As we begin a brand new 12 months after a very brutal, troubling 12 months, we’re on the lookout for a little bit of hope. Right here’s a listing of resolutions — largely for different individuals — that may make 2024 higher than the 12 months we simply ended.
For Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta: Sustain the stress on NIMBY cities, corresponding to Huntington Seaside and La Cañada Flintridge, that attempt to skirt state housing legal guidelines and refuse to make room for extra houses in any respect earnings ranges. California has a crippling housing scarcity that’s worsening poverty and homelessness as a result of for thus lengthy, communities made it too exhausting and too costly to construct sufficient housing to maintain up with the state’s inhabitants development.
For the Los Angeles Metropolis Council: Don’t dally on main governance reforms, together with strengthening the Ethics Fee and increasing the Metropolis Council. After high-profile and embarrassing Metropolis Corridor scandals, it is a uncommon second when there may be broad public assist for altering L.A.’s outdated governance system, enhancing neighborhood illustration and empowering the political watchdog company.
For the Hollywood studios and labor leaders: Do all the pieces attainable to keep away from one other strike. Contracts expire this 12 months with two unions, the Teamsters and the Worldwide Alliance of Theatrical Stage Staff, that characterize crew members who work behind the scenes. Lots of these employees had been sidelined by the writers’ and actors’ strikes final 12 months, which shut down manufacturing for months. One other strike could be extraordinarily painful for individuals within the business and for the people and companies that rely on the Hollywood machine.
For U.S. voters: Deal with the 2024 election as a referendum on democracy, and vote accordingly. Which means defeating Donald Trump, who has made it clear that he needs to be the nation’s first dictator. It additionally means rejecting all different candidates who’ve attacked America’s democratic establishments — together with the 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election outcomes — and would enable our nation to slip into authoritarian rule.
For Ken, er Ryan Gosling: Come again with one other hilarious send-up of macho tradition and a dance as filled with enjoyable as “I’m Simply Ken.” America wants the laughs.
From left to proper, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ryan Gosling as Ken, and Ncuti Gatwa within the 2023 “Barbie” live-action movie.
(Warner Bros. Photos)
For voters in practically half the states: Make like Ohio and take again your states by voting for measures to make sure that pregnant girls have a selection about whether or not to proceed with or terminate their pregnancies, and by casting ballots for the opponents of legislators who’ve voted to ship girls again to the Sixties.
For folks: Learn to your children. Studying is a disappearing pastime, with solely 17% of middle-schoolers studying often for pleasure. That’s lower than half the quantity in 1984. Develop their love of tales, and of fascinating info present in nonfiction, early and preserve it going with common “household studying occasions” within the evenings. Studying for varsity isn’t the identical as studying for pleasure, when children resolve for themselves which books enchantment to them.
Palestinians mourn their relations killed within the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip in Deir al Balah on Dec. 28.
(Adel Hana / Related Press)
For Israel and Hamas, or whoever steps ahead to justly and legitimately characterize the Palestinian individuals: Cease capturing, begin speaking and start to check and settle for a future during which the state of Israel and an impartial and sovereign Palestinian state are neighbors inside mutually agreed-upon borders.
For L.A. Mayor Karen Bass: You bought a number of homeless individuals into short-term housing final 12 months. This 12 months, consider getting them (and others nonetheless sleeping on sidewalks) into everlasting housing. A homeless individual in short-term housing remains to be homeless.
For Californians: Develop into water-tight, by which we imply: Proceed taking significant steps to eradicate waste of our treasured liquid belongings on unused lawns.
For pundits who maintain forth on California: Chill. This place is neither hellscape nor Eden. By no means has been. It’s a blessed and repeatedly examined chunk of America that’s taking over challenges that can in all probability attain you in about 5 years. Concentrate.
For all people: Cease sticking your head within the sand about local weather change and begin taking actual motion to dump fossil fuels. (And, no, elevating the A/C to 70 levels from 68 doesn’t rely.) Ignoring the damaging results of overheating our planet solely ensures calamity.
