Katherine the Great Community Organizer
Native Angeleno, Valley Girl, and tireless politico, might just be knocking on your door one day.
The first thing you notice about Katherine Tattersfield is her beautiful smile. It could be disarming or confusing because her image on Twitter is one of an energetic rabble rouser for progressive ideals, unafraid to take on conflict head on. But then you meet her and she is a gentle, soft-spoken, smiling Helper, who only wants the best for LA.
Well-educated, researched, and seasoned, Katherine knows way more about local LA politics than anyone you know. She’s helped lift up some of your favorites, and mourned the losses of a few who might have been too idealistic for the populace. But she never stops. Nor does she forget.
On a rainy afternoon in LA, we sat down with Katherine after she dropped off important paperwork at the City Clerk’s office, far from her home in Chatsworth. She had taken several busses and one rail line through the slop. That’s dedication.
Click the play button to hear the whole conversation or keep scrolling for the highlights.
Tony Pierce: First of all, thank you for being here on this terribly rainy day.
Katherine Tattersfield: Thank you for having me.
You know a lot about the Valley. You are also really active in local politics. You knock on the doors of the good people of the Valley.
I do. Yeah.
So I would say there’s very few people who know as much about the Valley as somebody who knocks on doors, because a postman just kind of puts the letters in the box.
Yes. You actually get to talk to the people and have conversations about the salient issues in the communities.
I’m nervous for you, though. Because when people knock on my door — in 2023 — I’m thinking “it’s trouble.” When people open the door, are they suspicious of you right away?
Some people are and some people aren’t. I think it depends on their mood — whether they’re having a good day or not. Sometimes it depends on just the type of person they are.
Some people have a Ring doorbell or a lot of security in the home where they can visibly see me. Usually those folks will talk to me from behind a screen or a metal gate where I can’t see them. That’s hard because you don’t know if you’re talking to the right voter that you have on the list.
But other people are very welcoming. “Oh, hang on just a second,” they say as they walk right out to the door. And those are the people that you’re gonna have good conversation with.
Are those people even worth it though, cuz they probably already agree with whatever your agenda was for that day?
Well, that is part of it. You do want to talk to the people who are most receptive to your message, because otherwise… you only have so much time to knock on doors and so much energy. And it’s such a labor intensive process, that you don’t want to spend your time with people who are not going to be receptive to your message because you’re only gonna move them a little bit.
It’s not the same as deep canvassing where the whole goal is to have that conversation.
If you’re trying to get voters mobilized, then no, you don’t want to spend your time on somebody who is just going to argue with you and essentially waste your time when there’s other people right down the street who are going to be happy to see you and excited about the vision and the movement.
I wish we could vote and do other things online.
I know. A lot of the process is so antiquated. When you talk about getting signatures for a candidate, you have to physically do it in person.
So many people ask me, “can I just do this online?”
No, you can’t. I wish you could. It would be so much easier to do this whole process online, but that’s not how the city works.
Earlier you mentioned CD-6. What does Council District 6 entail?
CD-6 are the neighborhoods that were formerly represented by Nury Martinez before she resigned. So you’re looking at Van Nuys and Lake Balboa. Then you have Arleta, Sun Valley, Panorama City, little bit of Pacoima, a little bit of NoHo.
These are very working-class communities. They’re overwhelmingly brown. The district is like 70% people of color. Median income is like $46,000 or something, per household.
Impressively, Katherine is just pulling this information off the top of her head. You nailed these neighborhoods. You even know the demographics!
You’ve got to know your voters. You’ve got to know where to hit the most engaged people in the community. That’s where you start and then you can kind of move in and bring in other people who feel disengaged and disenfranchised in the process.
So, once upon a time, were you knocking on doors for Nury in CD-6?
No, I was never involved with Nury Martinez at all. In fact, the group that I was part of was the West Valley People’s Alliance. Nury did not like the West Valley People’s Alliance.
