In the photograph, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is dressed in a sky-blue shirt, jacket in hand, talking to another man in a sky-blue shirt.
“At in Eagle Rock,” reads the mayor’s message on “Twitpic,” dated Saturday, October 8. “Great place for coffee, reading the paper, and chilling.”
A barista at Swork confirms that Villaraigosa paid a surprise visit to the coffee house Saturday afternoon. Those of us who keep abreast of L.A.’s heady politics will remember that Villaraigosa was the immediate predecessor to in the City Council District 14 seat. (Despite promises that he would stay a full term, Villaraigosa quit halfway and landed the mayor’s job in 2005.)
Mayor, Huizar at CicLAvia
Both Huizar and Villaraigosa are UCLA grads who were scheduled to attend Sunday’s CicLAvia event, which shuts off 10 miles of roads in and around downtown L.A. to vehicles from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., allowing cyclists—and walkers and skaters—to take over the area.
Mayor Praises DREAM Act as Sensible
Villaraigosa also issued a statement Saturday, applauding Gov. Jerry Brown shortly after he signed into the law the so-called “DREAM Act,” which offers state financial assistance to certain college students who entered the United States without proper documents as minors.
Short for “Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors,” the DREAM Act is also known as Assembly Bill 131. It was sponsored by Assemblymember Gil Cedillo, a childhood friend of the mayor’s who also went to UCLA and whose term in the state Assembly expires in 2012.
You can read here the latest Los Angeles Times report about Brown’s approval of AB 131, which was reportedly among some 50 education-related bills whose fate the governor decided. (He rejected a measure that sought to make it harder to establish charter schools, according to the Times.)
“Today, California invests in the dreams of talented undocumented students and in the economic future of our state,” Villaraigosa said in his statement. “I applaud Governor Brown for signing AB 131 into law and affirming the students’ role in creating a bright and prosperous future for California. With California facing a deficit of 1 million college graduates by 2025, this law makes the most sense for our economy and society.”
