On September 10, I was back home in Los Angeles for Wealth Building Meets AI, a community forum Operation HOPE hosted with the West Angeles Community Development Corporation at West Angeles Villas. More than 300 people came out on a Thursday morning to talk about artificial intelligence, money, and what both mean for families in South LA.
The evening before, Arlan Hamilton and I filled The Bridge at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza for a Capitalism for All conversation with Malik Books and the Pan African Film Festival. Both events were part of Operation HOPE’s LA Revitalization Initiative, led on the ground by Rod McGrew. I am grateful to Rod and to Tanya Carter for the work they put into making this week happen.
Dr. Belinda Allen, executive director of West Angeles CDC, opened the program. WACDC has been doing the hard work of community development in this city for decades, and her team brought together a remarkable room: Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, KJLH’s Karen Slade, WACDC CEO Emeritus Lula Ballton, and my colleague Lance Triggs, Operation HOPE’s senior executive vice president, among others.
Mayor Karen Bass joined us and spoke to something our community has always known. When banks and financial institutions are not there for us, she reminded the room, “we create our own.” That spirit of resilience ran through the whole morning.
My message was a simple one. AI is here, and it is going to transform daily life by 2030, so arguing with it gets us nowhere. Learning it gets us everywhere. There are things AI cannot do: it cannot lead, it cannot create culture, and it cannot bounce back from hardship. Those are strengths our community has carried for generations. As I told the audience, “Us, on top of AI, makes you invaluable.”
That is why Operation HOPE built Juanita, our HOPE AI, and why we keep showing up in rooms like this one. For years I have said financial literacy is the civil rights issue of this generation. AI literacy is the next chapter of that same story.
Thank you to Dr. Allen and the entire WACDC family, to Mayor Bass, to Rod and Tanya, and to everyone who filled that room. Los Angeles raised me, and it was good to be home.
Read the Los Angeles Sentinel’s coverage of the forum.