You guys were too punk rock?
Yeah, too punk rock and she did not like mutual aid efforts in her district.
A lot of people may not know some of these terms we’re throwing around. Correct me if I’m wrong. Isn’t “mutual aid” when you give food and blankets, to people living on the streets?
Yeah, people who are experiencing homelessness need a variety of things. And there was a lot of mutual aid work — there still is — particularly on Aetna Street, in Van Nuys, really close to the Sepulveda metro station. That is Nury’s former district.
She didn’t like it at all. She looked at it as encouraging people to remain on the streets.
I can understand that if you’re living in an ivory tower —
She lives in Sun Valley. You’d think that she would see the immediate need for… Sun Valley is one of the most underprivileged neighborhoods in the whole valley. It’s a community that has some of the worst air quality in the entire city.
Does it? Because we had a realtor on here last year. And people asked, “Where can I buy a house for under a million bucks” and she said “Sun Valley.”
Yeah, because it’s a really high-condensed pollution area.
Because there’s just no breeze to clear it out?
There’s no breeze, but there’s also a rock quarry… there’s a lot of fossil fuels and a lot of manufacturing there. To a degree, it’s unavoidable, but it’s also like, hey, let’s not have polluters right smack in our community.
You grew up where?
I grew up in the Woodland Hills / Canoga Park area. I was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. I was born at Kaiser, Panorama City.
Over by my favorite Walmart.
Yeah. The Panorama Mall Walmart is always poppin.
I actually love the Panorama Mall.
Well you are in the minority for sure. It does not have a good rep.
Maybe it’s because I’m a lot older than you, but I admire the retired grandpas who use the massage chairs and watch soap operas and soccer game replays on their phones.
Yeah, there’s always folks just chilling there. It’s just very reflective of the community itself. There’s a lot of empty storefronts inside the facade. I mean, that’s the case with any mall, but it’s not really like that at the Topanga Mall.
Did you go to college?
Yes. I went to CSUN.
Valley. True Valley.
That’s right!
Did a lot of your classmates from Canoga High go to CSUN?
Not really. Canoga isn’t designed for people to go to college. At least it wasn’t when I was there. It’s more the thought process that you’re just going to be a worker bee. So unless you were in like AP classes or something like that, there wasn’t a lot of emphasis, at least when I was there, on attending college.
Then what motivated you to go to college?
Working at Taco Bell.
I was just like, “this can’t be my life.”
At the store that I worked at, the person who was the manager — not the regional manager or anything — the manager of the one store, had worked there for 30 fucking years.
I’m sitting there at 19 years old, and I’m like, “30 years???”
I also started to notice that they would have meetings for the regional managers and stuff at that store and they were all men. This manager of my store was a woman.
And I just thought, okay, maybe this game is rigged? Maybe there’s a reason why she’s only gotten this far in 30 fucking years. So I was just like, “well, if I go to college, maybe I can get around that.”
It wasn’t a perfect solution. But I still feel that I did make the right choice.
But I also had the ability to make that choice. I had an opportunity that most people don’t have. I had money from my parents to pay for college. Everybody should have that same opportunity. Regardless of where you go to high school, regardless of what you were born into, you should have the opportunity to go to college.
What was your favorite a-ha moments about politics while being a Political Science major at CSUN?
Definitely reading Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope. Though, I read Dreams from My Father when I was at Pierce College, and then I read Audacity of Hope. It’s naive looking back on it, but at the time, it made a big impression on me.
And because of Obama, I read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, that was assigned to me in high school. I hadn’t read it when it was assigned to me, because I did not care at the time.
Did you knock on doors for Mayor Karen Bass?
I did not knock on any doors for Karen Bass, no.
You’re a Gina person, right?
Yes. Team Gina for life. Gina Viola is a good friend. She’s an organizer, and she was our candidate.
