Good morning. Good morning, everybody. This is Jerry green from the Pacific Council in Los Angeles. I want to welcome you to today's event. I just want to thank the Liu family, Bob Liu, a member of our board, Mimi Lowe, Justin Liu, who you will see in a moment for having an idea five years ago, which was to showcase Los Angeles as a global city. And just in the past two weeks, their their their presence and wisdom has been confirmed. The Summit of the Americas is coming to Los Angeles with heads of state from the entire Western Hemisphere, the Super Bowl, which is not only a sporting event, but a global event will be played in Los Angeles by a Los Angeles team and the eyes of the world will be on us. And we will soon be losing our mayor as as as an ambassador to India once his confirmation goes through. So the idea of the lose was really prescient, and unlike many they had an idea and they helped to make it a reality. So I want to welcome everybody to the final state of loss and global state of Los Angeles addressed by Mayor Eric Garcetti. But we expect to have his his successors following in his in his footsteps and addressing this important issue as well. I want to thank Ambassador and Soham getting animes up Mayor Garcetti, for joining us and I want to thank Antonia Hernandez, who's a member of our board of directors for being mayor gar said he's interlocutor. Thank you all for joining us, Justin, over to you.

Thank you, Jerry, for that introduction. First, on behalf of our family and our foundation, I would like to wish everybody a Happy Lunar New Year, many years ago, when the Pacific Council started brainstorming about creating a potential platform from which the mayor of Los Angeles could speak on all things. uprising that nothing like that existed at the time. And so, for us, the timing was a new idea. But at the same time, perfectly opportune because we had an incoming mayor who not only understood the impact that Los Angeles could have on the world but also the world's impact on the city of Los Angeles. Now, besides the obvious of what's happened since then, between bringing back to Los Angeles, the Olympics and Paralympics and navigating the city through a global pandemic. Mayor Garcetti has done so much more between chairing the C 40 group of mayors in combating global climate crisis, to leading the first national day of action on immigration to create the first position of Deputy Mayor of International Affairs for the city. He's had tremendous impact in so many ways on the international community community here in Los Angeles, but perhaps most importantly, and all that is that he's done so in a foundational way that will sustain and have impact well beyond his tenure. And in a way that also directly impacts the people in the city directly. And so in this moment of reflection, it's just with extreme gratitude mayor that we say thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your partnership, and most importantly, thank you for your friendship. And so Mayor Garcetti is going to give a couple opening remarks after which you will be joined by also one of California's great leaders, Pacific Council director and President CEO of the California Community Foundation is Antonio Hernandez. So without further ado, our city's 42nd mayor, Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Well, thank you, Justin, thank you for your amazing friendship and you and your family, which I'll get to in a moment. Thank you for the introduction. And let me welcome everybody who's joined us. It's heartwarming to see you all today. I wish it could be in person with a rubber chicken and all. But since this is the last time I'll address the Pacific Council, as your mayor, I'm a little wistful, though I hope to come back as an ambassador. And you can always count on me to be a strong supporter of this amazing, amazing group of people. You're truly a force for good in this world and a source of strength for Los Angeles. And after eight and a half years as your mayor, I'm so grateful for the friendship that you've shown to me and the state of the global city, a tradition that really has started from the loose family's vision and the Pacific Council. We brought in focus and been able to really hone in on the expanded role that Los Angeles is playing in the world, on the international stage, and through your generosity. We've had the opportunity to reflect every year on the goals, values and accomplishments we've done in the global space. So thank you to Lou family and especially Justin who's just a dear A personal friend, and you're lucky in life when you get to meet great people. And I look forward to many more decades of friendship together, Justin, and thank you to Jerry green, and the board, chaired by Robert Lovelace and Richard gates for all that you do for our city. You've been truly critical counsellors and guides to our work to make Los Angeles in my goal, an indispensable global city. And since this is my last chance to address you as mayor, I'm going to I'm going to encourage you, as you said in the intro, to keep this tradition going, it has been and will continue to be critical in helping us to name and to drive our global ambitions, as well as to measure our progress. So just as I counsel you to continue it, I will tell all of the candidates for mayor whomever she or he may be that my successor needs to continue this tradition and continue to deepen our engagement with the world. You know, there are two simple but powerful reasons why LA's may or should always care about international fairs. First, I believe we can meet our local challenges by taking advantage of global opportunities. And second, global challenges have enormous local consequences. In other words, you can't maximise LA's assets to move on our ambitions to create more safer, more prosperous and more healthy city without engaging the world. And if you think LA can solve some of its toughest problems, think climate change just as one, without engaging the world, you'll be governing with one hand tied behind your back. So simply put, la needs the world, and the world needs LA. So today, let me share what I have learned and what I believe LA has gained from this engagement by laying out a vision of why this work is so critical for us. But it's my hope to do this more than just for Los Angeles, but to demonstrate how other American cities can do the same, and to help our country continue to lead the world. As I near