This is particularly poignant because we won this LA2050 competition before—in 2014 with a project called "Dream Big With @MoveLATransit"— when we asked for funding that would allow us to work with a social media expert who could teach us how to seed "a countywide public conversation around public transportation with a digital media platform and strategy." (Thank you Vance Hickin! And thank you LA2050!) That was the very beginning of our campaign to win Measure M and $160 billion for transit—and you know what happened then! (It passed thanks at least in part to the mobilizing we and other advocates and elected officials were able to do using social media.)

But we have an even bigger campaign to win this time—Vision 2020, which you can read about here. Our previous project was in the "Connect" category. This year we are competing in the "Live" category, with a goal that LA2050 describes this way: "Our region’s residents will have the economic means and cultural capital to lead active, healthy lives, and everyone benefits from a sustainable environment.

"By the year 2050," the description continues, "Los Angeles will have the nation’s lowest obesity rates and every neighborhood will have access to healthy, affordable food. Every family will be able to afford quality health care and housing. And no families will face environmental health hazards because of where they live or how much money they make."

The italics are mine, because that's exactly what we want to do: We want to build a really big and powerful 4-county coalition around a very big goal: to end air pollution and abate climate change in SoCal, especially in low-income communities near heavily traveled goods movement corridors, by accelerating the deployment of clean cars and—especially—trucks, by electrifying and expanding Metrolink, and by modernizing goods movement infrastructure. Do we want to dump diesel, too? You bet!

Whether we win is determined by popular vote, and voting begins June 19! Mark your calendars. Of course we'll remind you!