Unfortunately, we’re seeing now with the new mayor, just in a few weeks, why we wanted Gina in there. Gina had a very different approach to homelessness and criminalization and a lot of very pressing issues in our city.
You don’t think Mayor Gina would have appointed Chief Michael Moore to oversee Homelessness?
I just don’t see Mayor Gina doing that, no. That was one of Gina’s highlights — talking about bringing in people experiencing homelessness themselves to guide the policy. Have the people who are directly impacted — the people who are already working with nonprofits and other mutual aid community groups — doing this kind of work. Letting them lead the way.
And that’s the opposite of what we’re seeing from Mayor Bass.
Let’s talk about Rick Caruso for a second.
Oh, do we have to?
I want to talk about him for a couple reasons. First, it’s shocking to me that you can spend $100 million…
$110 million
..and lose.
He built two malls that people love. Everybody loves the fucking Grove and the Americana. He’s a handsome billionaire. He checks a lot of the boxes.
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I love LA, obviously. But we’re not the greatest voters for local politics. And so you think of any city, he could have snuck a win in here.
Oh, yeah. That’s actually what he banked on.
So I want to ask you this. It seems like the only time that he gained ground on Karen was when he tried to associate her with the Church of
Scientology.
Yes, the Scientology shit did resonate with some voters. Yeah.
Was that surprising to you that that worked?
No. Because, you know, there are a lot of strong feelings about Scientology in the city. And let’s be honest, there’s a lot of religious bigotry in general.
I mean, you would think as a Catholic person that Rick Caruso wouldn’t engage in that kind of thing, because it was definitely a bigger deal to be a Catholic 50 years ago in American politics. And he was absolutely around back then.
I mean, do we think that they’re still not protecting priests in the Catholic Church from way grosser crimes?
Yeah, yeah.
Meanwhile almost all the politicians go over to the Scientology HQ: Sheriffs. Garcetti.
Garcetti has been there a million times. There’s lots of footage of almost every politician you could think of, especially Mitchell O’Farrell: that was in his district. He was there all the time.
Do you see other would-be candidates attacking their challengers if they can dig up some video of them shaking hands over there?
I guess so. I mean, but it didn’t win it for Caruso. And it was on ad nauseam. Like anybody who watches regular TV saw that shit, non stop.
Every door I would knock on in the Valley would have a stack of Caruso, mailers next to the door or in the trash and that was just wild.
My belief is if Caruso just ran as Republican —
— he would have done way better, right?
Do you think he would have?
I do because he had to spend so much time on it, especially after we highlighted that [he had been a lifelong Republican]. We repeatedly attacked him for it. He spent a lot of his time and resources trying to convince voters that he had made a genuine change.
Did you get that letter in the mail? It was like a regular, standard letter that said, “I am Rick Caruso. I used to be Republican. And here I’ve changed…”
As soon as I got that letter, I was like, “Oh, this fucker is finished.”
Let’s talk about the DSA. The DSA stands for what?
Democratic Socialists of America.
Socialism? I think I like Socialism, don’t I? I’ve got a Bernie poster behind me.
Socialism is alive and well in this apartment.
Well it’s also alive in America. Thank you very much for public schools. The mailman just brought me my mail. During COVID a whole bunch of people gave us free money.
Right.
The reason I’m bringing it up… first of all, are you part of the DSA?
I have not, nor have never been. I have lots of friends who are. I’ve worked for candidates who are members.
So I’m bringing it up because our guy, William, Mr. Film The Police LA, star of the second Hear in LA episode we ever did —
We love you, William.
We love William. William doesn’t like the DSA. And I would think that outsiders would think that William is as far-left as a left wing “extremist” could be.
Oh, for sure. He would get labeled that.
And yet, he doesn’t like to DSA, and there’s some anonymous members out there in the DSA that try to troll him, which is foolish. He’s so good on Twitter.
He’s the master. So I don’t even know why y’all try. You know, you’re just gonna get smoked.