the end of an incredible chapter in local government, I've been reflecting a lot about the new one I'm about to begin as Ambassador to India. And back when I was in my 20s, I saw myself likely pursuing a career in international relations. I was going to do human rights work. I was teaching international politics at Occidental and at USC, I thought I'd maybe go into international development or diplomacy. I've been blessed to study to work to travel to over 90 countries visit all seven continents. And so I figured that my career would be focused on global affairs. As a teacher at Oxy and USC, I ran for local office and I got the question a lot, why would a Professor of International Relations want to be on the city council. And as soon as I got to City Hall, the connection was clear. I was representing neighbourhoods with names like Little Armenia, and Thai town, I was able to designate new communities like historic Filipino town in little Bangladesh. And the old cliche of seeing the face of the world on the streets of LA was perhaps most true among the constituents I represented in 13th district in the Heart of LA. Then in 2013, when I was handed the reins of this city by voters, I saw even more clearly how LA was one of if not the most diverse city in the world, and most international city in the world with the largest diaspora populations, anywhere in the globe, with deep cultural and business ties to cities and nations on every continent. So I guess the plot twist here, how come I didn't even imagine when I ran for local office, is that to serve in LA is to be engaged in local international work. It's both pothole policy and foreign policy. So it's clear that we can make life better for Angelenos through new and deeper connections to the world. And that's what led me to appoint my longtime friend, and amazing foreign relations expert Ambassador Nina had cheeky and to serve. In a brand new position, I challenged her to meet Deputy Mayor of International Affairs, one of the first in the country, the only one that we believe it's around right now as deputy mayor, and we created a Mayor's Office of International Affairs. You see for many years, going back to Tom Bradley, even before we had wonderful folks who headed up offices of protocol. But that was a passive kind of receiving international visitors. It was about being proper, not about advancing policy. It was clear to me that if we wanted to create more jobs, more opportunity bring more culture, ideas and visitors to LA, we needed to do more. If we wanted to have this city take its proper leadership role in one of the top five cities of the world. We needed a distinct office. And it was also clear to me that we needed to seize the once in generation opportunity on the horizon. That's why I did two things on my first day as mayor in 2013 First I paved the street in the valley. I hope you've noticed that our streets ratings have gone up every single year for the last eight and a half years after decades of decline. But the second thing I did was I wrote in a letter to the US Olympic Committee saying we wanted to host the world. And we thought at the time 2024, but to host the Olympic Games for third time and the Paralympic games for the first. And my approach out of the gate to leading the city really hasn't changed since that day. It's about solving crises right in front of you, while simultaneously governing as if you're a decade out. Looking back on the decisions that you make today, I always tell my team, don't worry about the criticisms of today. Don't worry about the headlines of tomorrow. Imagine yourself a decade from now, and let that inform the decision you will make today. The stuff you get most criticised for today is the stuff people will be most appreciative of tomorrow, and demands that you put your energy into efforts that don't come into fruition while we are serving in office. I have an example. I was proud to serve as chair of C 40. Cities, the group of the largest cities of the world's mayors comprising a quarter of the world's GDP. And as we're looking ahead to cop 26, in Glasgow, I knew C 40 had an immense opportunity and responsibility to really show up to inspire the world that we can face climate change head on, and to join with our partner networks. And to make sure that we show that cities governments were reducing to net zero by 2050, and cutting our share of global emissions in half. By the end of this decade, we set a really high bar not just for 97 cities, I said let's find that 1000 And I was able to from the stage in Glasgow with world leaders be one of only three non national leaders to announce that 1049 cities were going to pledge to that goal, and that the majority of us were already on track or exceeding the timeline to do so. That's the equivalent of the fourth to fifth largest country in the world as an emitter zeroing out its carbon when right now only one country The Gambia has been able to meet its goals. One of the first zoom calls of 2020 showed to me to just how important that network was and engaging with the world. This was one of the most significant calls of my life, because there's really no association of the world's global mayors. Besides C 40 at that level, so I hit the bat signal about four dozen C 40 mayors in every time zone of the world joined my second zoom call ever. We heard the mayor of Seoul talk about what drive thru testing was when nobody knew what that was the mayor of Milan when Northern Italy was the hotspot talking about rationing Hall space to try to save lives and hospitals. Later a fellow mayor now my successor, Mayor Khan told me that when he sat down with his Prime Minister and talked about the call, it dawned on him how long it takes for information sometimes to reach the top for national leaders. There's bureaucracies that feed that up very slowly. And when they get it there's other bureaucracies that take time before national leaders engage with each other, the last weeks or sometimes months. In some ways, national governments are like the aircraft carriers of global relations. But layers are like the speedboats turning on a dime, we got off that call and started implementing policies here we built the largest testing site in the world as a result of that call. We don't just move more quickly and more nimbly than national leaders. We also have frictionless communication. The things that slow down international relations like diplomatic conflict and