Long before Donald Trump’s presidency brought think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 into daily headlines, the influential conservative organization had already quietly left its mark on neighborhoods far from Capitol Hill—including South Central Los Angeles.
Founded in 1973, the Heritage Foundation built its reputation in Washington, D.C., as a champion of small government, free markets, and traditional values. But behind its marble-columned headquarters and white papers on national security and tax policy, Heritage also helped shape debates that trickled down to the sidewalks of Crenshaw Boulevard and Florence Avenue.
Though the Foundation never opened an office in South Los Angeles or directly invested in the area, its ideas influenced federal and state policies that affected everything from local public schools to policing and economic development.
School Choice and Charter Schools
One of the clearest examples of Heritage’s reach came through its strong advocacy for school choice. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the think tank was a key intellectual driver behind the growing charter school movement—a movement that gained ground in California with the 1992 Charter Schools Act. According to a report from National Public Radio (NPR), the Heritage Foundation influenced Sacramento from 1983 to 1999.
By the late 1990s, charter networks began expanding in South Central Los Angeles, promoted as alternatives to underperforming public schools. Parents were not only concerned about substandard education but also viewed charter schools as safer, with a stricter stance on bullying and disruptive behavior, according to urban cowboy and community activist John Hughes.
Hughes was affiliated with a nonprofit that donated supplies to South Los Angeles charter schools and introduced inner-city youth to livestock and horses at his ranch in Compton. When not teaching the art of bull riding or volunteering at the Bill Pickett Rodeo, he paid close attention to what he saw as a charter school boom.
“Charter schools were popping up everywhere,” said Hughes. “Some were understaffed, and many had uncredentialed teachers. People saw a chance to profit, but the kids suffered.”
According to Hughes, the upside was the arrival of new organizations like Green Dot and KIPP, which opened campuses offering stricter discipline, longer school days, and test-based accountability—ideas that mirrored Heritage’s push for privatization and market-driven education reform.
Supporters say these schools gave families more options and improved outcomes. Critics argue they drained resources from traditional public schools, deepened inequalities, and sometimes lacked oversight. Many charter students, especially from smaller “storefront” schools, returned to public schools only to discover they were far behind their peers—lacking basic reading skills and unable to grasp fundamental math.
“Heritage didn’t plant a flag in South LA,” said Dr. Monica Reid, an education policy analyst based in Los Angeles. “But their fingerprints were on a lot of the policy architecture that shaped what education looked like here by the early 2000s.”
Welfare Reform and Work Requirements
The Heritage Foundation was also a leading advocate for the 1996 federal welfare reform signed by President Bill Clinton, which imposed time limits and work requirements for recipients of public assistance.
“In South Central LA, where poverty rates remained high after the 1992 uprisings, we at DPSS believed these policies were controversial,” said Valerie Cannon, a Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) caseworker. “Local residents often bore the brunt of reforms designed thousands of miles away. Aid was reduced, and access to services became more bureaucratically entangled.”
Heritage economists, however, argued that such measures would promote independence and reduce generational dependency on government support. In reports cited by lawmakers crafting California welfare policy, the Foundation maintained, “People need a hand up, not a handout.”
Policing and Public Safety
A 2003 Los Angeles Times article described how the LAPD had embraced a new strategy known as the “broken windows” policy. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Heritage Foundation published reports strongly supporting such policing models, which emphasized cracking down on minor offenses as a way to prevent larger crimes.
Critics contend that this approach led to over-policing and mass incarceration, disproportionately impacting Black and Latino communities. Heritage, by contrast, argued that public safety was a prerequisite for opportunity and urban renewal.
A Legacy Felt, Not Seen
Unlike progressive nonprofits or faith-based organizations with visible presences in South LA, the Heritage Foundation operated as a behind-the-scenes architect—shaping the broad contours of conservative domestic policy. Their ideas filtered down through governors, school boards, and city councils, often without residents knowing the ideological roots.
“It’s not like we ever saw Heritage here,” said longtime community activist John Hughes. “But the policies they helped write? We lived those.”
As the Trump era brought Heritage into the limelight—particularly through initiatives like Project 2025—it’s worth remembering that their ideological influence was already alive and active in South Central long before the MAGA movement began.