What advice would you have for the DSA in regards to dealing with William?
I mean, William just made a very simple point initially, just stating the fact that everybody could see with their own two eyes.
There was a picture of a large DSA event. And there were like two Black people in the picture. And his comment was just “hey, there’s no Black people here.”
And, to me, the way to approach that is to say, “you’re right, we need to do something about that. We need to examine why that is. Are we doing anything that’s preventing people from feeling accepted in this space?”
Maybe it’s not something you want to say as an organization, “hey, we’ve got this problem.” But it was also something that had come up before.
There was a group of folks who had an Afro DSA caucus. I don’t remember the exact name of it. But you know, it was a group of Black folks in the organization that were trying to do their own thing. And they left the group because of the anti-Blackness that Will was referring to.
So this wasn’t the first rodeo of anti-Blackness within the organization. So to me, especially after this has already been discussed publicly, when a Black man tells you, “this is upsetting,” the opposite way to address it is to try and attack him personally, assassinate his character and send a troll army after him.
It was just like, thanks for proving Will right.
When people say Chatsworth what usually goes through their mind?
They think of porn, weed and the Manson family.
Why weed?
There’s a lot of shitty warehouse space in Chatsworth. And a lot of it used to be for porn production. And now they’re grow houses.
Do you run across xxx stars in Chatsworth?
I probably have. I just didn’t recognize them.
And the third one on the list is the Manson Family?
Yes. But Chatsworth is also known as a white supremacist community. The SFV Peckerwoods are active —
Hold on, San Fernando Valley Peckerwoods. They call themselves that?
Yes, they do.
That’s pretty brave. I don’t know what you’d call that.
Brave. Stupid. I mean, they’re owning it.
I first encountered skinhead, white supremacist gangs when I was in high school. As a white person, I was seen as a potential recruit… even though there are a lot of folks — at least when I encountered them as a teenager — that were not white that were involved in these groups. Latinos, mostly.
Okay, let’s wrap it up with good things you like about Chatsworth.
I love the parks. It’s a great place to be if you like hiking, if you like nature photography, which I do. I love infrared photography. It’s a really cool place to explore stuff like that.
Here’s a weird thing about Chatsworth that you wouldn’t expect: it has a really good Jamaican restaurant. I know it sounds crazy, because it’s like a white neighborhood. It’s called One 876 Caribbean. It’s off of Lassen and DeSoto.
And it’s a random name, but you go in there and those folks are almost all from Jamaica and they are rocking it in Chatsworth.
They make their own juice and it’s kick ass. I love the pineapple ginger. And it’s just not what you’d expect from Chatsworth, right?
Should I order jerk chicken?
They have jerk chicken, they have oxtail. If you like oxtail.
My favorite thing are the patties. They have beef patties, jerk chicken patties, curry chicken patties — those are fire. You should definitely get those. And they make amazing mac and cheese.
And there’s another soul food restaurant in Chatsworth that is called Les Sisters barbecue. It’s a staple that’s been there for a long time. I think it opened in the ‘70s and you know it’s really close to Devonshire and Topanga and they just opened up another location not too far.
They got your standard ribs and they have the best hush puppies. Get the hush puppy for sure. They started making fried chicken sandwiches to get on that Popeyes train and stuff. They just have really, really good food and it’s a Black-owned business in the community that’s beloved.
This is why I do this podcast. The last thing I thought would come up in this episode is soul food and Jamaican food.
Right? It’s funny how that works.
That is just a fraction of our conversation, click the play button to hear more from Katherine. And you will want to follow her on Twitter.
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Hear in LA is Produced by Tony Pierce and a man who has never been called a peckerwood: Jordan Katz
Editing, mixing, and music supervision by Jordan Katz
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Special thanks to Cindy for creating the logo
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and good souls like Katherine, knocking on doors, being part of Democracy, and on the side providing mutual aid for the poorest of the poor in our community. Thank you!