bureaucracy simply don't exist at the local level. We might come from different systems, different cultures, different geographies, but there's a certain universality that we share about running a city. And we know what happens in Joburg affects what happens in LA, what works in Mexico City can work in Seoul. If I hear about a great programme, I want to steal it right away. And if I'm told we can't do something, I can point usually to a city somewhere in the world. That is when my bureaucrats might say we can't do it. It can feel like we live in such a divided world today. It's split down for so many things. ideology, clickbait generates our news, culture, technology seems to be in some ways dividing us instead of uniting us. But there is in fact a global network of cities that is working counter to that I would offer it's serving as a global counterbalance to the forces that are moving us apart. Picture this the city to city connections are kind of like a net that catch opportunity. They provide support in an increasingly fractured world. And I've experienced the power in those connections. As your mayor, I've met with hundreds of heads of states, Minister, ambassadors and other foreign guests over the last eight years in both Los Angeles and abroad, whether it was the president of Spain or the foreign minister of Japan, or the Prime Minister of Japan, these interactions have paid huge dividends for our people. And it's always been my ambition to make la not just a global city, not just an important global city, but the most indispensable global City. By founding and leading organisations, I want to show how we are bringing those cities together around issues that are very important to us locally, as well as globally, building up formal and informal ties modelling, I hope for the world what American leadership looks like. Again, I mentioned that I chaired C 40. But I was also proud as your mayor to co found the mayor's migration Council, you 20 The Urban 20. And change, which is the first international city led network focused exclusively on gender equity. La founded change with Mexico City, Tokyo, London, Freetown in Barcelona, we just added bonus IDs and looking to add more cities this year. We're not just taking on broad overarching work. We're also focused on specific things. When we do something like pave our pavement with a lighter shade in the San Fernando Valley and across the city to be able to deal with climate change. Other cities want to reduce the ambient temperatures of their streets and are taking that technology. Because we care about people who are suffering the worst impacts of climate change, a senior waiting in the blistering sun for a bus, those dozens of miles of cool pavement across our city. If that inspires another one to do the same. It also elevates Los Angeles as global leadership and saves lives. At the end of the day, everything we do locally and globally is about creating greater safety and greater prosperity. You know, there's a quote here at the top of city hall in the Bradley ballroom named after our greatest mayor ever. It reads and it's from Aristotle's Politics, the city came into being to preserve life, but it exists for the good life. I can't think of anything more fundamental, first to protect one another. Whether it's global climate change, whether it's making sure that we have equity for all people human rights, but then second, its prosperity. To make sure the good life however we find or define it is there for everyone. Safety is physical, its resilience and climate change. But it's also justice, ensuring a world governed by social progress where women can live without fear of violence, or discrimination because of their gender, or gender identity, their race or religion, their country of origin, their immigration status. I'm proud also that Los Angeles was one of the first cities in the world to measure and to report to the United Nations our progress on the Sustainable Development Goals. Because no nation can do that without cities doing that, too. And I'm proud of the work that we've done to build prosperity to cut poverty in the city by 27%, to build more affordable housing to triple the pace of housing to see things that will bear fruit in the years ahead. And as you all know, LA is home together with Long Beach to about 40% of the cargo that comes by sea. So naturally, our port leadership has made almost 70 international trips since late 2014 made contact with ports from 52 countries, from visits to new mo use to working on reducing our emissions for the communities who live by our ports since we've been since I've been mayor, and we've led trade missions to Mexico, Asia, New Zealand, London, even managed to lead a few to Vietnam and Kenya in 2020. Of course, virtually. And these trips have resulted in concrete wins for Angelenos, new jobs, increase tourism, economic opportunities here and abroad. And I think it's worth noting because I think in the popular press, people say oh, those things are junkets not under my leadership, you were working and everybody who knows who's nodding their head who went on those trips know that we started working at seven, and we stopped working at 10. At night, eating with elected and business leaders making speeches, promoting Los Angeles, bringing new airline flights here. We place a high value on those face to face international partnerships. And I encourage my successor to do the same even in the face of lazy criticism that doesn't understand how critical it is to go out there. Beyond bringing investment to our city, we've also worked hard to empower our domestic companies here to capture more overseas opportunities and greater exports. And we've recently exported one of our greatest assets, our people through the mayor's young Ambassador programme or my programme, we've sent about 130 low income community college students, most of whom have never left this city, let alone the state or country to seven countries. And let me just pause to thank our extraordinary Consular Corps, who we've worked together as so many things including Maya, you've helped us clean up the LA River. You've helped us give money to folks during the pandemic. You've helped build homes for families in need. You've been extraordinary partners. We're so fortunate to have a Consular Corps that steps up for a programme like my truly life changing for these young people and their primitive ambassadors for your country as well.

