding the Los Angeles Fire Department; reforming campaign finance laws; creating more than 1000 units of homeless housing; and modeling a services-led approach to the homelessness crisis with the city’s largest and most successful “encampments to homes” homeless housing initiative.
Mike spoke up when others stayed silent, and took on battles others found too controversial. Bucking tremendous public pressure, he was the council’s most forceful opponent of policies that criminalized homelessness. In the middle of a fiscal crisis, he insisted the police union renegotiate its contract in order to prevent deep cuts in human services. He was the lone vote against cuts to bus service. He successfully fought for reforms that make it easier for grassroots candidates to challenge the establishment. Mike’s principled stands won the ire of the police union, corporate real estate interests, fossil fuel companies, conservative talk radio, NIMBYs and, often, other elected officials. Attempts by these forces to recall him from office failed repeatedly.
Throughout his career, Mike fought for big, comprehensive solutions that address the cause, not the symptoms, of our problems. He led the successful fight for a citywide $15 minimum wage so that all Angelenos could better support themselves and their families. He led the fight for fareless transit for LA’s buses and trains, for construction of city-owned mixed income social housing, for formation of a publicly-owned bank to finance community investment, and for deploying unarmed, trained professionals, rather than armed law enforcement officers, to respond to issues like mental health crises, homelessness, and traffic violations.
As a public official, Mike fought to create space for younger, more diverse, and more progressive voices in the political system. He supported youth-led organizations, such as the Sunrise Movement, and grassroots organizations fighting for substantive policy changes. He broke political tradition and supported grassroots challengers against incumbent officials. He led fights to expand access to public campaign matching funds, which gave new candidates the resources to compete and win.
In 2020, Mike was the first Los Angeles-area official to endorse Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and served as a Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Prior to his election to public office, Mike co-founded an acclaimed training program for young LTBTQ+ leaders fighting for same sex marriage, worked as a field organizer for the 2008 Obama campaign, served a staff member to elected officials representing the Westside of Los Angeles, and worked as a newspaper and radio reporter.
Mike, who drew national attention after getting arrested protesting the Trump administration immigration policy of separating families at the border, and his husband, Sean Arian, live with their young son in Mar Vista. Mike is a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, who openly shares about his struggles with substance abuse, housing instability, and depression. He is currently mentoring young leaders to win campaigns and policy victories.