Think of how transformative a trip to Egypt or Australia is for a 20 year old Community College student from South LA. When it comes to her worldview, the possibilities that she will unleash The scale of her ambition and think about what it means for the future. So I encourage all our Consular Corps, join with us and continue to grow this programme.

The future is actually where I want to end my remarks today. And I look forward to the discussion with Antonia. I want to talk about where we're headed, and the important role all of you can play in getting us there. My favourite criticism sometimes as mayor was, oh, you're going to be gone one day, you don't even care about this. And I say, Well, when I come back, I'm going to have a title even more dangerous than their constituent. I'll always be an Angeleno. And I love this city with all of my heart and soul. I always will. As excited as I am to go to India. I'm so sad to leave this place that I love. But let me frame a challenge. With a little bit of a warning. I'll be blunt, outside of the Pacific Council, and a few other places. international engagement is not something LA's traditionally good at. It hasn't been really built into our civic DNA, much think it's built into our popular DNA much more than it is in our leadership. The critical importance of global relationships is not something that is taught naturally to us Angelenos, but it should, considering how global we are, we really have some work to continue to do. I hope I've laid the table. But as Jerry said, in the next few months, we have amazing kind of dry run, a chance to elevate our leadership and preparation for 2028 when the world will come here for the Olympics by hosting the Summit of the Americas. It's a good example of how our civic DNA is growing towards the global space. It didn't happen by accident. It happened because we saw it in the Federal Register. Don't Lou who runs our convention centre noticed it with only two days left to put a application in, we applied for it. We went after it, we made the case. And we made it easy for the White House and for Washington to say of course, Los Angeles should host every head of state from the Americas because most of them have their largest population outside their home country here in LA already. In June. This will be a defining moment for us. Those things that often go to Chicago or New York or Washington, sometimes Boston or Seattle, but almost never to LA, we can come out as a great global city ready to host the world got us ready for the World Cup, the Olympic and Paralympic Games. He's once in a generation moments to articulate who we are, and who we want to be moments that will help us advance our local goals. As we contribute to our global goals, to house our people reduce our traffic, clean our air, and so much more. As we contribute to the world's prosperities the world's greater gender equity, the world's climate fight. So we need this engagement to be cooked into our DNA and in the DNA of our organisations. And here's the challenge. That's why we're launching global LA. So the public private partnership modelled on what London did in advance of its Olympics to synthesise together investment opportunities, especially the underserved parts of our city tourism opportunities, and also study opportunities, whether it's trade or investment, whether it's a tourism or a student, we need to promote LA with one voice because they all want to see that same Hollywood sign. They want to take advantage of those brilliant universities. They want to be here for our diversity and our sense of belonging. And this is where you come in. Los Angeles is a great global city. I believe we're still unfulfilled potential to steal yet again Antonia's phrase, it's an imperfect paradise. But just as Los Angeles is becoming a great city, it can be so much more. So start using your voice. It starts with your friends overseas, talk about our city, and how it's so much more than they think. Tell them that creativity comes not just through our entertainment, but in sustainability in aerospace. It's not just the place to test your new idea for mobility. It's where the talent is already homegrown and diverse. You'll find whatever you need here, no matter what kind of business. If you have a company or nonprofit looking for a home, let us know so that we can bring them to LA and help us with the Summit of the Americas. By donating to the efforts that we're raising money for are hosting a cultural event or an opportunity for the year long leadership we will have as the capital city of the summit, where we can learn more about our Latin American and Canadian neighbours. If you've been toying with the idea of starting a global organisation, an international humanitarian group, don't wait for somebody else to do it. Do it here in LA. You'll find here that the soil is rich, the sun is always shining, and the global connections that make our city so extraordinary and diverse and such an innovative city of the future will continue to grow and spread for generations to come. And I can't wait to see as an Angeleno what blossoms. Thank you

Well, Mayor Eric, wonderful speech. And you're right, your passion for LA comes across vividly. And you and I share something in common is the love of the place, not just the city, but the place because LA is a state of mind. You know, you run the city, but there's 87 cities. And, and, you know, there's been very lots of challenges in your administration. But I think one of the shining successes has been the recognition that we are a global place, led by the city of LA. But you know, as far as making that a reality, there are so many barriers and, or, you know, challenges or opportunities. And I want to start by something you indicated, that, you know, to highlight the fact that we're a world city, and that is the port. And the challenge right now, as far as making sure that the goods that are parked on the ocean, get through the rest of the country, you know, as far as the city itself, and the management of the infrastructure in order to be a global city. What challenges have you faced and what challenges will will are your successor face in making this? It's a continuum, okay, it's not going to happen overnight. But to truly make it a global place, where the world needs in Southern California, the concept of La the place led by the city of LA,

you're right, you know, nothing is easy, big cities are complicated. We're now the third largest municipal economy in the world. Tokyo is about twice the size of New York and Los Angeles, which are basically tied down 90 million people in a continuous contiguous city. That's a real strength. On the flip side, we've divided it into over 120 pieces. That's just the municipalities. And then we layer on top of that our school districts and our air quality districts and, you know, are different our counties to make both the horizontal and vertical axes quite difficult to get things done. California, which has such amazing assets and still continues to lead, the nation needs to get real about becoming more frictionless and reducing some of the impediments to building things like housing. I think that the biggest three issues for LA are housing, housing, and housing. And for California, we need to build that opportunity. Because the weather is still here. The people are still here. The jobs are still here. But they won't all last forever. We don't have a place for them to sleep at night. That's affordable. I'm very proud that we've gone from, you know, about each year, I think let me get the numbers, right. We've tripled. Since 2013 2019, was the last year we have the full years, we tripled the number of units of housing per year, we've increased the affordable housing by more than fourfold. But we have to say yes, in our own backyards, we have to build ourselves up. That doesn't mean any ugly thing that any developer wants to build, we say yes to, but it means we get real about what those numbers look like. And not just in the city of LA where we're doing our part. But the neighbouring cities do sometimes say, Okay, I'll be a little bit of a barnacle on to LA, well, I'll ride along in the ocean. But I'm not going to do anything to add new housing. I think second is that infrastructure, the biggest change that I think I will leave behind has to do with infrastructure, 15 rail lines, a brand new airport, essentially, and what you talked about with the port, and the port is a great example. I'm glad you brought that up. We're we've moved by the way, Christmas wasn't cancelled, it got to the shelves. For those that are those of us that are Jewish, the first week of December was Chanukah we even had to give to them. So it came quite early. But we also showed the power of government as a force for good. This was inefficiency in the private sector. We don't own a shipping line. We don't own a we don't run a single one of those docks, we don't have a trucking company, a warehouse. And we're not the retailers it was inefficiency in the private sector. But simply by working with them with incentives and potential sticks, of saying you can't just store your stuff here for free, your big multinational corporations, we've moved over 70% of those goods off the docks, we now need to make sure is that we're cleaning up the air that we're doing good for the communities. And I think LA the Port of LA it's scary. I know squared for the port itself is going to lead the way with Long Beach and showing what a zero emissions future can look like. So we can continue as we've done had these record after record year 17 million T us those are the containers move just last month in Los Angeles port alone. That's a brand new record. I'm very proud of that. We got to make sure it's not the expense of those who live close by so I think those challenges are just the size and combining With the amazing assets and leadership that understands a mayor has to understand for her for him, your leadership is both formal, I control the port, the airport, etc. But it's also informal, I couldn't force through Metro measure Am I to visit those 87 Other cities and mayor's, which I have done quarterly by convening them something, I hope the next mayor will continue and letting them know that our fate lies together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai