An anti-Trump encampment has returned to Columbus Circle outside Union Station after being removed two weeks ago when its permit was unexpectedly revoked.
An anti-Trump encampment has returned to Columbus Circle outside Union Station in D.C. after being removed two weeks ago when its permit was unexpectedly revoked.
The group, known as FLARE USA, which stands for “For Liberation and Resistance Everywhere,” had maintained a 24/7 presence at the site since May 1.
“We have a right to express ourselves legally and peacefully, and that is what we’re doing here,” said David Mytych, FLARE’s congressional outreach lead.
In the early morning hours of Oct. 3, U.S. Park Police cleared the encampment, citing safety concerns. In a letter obtained by WTOP, the Department of the Interior claimed the group posed a “clear and present danger to the good order” and alleged a Park Police officer had been assaulted. FLARE members dispute that, saying the incident involved individuals not affiliated with the group.
Michael, a coordinator with FLARE USA, was present during the removal.
“They kidnapped all of our stuff against our will, and it was illegally done,” Michael said.
After weeks of outreach and legal review, Mytych said FLARE USA was granted a new permit by the National Park Service. The group’s seized belongings — including what members estimate to be $20,000 worth of property — have now also been returned, he said.
“FLARE is back in business,” Mytych said. “The First Amendment right now, as of today, is still alive.”
The group said it plans to reestablish its footprint in the coming days and continue its peaceful demonstration.
“We are rebuilding very, very soon,” Michael said.
The permit, which the group showed to WTOP, allows for the encampment at Columbus Circle until Feb. 13, 2026.
The National Park Service has been contacted for comment.
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An encampment protesting President Donald Trump outside of Union Station was removed early Friday morning. However, the group that spearheaded the site says it will continue to protest Trump while it fights the revoking of its permit.
An encampment protesting President Donald Trump outside of Union Station was removed Friday morning. However, the group that spearheaded the site says it will continue to protest Trump while it fights the revoking of its permit.
The encampment, put together by FLARE USA, had been up since May 19, organizer Randy Kindle told WTOP.
The organization’s mission states it fights the “rise of fascism in the United States” through the “nonviolent occupation” of Columbus Circle, with the goal leading to the “impeachment and removal” of Trump.
However, on Friday, Kindle received an early morning call from one of the organization’s members stating that they were being “decamped.” By the time he arrived, the organization’s possessions were removed, with members of the U.S. Park Police, National Park Service and U.S. Marshalls surrounding the area.
“They were standing around with lots of guns and taking our stuff from us and putting them in flatbed trucks and not telling us anything about why they were doing it,” Kindle said.
Members of FLARE at the encampment received a letter from the Department of the Interior, National Park Service and Park Police. Obtained by WTOP, the letter claimed the group’s permit was revoked because its demonstration “presents a clear and present danger to the good order” and violates multiple conditions.
One of the conditions said the group “personally assaulted” a U.S. Park Police officer.
Kindle denies the assault claim and said no formal notice was issued before the encampment’s removal. FLARE intends to appeal the permit revocation.
“There’s been no reports of violence here,” Kindle said. “We have not had one protester arrested at any of our events. No one has ever been arrested here. No one’s ever been arrested from our organization.”
In a statement, a Department of Interior spokesperson said the encampment “violated the terms of their permit. The permit was revoked, and the event was removed.” There was no reference to the letter in the statement.
FLARE members and other demonstration groups rallied together Friday afternoon to protest the decision at the scene of where the campsite once stood. Over 80 people arrived holding anti-Trump signs while playing music.
Demonstrators hold signs protesting President Donald Trump outside of D.C.’s Union Station on Oct. 3, 2025.
(WTOP/José Umaña)
WTOP/José Umaña
Three demonstrators hold signs and dress in costume during a protest outside of D.C.’s Union Station on Oct. 3, 2025.
(WTOP/José Umaña)
WTOP/José Umaña
Nadine Seiler wears a “Protect Free Speech” T-shirt outside of D.C.’s Union Station on Oct. 3, 2025.
(WTOP/José Umaña)
WTOP/José Umaña
Over 80 people gathered on Columbus Circle outside Union Station to demonstrate support for an encampment calling on the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
(WTOP/José Umaña)
WTOP/José Umaña
Nadine Seiler traveled from Waldorf, Maryland, to learn that her speaker and other belongings inside the encampment were taken with no information on how to retrieve them. She said the experience made her feel like her rights were being trampled on, and wished Americans would be fighting for their rights alongside groups like FLARE.
“We are right now like a frog in boiling water, we don’t realize that we are dying,” Seiler said. “Democracy is dying, and people don’t seem to be taking it seriously enough.”
Walker Cook had grown accustomed to seeing FLARE’s tent as he walked to work in the mornings. The decision to take it down attacks one’s free speech, he said, motivating him to join the protest alongside the other demonstrators.
“I’m here protesting for the right to protest for our freedom of speech, because if we don’t use it, we could lose,” Cook said.
The removal of the encampment “galvanized” FLARE members to call for Trump’s impeachment more, especially once Congress returns to work following the shutdown, Kindle said.
He added that FLARE will continue coming back to Columbus Circle and demonstrating in a non-violent action, until being asked to leave in a legal fashion.
“It was unfortunate, but now we know that we’re getting under the skin, and that’s exactly what we want,” he said.
WTOP reached out to U.S. Park Police for comment.
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As part of President Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., takeover, law enforcement agents are clearing out homeless encampments. Newsorganizations and residents captured videos of officers pasting eviction notices on tents and using trash trucks to discard people’s belongings.
But some social media users seized on these real events to generate fake videos using artificial intelligence.
“Police moved in today to clear out a homeless camp in the city,” a narrator said in an Aug. 16 TikTok video as sirens blare in the background.
“City crews tore down tents and packed up belongings and swept the park clean,” another narrator said as the video continued. “Some protested. Some begged for more time. But the clean up went on. What was once a community is now just an empty field.”
The post showed what appears to be footage of police gathering around tents, men in yellow vests sweeping trash bags and putting tents in a truck and a crowd of people protesting.
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Another Aug. 19 TikTok video showed a long tree-lined path littered with trash and tents and an official-looking building, possibly the White House or a monument, in the background. It appears to show hundreds of people including some in yellow vests cleaning the trash.
“An encampment for the unhoused in Washington D.C. was cleared by employees of the city’s Department of Health and Human Services,” the video’s caption read. “The residents of the homeless encampment packed up their belongings and left with the help of city outreach workers, as well as non-profit employees and volunteers.”
But neither video is real. They were both generated with artificial intelligence. Here’s how to tell.
Look for watermarks or disclaimers that identify AI
Some AI-generated content includes watermarks or disclaimers.
For example, the clips in the Aug. 16 TikTok post included a small watermark that read “Veo” on the bottom-right corner. Veo is Google’s AI video generator. The platform lets users create eight-second videos, which helps explain why the clips in the TikTok post are all shorter than that.
The Aug. 19 TikTok video didn’t have a visible watermark. However, the post included a tag that said “creator labeled as AI-generated.” TikTok’s guidelines “require creators to label all AI-generated content that contains realistic images, audio, and video.”
(Screengrab from TikTok)
Look for visual inconsistencies
Despite how realistic AI-generated videos can be, they’re not perfect, and looking closely at the clips can frequently reveal visual inconsistencies.
At the two-second mark in the Aug. 16 video, a woman holding a white trash bag appeared from behind police officers. In the same moment, a blur of another person walked through her before disappearing. After that, about six seconds into the video, a police officer took one of the woman’s trash bags as the other bag she was holding vanished.
In another clip, a man in a yellow vest folded up a tent. As he turned toward the camera, a pole seemed to pass through his body, and the tent he was folding disappeared.
(Screengrabs from TikTok)
Video of protesters showed people holding signs with illegible messaging and a woman whose hand looked blurry, with what looked like more than five fingers. The clip included captions with misspelled words and blurry letters.
(Screengrab from TikTok)
The Aug. 19 video also had inconsistencies. For example, a man in a yellow vest set down what looked like a sleeping bag. The sleeping bag morphed into a white plastic bag. Eventually, a person appeared from that bag.
(Screengrabs from TikTok)
Additionally, the trees lining the path in the video had no leaves. Trump’s Washington, D.C. takeover started Aug. 11, in the middle of summer, when trees in the district have green leaves.
It’s unclear which government building is supposed to be represented in the background of the video. The White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson memorial all have white columns similar to the ones in the video. But, in real life, none of those buildings has a dirt road lined by trees leading up to them.
TikTok videos claim to show police clearing out homeless encampments in Washington, D.C., but they were generated by AI. We rate them False.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib delivered a speech in Dearborn in February, urging Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the presidential primary election to protest President Joe Biden’s support of Israel.
Tlaib, who was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrants and is the only Palestinian American member of Congress, condemned the charges as an unjust and heavy-handed response to peaceful civil disobedience.
“This is a move that’s going to set a precedent, and it’s unfortunate that a Democrat made that move,” Tlaib said in an exclusive interview with Metro Times on Friday. “You would expect that from a Republican, but not a Democrat, and it’s really unfortunate.”
A student protest encampment, which was established in April, grew to include about 60 tents and was intended to draw attention to Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The attacks started after Oct. 7, when Hamas in Gaza killed more than 1,000 people in Israel and took more than 250 hostages. Israel’s U.S.-backed retaliation has killed more than 40,000 people, many of them women and children.
The students called for a ceasefire truce and also demanded the university divest from corporations linked to Israel. Despite multiple meetings between student liaisons and the university, the encampment remained in place, leading to police action on May 21.
Two people were charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail, for refusing to leave the encampment after repeated orders to vacate. An additional seven were charged with trespassing and resisting or obstructing a police officer, a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. These charges are reserved for those who allegedly made physical contact with officers or obstructed arrests, Nessel said.
In addition, two people, including a U-M alumnus, have been charged for separate incidents during a counter-protest on April 25. One is charged with disturbing the peace and attempted ethnic intimidation, while the other faces charges of malicious destruction of personal property for allegedly breaking and discarding protestors’ flags.
Tlaib recalled her visit to the encampment and described the atmosphere as peaceful and welcoming.
“It was very inclusive. It was diverse, very loving,” Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat, says. “When I visited, I remember they were talking about the Armenian genocide, and what we learned from that — it was very powerful. I wish [University of Michigan] President [Santa] Ono could see his students as people that just want to save lives, no matter their faith or ethnicity.”
Pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Michigan.
Tlaib also criticized Nessel, who is the first Jewish person elected Attorney General of Michigan, for what she believes is a biased approach to the protest.
“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest,” Tlaib says. “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”
In a statement announcing the charges, Nessel said the protesters should be held accountable.
“Conviction in your ideals is not an excuse for violations of the law,” Nessel said. “A campus should not be lawless; what is a crime anywhere else in the city remains a crime on university property.”
The charges are likely to have a devastating impact on the lives of the young protesters, Tlaib says.
“It’s devastating because I just hope people don’t forget these are young folks,” she says. “Many of them remind me of my own self who wanted to free our world from oppression. I just know that her action is going to ruin their lives. That’s all I can think of. They’re so young, and they have such a tremendous future.”
Tlaib accused Nessel of caving to demands to prosecute from university authorities, including Ono and members of the Board of Regents, pointing out that Washtenaw County prosecutors could have filed charges but didn’t. In May, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit brought charges against four people for allegedly resisting, obstructing, and assaulting police during a protest at the U-M Ruthven Administration Building on Nov. 17. But no other charges have been filed on the county level since then.
“I think people at the University of Michigan put pressure on her to do this, and she fell for it,” Tlaib says. “I think President Ono and Board of Regent members were very much heavy-handed in this. It had to come from somewhere.”
The congresswoman lamented the long-term impact of the university’s actions.
“In 10 years, the University of Michigan itself is going to teach about this movement and say how wonderful it was, or how it moved our country toward a direction that it needed to, following international law and human rights laws and our own U.S. laws,” Tlaib says. “Yet people are going to write about how the University of Michigan decided to prosecute, criminalize, and vilify their students when they just did everything that they were taught to do.”
Tlaib’s remarks highlight the ongoing tension between university administration, law enforcement, and student activists, as well as the broader implications for free speech and the right to protest in the United States.
“Shame on President Ono and the University of Michigan leadership for enabling this,” Tlaib said. “True leadership, especially in positions of public service, is bringing communities together and having a dialogue. Instead, they’re using their political positions to divide the student population and really make everyone feel unsafe on campus and feel unseen and unheard.”
A collective of student groups that calls itself the Tahrir Coalition organized a protest encampment on the University of Michigan Diag with the aim of convincing officials to divest $6 billion from companies tied to Israel.
In addition, two people, including a U-M alumnus, have been charged for separate incidents during a counter-protest on April 25. One is charged with disturbing the peace and attempted ethnic intimidation, while the other faces charges of malicious destruction of personal property for allegedly breaking and discarding protestors’ flags.
Two people have been charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail, for refusing to leave the encampment after repeated lawful orders.
An additional seven people face charges of trespassing and resisting or obstructing a police officer, a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. These charges are reserved for those who allegedly made physical contact with officers or obstructed arrests.
The charges follow an extensive examination of evidence that included body-worn camera footage, police reports, communications between university officials and local authorities, and various university policies and bylaws. The Solicitor General Division also evaluated all charges for potential First Amendment violations.
Following the review, the Attorney General’s Office declined to prosecute protesters involved in two specific incidents: the Honors Convocation on March 25 at Hill Auditorium and the protest outside the University of Michigan Museum of Art on April 22. However, the investigation into incidents at the homes of U-M Regents remains ongoing.
The charges announced Thursday stem from protest activities on the Diag, a central park area on the U-M campus, where demonstrators established an encampment in April. The encampment, which grew to approximately 60 tents, raised significant safety concerns, including fire hazards and blocked egress paths, according to the U-M fire marshal. Despite multiple meetings between university officials and student liaisons, the encampment remained in place, prompting the university to request police assistance to clear the area.
At 5:38 a.m. on May 21, police issued a dispersal order, giving demonstrators 10 minutes to vacate the area. When the order was ignored, police moved in, encountering resistance from several demonstrators who placed and threw objects to block the officers’ path, according to Nessel. During the operation, some demonstrators physically obstructed the police.
But protesters countered that police used excessive force. Officers dressed in riot gear used batons and pepper spray to drive protesters back from the encampment before tossing tents, supplies, and students’ belongings into trash containers.
“There were dozens of demonstrators in this encampment that morning who promptly obeyed the officers on the scene and dispersed,” Nessel said. “For those who did not, trespassing is a 30-day misdemeanor. In this case, we charged only those who made an effort to impede the officers clearing the encampment. Resisting or Obstructing is a much more serious offense, and for the seven demonstrators we have charged with that felony, we allege that every one of them physically placed their hands or bodies against police who were conducting their duty to clear the hazardous encampment, or physically obstructed an arrest.”
Nessel emphasized that while the right to free speech and assembly is protected under the First Amendment, illegal activities will not be tolerated.
“Conviction in your ideals is not an excuse for violations of the law,” Nessel said. “A campus should not be lawless; what is a crime anywhere else in the city remains a crime on university property.”
Charges were filed Wednesday in 15th District Court in Washtenaw County, though none of the defendants have yet been arraigned, as of Thursday morning.
Dozens of officers in riot gear from multiple agencies descended Monday afternoon on a pro-Palestinian encampment at Cal State L.A. to dismantle the camp and force protesters to leave after tensions escalated last week.
About 1:20 p.m., police issued a dispersal order in English and Spanish, and the remaining protesters in the encampment, a group of about 10, left voluntarily, said university spokesperson Erik Frost Hollins.
It was the last major pro-Palestinian protest encampment at a Los Angeles college.
Officers, who included those from the LAPD, California Highway Patrol and multiple Cal State campus police departments, did not use any weapons to remove protesters and made no arrests, Hollins said. Campus security and police blocked all road entrances to campus, although exits were open, and the campus was accessible by foot.
Using forklifts and large dumpsters, crews took down the painted and graffitied wooden boards that encircled the encampment and hauled them away. Many were painted in the red, green, white and black colors of the Palestinian flag and bore phrases including “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and “Google LASD gangs.”
Students launched the camp on May 1 to demand that Cal State L.A. and the California State University system disclose its investments, “divest from companies that financially and materially support genocide, defend the Palestinian people’s rights of resistance and return, and declare that the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law,” according to a statement from the Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State L.A.
Hollins said that, since the encampment launched, Cal State L.A. President Berenecea Johnson Eanes had visited it twice and held several conversations with protesters.
While other universities, including USC and UCLA, moved in relatively quickly to shut down pro-Palestinian encampments over the spring, the one at Cal State L.A. was tolerated for many weeks. For the most part, it hasn’t been a site of heated controversy or clashes involving students, campus officials or police.
But the nature of the relationship between the university and protesters changed Wednesday, Hollins said, when several dozen protesters barricaded themselves inside the student services building, with some administrators inside, for more than nine hours. The Students for Justice in Palestine group said that administrators were free to leave, with escorts, whenever they desired. The group said it communicated that message directly and via Instagram. About 60 staffers were in the building for roughly two hours before exiting. Around a dozen, including Eanes and Hollins, voluntarily remained behind.
Hollins said there was no specific event on Monday that spurred the university to call in police but said officials had been talking about taking the encampment down since the building occupation.
On Monday afternoon, Eanes said in a campus-wide email that “those associated with the encampment engaged in unlawful acts that put staff and students” at risk during the building occupation, “including assault, vandalism, destruction of property, and looting.”
“The only acceptable option for the safety of the entire campus community was for the encampment to disband and disperse. We will not negotiate with those who would use destruction and intimidation to meet their goals,” she wrote. “It does not escape me that public employees serving a public mission at a public university in one of the region’s most under-resourced communities have been victimized by those claiming to protest injustice.”
Eanes said the campus, where classes have been virtual since the middle of last week, would continue virtually on Tuesday. The university is in its summer session, which ends Aug. 10.
On Monday, the Cal State L.A. chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine said it had remained concerned for weeks that the peaceful encampment might be compromised as negotiations stalled and frustrations mounted.
“While the protest of June 12th produced a turning point for the encampment, we propose that timely, good faith negotiations with the students over their divestment demands is the best route to a resolution,” the group said in a letter posted on Instagram. “We also recommend that you communicate more clearly with the encampment students about a timeline and process for decampment, rather than resort to an unannounced possible sweep that is likely to produce trauma, harm, and violence as it has at other universities.”
An Instagram post by Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State L.A. showed a video of what appeared to be activists talking to police in riot gear who were gathered outside the camp’s barricades. “We have to do whatever they say,” a voice from the camp says in the background. “Can we leave?” an activist says to police as the activist looks out at law enforcement. “Yes!” several officers say in unison. “I want you to go,” an officer says. “I want less of you in there.”
The encampment was nearly dismantled by 5:30 p.m. Its removal revealed graffiti covering the wall below the “Olympic Fantasy” tile mural near the heart of campus, with slogans such as “Gaza lives” and “Stop funding genocide.”
The student services building, the site of last week’s occupation, remained closed off with police tape. Tables and chairs were turned over on its patio, and graffiti remained across its ground-level windows.
A campus security worker not authorized to speak to media said officials would clean up the building area after the camp materials were fully removed. They said they weren’t sure whether that would happen Monday.
Onlookers, including students and neighborhood residents, expressed surprise at the encampment’s removal and the police presence Monday.
“I did not agree with what the camp stood for, but I walked by it many times,” said James Wheeler, who walked over to the encampment area — cordoned off with yellow police tape — while a helicopter flew above.
“These were mostly peaceful students,” Wheeler said, “and their protest was nothing like the conflict or controversy you have seen at other colleges, aside from the one time they went to occupy the building.”
A student who said she knew members of the encampment said the police response was “way overblown” considering it was about 10 activists who voluntarily left the scene. “They sent in all these police cars, these riot police, blocked off the streets, all for nothing. It’s out of control,” said the student, who declined to share her name.
In her letter Monday, Eanes said the university would “need to confront the aftermath of sheltering inside [the student services building], the anger at the destruction of student spaces they worked so hard to create, and the grief of feeling less safe on a campus we all cherish.”
Hollins said, during the sit-in, one employee had “something thrown at their head,” while another was pushed into the door and then out of the way as protesters forced their way into the building.
Protesters vandalized the building heavily, Hollins said, and the university is still investigating to determine whether there should be arrests. Protesters covered their faces and took other steps to hide their identities, which complicates the investigation, they said.
Activists defended their actions.
“The defense of the sit-in and the Solidarity Encampment will continue despite heavy police pressure from the University Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department until CSULA ends its financial and material support for genocide,” the group said in a statement last week.
Times staff writer Angie Orellana Hernandez contributed to this report.
Scores of protesters formed a roving pro-Palestinian camp on UCLA’s campus Monday afternoon, reciting the names of thousands of people who have died in Gaza.
After several hours of mostly peaceful demonstration, however, the situation turned chaotic, with Los Angeles police and private security guards forming a skirmish line and confronting protesters who stood behind barricades.
A crowd formed on the opposite side of the skirmish line, with protesters chanting, “Let them go!”
Associate professor Graeme Blair, who is a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, said one student went to the hospital for treatment of wounds from a rubber bullet, which he said was fired when students were barricaded near Dodd Hall. He criticized authorities, saying the students had been following dispersal orders throughout the evening.
A UC Police representative declined to answer questions about arrests or whether “less than lethal” weapons were used.
Earlier, police had ordered the demonstrators to disperse at least twice, and the crowd quickly dismantled tents and barricades and moved to different locations on campus.
As protesters marched, one among them was reading aloud names of Palestinians killed.
“They will not die in vain,” protesters chanted after each name. “They will be redeemed.”
Some protesters set roses down next to a coffin painted with the Palestinian flag that sat alongside fake bloodied corpses. A helicopter hovered overhead.
Many protesters declined to give interviews, saying they were not “media liaisons” or “media trained.”
The event was organized by the Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA. Several faculty members followed the crowd with a banner showing support for the students and the demonstration.
Monday’s event marked the third pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA in recent weeks, the handling of which has drawn outrage and questions about how ill-prepared the university was for such an event.
The first one was set up April 25, sparking mixed reactions and a largely peaceful counterprotest on April 28.
Two days later, however, UCLA declared the encampment unlawful and directed campus members to leave or face discipline.
Later that night, a violent mob attacked the camp. The few police officers on duty were quickly overwhelmed, and the violence continued for three hours until authorities finally brought the situation under control.
At Monday’s demonstration, most protesters wore surgical masks, and those at the edges of the moving encampment held makeshift wooden shields or set up chicken wire to barricade themselves in. The crowd moved from the courtyard outside Royce Hall to the bottom of the Tongva steps, to the patio behind Kerckhoff Hall, to a courtyard outside Dodd Hall.
Los Angeles police and private security guards formed a line as an unlawful assembly was declared Monday at UCLA.
(Alene Tchekmedyian / Los Angeles Times)
As evening set in, the protesters set up their barricades in the Dodd Hall courtyard. The confrontation escalated as an unlawful assembly was declared. Police and guards formed a line, with protesters shouting, “Cops off campus!”
L.A. Police Capt. Kelly Muniz confirmed to The Times that arrests were made at the protest but did not provide further details.
UCLA professor Yogita Goyal, who teaches English and African American studies, was among faculty on campus Monday expressing support for the protesters. Goyal said police should not have declared an unlawful assembly on Monday — or on April 30 when students were protesting peacefully.
“UCLA leadership should be out here and should be allowing our students to express their political views,” she said.
Some Wayne State University faculty and staff members are calling on President Kimberly Espy to resign after authorizing police to raid a student protest encampment on campus.
WSU cops cleared out the encampment Thursday morning and used force to prevent the anti-war activists — tuition-paying students — from returning to campus. Police tackled some of the protesters and tore off at least one woman’s hijab, even as the demonstrators were following the cops’ orders. About 11 activists were arrested.
It was the second time in a little over a month that police used force to handle peaceful protesters on campus. At a WSU Board of Governors meeting on April 26, university police also pushed and yanked activists out of the public space for chanting, “We will not rest, until you divest.”
“This is the second time that Espy has sat silent while her police force has directly targeted women and unleashed violence against them,” Bryan Victor, professor of social work, tells Metro Times. “Police forcibly removed a hijab that one of the protesters was wearing. We have lost all confidence in Espy’s capacity to lead.”
Metro Times interviewed more than a dozen faculty and staff members, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of reprisal.
They are considering organizing a no-confidence vote to pressure Espy to resign and to send a message that her actions were unjustified and immoral.
“Wayne State’s actions were deplorable, disgusting, inappropriate, vial, and repugnant,” a professor in the College of Fine and Performing Arts says. “Pick any descriptor and it applies. Siccing the cops on students who are literally resisting and protesting a genocide demonstrates that the president lacks the moral clarity to do her job. She should step down. She’s not equipped to handle her responsibilities.”
Activists set up the encampment on May 23 to call on the university to divest from companies connected to Israel. Espy agreed to meet with a limited number of activists if they abandoned the encampment on Memorial Day. The activists countered the request, saying they would meet Espy on their terms.
In response to Thursday’s crackdown, a group of WSU workers also launched the Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine, an initiative that is part of a larger movement with more than 100 other groups on campuses across the country.
“The FSJP stands in solidarity with our students and seeks to protect them from harassment, discrimination, and punishment,” a statement reads. “We are dedicated to reclaiming and protecting academic freedom and free speech within our university, which have become battlegrounds in the propaganda war against Palestinian freedom advocates. We will work in close collaboration with colleagues in Palestinian universities and other universities around the world, supporting public education about the ongoing Nakba and endorsing the principles of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS).”
Professors accuse the university of exploiting diverse students as a recruiting tool, only to treat them unfairly on campus.
“The university uses images of many of these students in their promotional materials,” Shannan Hibbard, a professor in the Department of Music, says. “The university literally uses the faces and images of these students that they unleashed violence on and brutalized. I know many of these students personally, and I am disgusted by this.”
Faculty and staff members also admonished Espy for resorting to force to handle peaceful students who only want their voices to be heard. They point to the brutal crackdowns at other colleges, including the University of Michigan, saying Espy should have known that the encampment crackdown would further inflame tensions and demoralize students.
Wayne State University police arrested nearly a dozen pro-Palestinian activists Thursday.
“Imagine sitting in your office at Wayne State University after having watched what happened at Harvard, Yale, and other universities and saying, ‘What I should do is the same absolutely stupid thing,’” a professor says. “Not only does Espy have vial political beliefs, but she isn’t learning what she’s seeing around the world. How dumb is she?”
Thousands of students have been arrested on campuses around the country in recent weeks for protesting Israel’s U.S.-backed brutality, and police have used aggressive tactics to crack down on dissent. At the University of Michigan last week, police in riot gear used batons and pepper spray to drive protesters back from their encampment before tossing tents, supplies, and students’ belongings into trash containers. The violent actions by police led to larger protests as supporters of free speech rights joined the activists to condemn the universities.
Instead of sitting down with students to discuss their demands, Espy chose violence and the suppression of free speech, faculty and staff members say.
“It doesn’t take a lot of research to understand that there is a better way to handle this,” a professor says. “There were no attempts to do this differently. And there have been multiple times when Espy deliberately misled her students and even misrepresented her own intentions to make it seem like she was going to bargain in good faith.”
Morhaf Al Achkar, professor of Oncology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, says universities should be havens for free speech, and college leaders should encourage dialogue.
“When we are in our classrooms, we pose questions, and sometimes you are faced with silence,” Al Achkar, who is from Syria, says. “Now you have the students talking. And you have the community here. Let the community engage. Let the students deliberate. We support them and are behind them. This is a formative moment for every student here. And we stand behind it.”
The staff and faculty members say they’re proud of the students for having the courage to speak out.
“I am incredibly proud of them, and I am deeply inspired by their bravery,” Julia Yezbick, a professor in the Department of Communication, said three days before the encampment was raided. “Many of them are young, and they are very intelligent and so well spoken. And they have done their research, and they are standing firmly in what they believe. It’s incredible walking through camp because we see our students here, and they’re showing up.”
Another professor, who is a licensed mental health professional, says students have been dealing with so much anxiety and uncertainty over the past few years, from the mass shooting at Michigan State University and the COVID-19 pandemic to the violence against Palestinians.
“After going through all of that, they’re showing up here with bravery,” he says. “They are seeing everything that has been happening in Gaza over the last six months. They’ve gone through so much, and it’s just nauseating to think that they’re putting themselves in this position and the response is, again, more violence.”
Al Achkar says the violence against students will be “a tragic and dark stain in the history of this institution.”
Meanwhile on Thursday evening, dozens of activists gathered outside the jail to support the students who were arrested.
Powerful moment, those detained at Wayne State’s encampment walked out together as they held one another.
— Andrea May Sahouri (@andreamsahouri) May 30, 2024
In a statement Thursday, Espy defended the raid, claiming the encampment was unsafe and scaring other students.
“At Wayne State, we live by an unwavering set of values — including collaboration, integrity, diversity and inclusion — as well as a commitment to safety, security and equity for our entire campus community,” Espy said. “As president, I have a responsibility to uphold these values for all to live, learn and work.”
Espy added, “Since the encampment was established on May 23, it presented legal, health and safety, and operational challenges for our community. University leadership repeatedly engaged with occupants of the encampment.”
Campus police swarmed the encampment shortly before 6 a.m. after giving three warnings for activists to disperse.
Protesters, most of whom are tuition-paying students, complied with the demands and were forced to retreat to a public sidewalk just outside of campus along Warren Avenue. Police formed a line to prevent activists from returning to campus.
“There’s no riot here! Why are you in riot gear?” activists chanted.
Meanwhile, cops tore down Palestinian flags and knocked over tents, protest signs, tables, and boxes full of water bottles and food.
“Everyone was given ample warning,” university spokesman Matt Lockwood tells Metro Times. “Officers told everyone to clear out. We didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
The raid came one week after activists set up the encampment and demanded that Wayne State divest from companies with links to Israel. On Memorial Day, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, joined protesters after WSU President Kimberly Espy set a deadline that evening for activists to abandon the encampment.
As rumors of an imminent raid circulated, about 200 protesters gathered at the encampment. On Tuesday morning, Tlaib, a Detroit Democrat, told police that she and the activists were not leaving.
At about the same time, the university canceled on-campus events and moved to remote classes, citing a “public safety issue.”
Only a couple dozen protesters were at the encampment when the raid occurred.
Wayne State University police faced off with protesters, demanding they leave campus.
At 6:30 a.m., activists marched on a public sidewalk to the southern edge of campus and were confronted by more police in riot gear. Cops demanded that the protesters leave campus. As the activists retreated as ordered, several cops wielding batons lunged at protesters, throwing them to the ground, pouncing on them, and threatening to use pepper spray. Several protesters were handcuffed and whisked away.
The cops’ decision to escalate the confrontation only stoked more anger.
“40,000 dead, and you’re arresting us instead!” protesters shouted at police, referencing the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis since the war began in October.
“Fuck your handcuffs, we’re not going anywhere,” the activists chanted.
A Muslim activist yells at Wayne State University police, “40,000 dead, and you’re arresting us instead!”
Mohammed Abuelenain was sleeping in a tent in his pajamas when police ordered activists to leave Thursday morning.
“They came in the middle of the night when there was barely any of us,” Abuelenain tells Metro Times. “So it really shows they were being cowards for not showing up when we’re able to protect ourselves.”
Abuelenain says the activists are demanding more transparency from Wayne State.
“We’re protesting the genocide and Wayne State University’s investments in Israeli companies,” Abuelenain says. “And we are diverse. We want full disclosure, not simply what the endowments are and what possible percentages could be put into Israeli companies. We want full disclosure, and we want WSU PD to stop sending the chief of police to Israel to be trained by the [Israel Defense Forces].”
Wayne State University police arrested several pro-Palestinian activists on Thursday morning.
In a statement Thursday morning, Espy says the decision to raid the encampment came after consulting the WSU Board of Governors, university leadership, and other community leaders.
“At Wayne State, we live by an unwavering set of values — including collaboration, integrity, diversity and inclusion — as well as a commitment to safety, security and equity for our entire campus community,” Espy said. “As president, I have a responsibility to uphold these values for all to live, learn and work.”
Espy added, “Since the encampment was established on May 23, it presented legal, health and safety, and operational challenges for our community. University leadership repeatedly engaged with occupants of the encampment.”
On April 26, pro-Palestinian activists turned out at a WSU Board of Governors meeting to demand divestment and began chanting, “We will not rest, until you divest.” Campus police, some in plain clothes, converged on protesters and pushed and yanked them out of the public meeting as they linked arms and continued to chant.
More than 100 faculty and staff members condemned the use of force.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is facing faculty calls for his resignation and motions of no confidence and censure as criticism mounts against his leadership in the wake of a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters and a sweeping police takedown of their encampment that resulted in more than 200 arrests last week.
Representatives of the 3,800-member UCLA Academic Senate — made up of tenured and tenure-track faculty — are preparing to vote on separate motions for censure and no-confidence, both stating that Block “failed to ensure the safety of our students and grievously mishandled the events of last week.”
The vote was scheduled for Friday but has been postponed to next week.
The vote has no legal power to force action, but it marks a grave moment for Block. The leader of the nation’s top public research university is completing the final months of his 17-year tenure, after steering the Westwood campus through a financial crisis and global pandemic to reach new heights by expanding enrollment, diversity, philanthropy and research funding. Last year, Block announced he planned to step down on July 31 and return to faculty research.
Other university leaders also have been criticized for their handling of campus protests, sparked last October when Hamas militants launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel and Israel retaliated with a massive bombardment of Gaza. Earlier this week, USC’s Academic Senate voted to censure the university’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, after the widely criticized decision to cancel the valedictorian’s commencement speech due to unspecified “threats” and controversy over an aggressive police takedown of a pro-Palestinian encampment.
UCLA declined to comment on the upcoming faculty vote.
Three weeks of turmoil at UCLA started April 25, when students set up an encampment in the campus’ grassy quad to express solidarity with Palestinians, condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza and demand that UCLA divest from firms that make and deliver weapons and services to Israel. The encampment was initially free of violence, with protesters engaged in teach-in, art builds, yoga and other activities.
“Many of us have personally witnessed the vibrant, respectful and highly disciplined learning [at the encampment],” Chicano Studies department chair Charlene Villaseñor Black said. “And university administration have gotten it wrong every time.”
But UCLA Police Chief John Thomas said he advised campus leadership against allowing the encampment, as it violated rules against overnight camping. Inna Faliks, a professor of piano, said she and some other Jewish campus members felt targeted by protest chants, graffiti of expletives against Jews and blocked access to public walkways and buildings.
UCLA declared the encampment unlawful on April 30. Later that night, a violent mob attacked the encampment and students were left to fend for themselves against beatings, pepper spray and fireworks for three hours. Law enforcement moved in on May 1 and early the next morning took down the encampment and arrested more than 200 people.
Since then, a number of people have been blamed for the debacle.
More than 900 University of California faculty and staff members issued a list of demands this week that included Block’s resignation, amnesty for students, staff and faculty who participated in the encampment and peaceful protests, university disclosure of all investments and divestment from military weapon production companies.
“Following the violent and aggressive police sweep of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on May 2, 2024, resulting in more than 200 students, faculty, and staff arrested while peacefully protesting, it has become obvious that Chancellor Block has failed our university,” the demand letter said.
Faculty who signed the letter represented various departments including those of mathematics, American Indian Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Asian American Studies, history, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, African American Studies, and anthropology.
They spoke out about their demands Thursday, joined by a group of volunteer medics — representing about 100 UCLA medical students, nurses, residents and emergency medical technicians — who raised concerns regarding police brutality and the absence of medical help from the university after the attack. They said more than 150 students were attacked with pepper spray and bear mace, and at least 25 students were hospitalized for head trauma, fractures and severe lacerations.
“UCLA Chancellor Gene Block’s and UC President Michael Drake’s statements minimize the severity of both the physical and psychological impact of their actions while attempting to justify the force they authorized against their students,” a medic said in a statement.
When police took down the encampment, medics said, more than a dozen students were evaluated for rubber bullet injuries and others showed contusions and musculoskeletal injuries.
“We strongly feel that Chancellor Block endangered the lives of our students, faculty and staff,” said Michael Chwe, a political science professor who helped organize the demand letter.
Judea Pearl, a computer science professor, said UC President Michael V. Drake was ultimately responsible for the campus security failures. He said Block should not be blamed for failing to bring in a stronger police presence because he was a “victim” of UC systemwide guidelines that direct campuses to rely first on communication with protesters and bring in law enforcement as a last resort.
“He was trying to protect the campus but had to follow the directive…not to bring in police,” Pearl said.
But other critics have blamed Thomas, the police chief. Three sources not authorized to speak publicly told The Times that campus leadership, even before the mob attack, had wanted to beef up security and authorized Thomas to bring in external law enforcement to assist UCLA police and private security with as much overtime pay as needed. But he failed to do so, they said, and also did not provide a security plan to campus leadership despite multiple requests to do so.
Others said that Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck, who oversaw the police department and Office of Emergency Management at the time of the mob attack, should step aside. Previous lapses are now being scrutinized, including his responsibility for not stopping the LAPD from using the UCLA-leased Jackie Robinson Stadium as a staging area for action against Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 — which Block, Beck and others called a mistake and a violation of university values. Beck’s duties also include management of Bruin Woods, the university’s Lake Arrowhead facility, where two counselors alleged they were hazed and sexually assaulted by other counselors in 2022.
Beck did not respond to requests for comment.
Pearl said a censure and no-confidence vote would send the wrong message to Block’s successor to refrain from strong leadership and instead pander to campus political sentiments, which he said would signify a “caving in” to demands to cut business and academic ties with Israel. Chwe, however, said it would signify faculty’s strong views that the chancellor must be held responsible for student safety.
UCLA also has moved swiftly to improve security by creating a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations, including the campus police department. Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief who has reviewed law enforcement responses in high-profile cases across the country, is leading the new Office of Campus Safety as associate vice chancellor.
Some critics, however, said the move would further “militarize” the campus. UCLA deployed a larger law enforcement presence earlier this week, when campus police arrested 44 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in a parking structure before a planned demonstration. Police said they carried equipment that could be “used to unlawfully enter and barricade a building.” Some students decried the arrests as harassment and intimidation. Classes were moved online for the rest of the week as a security precaution.
Differing opinions among faculty over the university’s response to student protests have created small rifts within departments, according to multiple faculty members.
Chwe said they are working to combat misinformation being spread to faculty members surrounding recent events and continue to hold conversations with their colleagues.
“It’s not only about dialogue with the university but also with our colleagues,” he said.
Caroline Luce, a UCLA historian and member of University Council-American Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 3,000 non-senate faculty and several hundred professional librarians, called the atmosphere for UCLA faculty, particularly those not tenured like lecturers, “dicey with lots of risk.”
“There are reputations and interpersonal dynamics in departments that they have to navigate,” she said.
John Branstetter, a UCLA lecturer in political science, was one of about 10 faculty arrested after police took down the encampment. He said the university’s crackdown on free speech on campus has not only made him fear for his students’ safety but for his own.
“I do feel threatened by the general atmosphere that the administration is fostering through this continuing quasi-criminalization of free speech on campus, so I don’t know if they will try to get rid of me or the protections I have will be abided by,” he said.
UNC Charlotte students and local activists march through campus during a rally for solidarity with Gaza and to protest student oppression at UNC Charlotte in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.
Khadejeh Nikouyeh
Knikouyeh@charlotteobserver.com
Supporters of Israel-Hamas war protests at UNC Charlotte say they’re “disgusted” after police dismantled a pro-Palestine encampment at the college this week, resulting in one arrest.
Students, teachers and other supporters gathered outside the government center in uptown Wednesday afternoon, responding to the university’s and Charlotte Mecklenburg police’s move to shut down the encampment. They say students have been suspended in connection with the protests.
“UNCC protest organizers have been denied a good faith conversation with university administration about their demands, and the university has, instead, leveraged its power to silence students and community members,” said Sam Poler, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist Jewish advocacy organization. “UNCC’s actions are making everyone less safe.”
Protests in Charlotte are joined by many others across the country, with participants setting up tents, making signs and occupying buildings. Police at colleges across the country have clashed frequently with protesters. Last month, police charged 36 people at UNC Chapel Hill and protesters threw water on interim Chancellor Lee Roberts and officers as they worked to put back up an American flag.
Police in Charlotte dismantled the encampment early Tuesday morning after ordering protesters to disperse. Later that evening, around 50 protesters marched through UNC Charlotte’s campus. One UNC Charlotte protester was arrested overnight and released Wednesday before being arrested a second time for returning to campus, The Charlotte Observer’s news partner WSOC-TV reported.
Organizers said the use of force by university police and CMPD in removing protesters was unwarranted.
“We are disgusted at the use of force against students,” Poler told the press. “Police threw away personal belongings and community-donated supplies from the encampment, supplies that students had planned to donate to local organizations.”
Protesters suspended from UNC Charlotte?
The university issued a statement Wednesday detailing what police found at the encampment site.
“Various concerning items were discovered, including knives, box cutters, a collection of baseball-sized rocks, and a mattress that was used to collect and store feces,” the statement said. “Over the past several days, an encampment on UNC Charlotte’s campus has been marked by escalating violations of law and policy, including the erection of unauthorized structures, defacement of University property, and the disruption of academic activities and final exams.”
University officials declined to comment whether students had been suspended, but speakers at Wednesday’s press conference said there had been “several suspensions.” At the same conference, students declined to give their names and wore scarves and masks in front of news cameras in order to avoid being identified by university personnel.
Jewish Voice for Peace called on UNC Charlotte officials to drop all charges and overturn all suspensions made in connection with the encampment.
What do UNC Charlotte protesters want?
UNC Charlotte students and local activists march through campus during a rally for solidarity with Gaza and to protest student oppression at UNC Charlotte in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. Khadejeh Nikouyeh Knikouyeh@charlotteobserver.com
Protesters are calling on the university to divest from its activities in Israel and any other investments contributing to the war in Gaza. Most notably, protesters called on UNC Charlotte administration to divest from its Mount Zion Archeological Project in Jerusalem, which has been funded and staffed in part by UNC Charlotte students and staff since 2008.
The school released additional information about the project Wednesday, saying excavation at the site ended in 2023 and that remaining work involves cleaning and conservation, which students won’t be involved in.
“All funds from this project were raised from private donors; no state or University funds were used. The donated funds were used to cover the logistical costs of managing the project in the field, undertaking scientific research on the artifacts, and preparing publications,” the university said in a statement. “Additional private funds will be raised when necessary to complete the research and publication of the work, not for fieldwork.”
The university also clarified the site’s location.
“The archaeological work in Jerusalem was conducted on ‘common’ land that was set aside as a green park in the 1920s. It is important to note the University project was undertaken on the traditional Mount Zion, not the biblical Mount Zion (also known as the ‘City of David’). They are two different and distinct locations,” the statement said.
Critics claim the project contributed to the displacement of Palestinian families, while the university claims the project maintained an outreach program with the local Palestinian community.
Related stories from Charlotte Observer
Rebecca Noel reports on education for The Charlotte Observer. She’s a native of Houston, Texas, and graduated from Rice University. She later received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. When she’s not reporting, she enjoys reading, running and frequenting coffee shops around Charlotte.
Eilon Presman was about 100 feet from the UCLA Palestinian solidarity encampment when he heard the screams: “Zionist! Zionist!”
The 20-year-old junior, who is Israeli, realized the activists were pointing at him.
“Human chain!” they cried.
A line of protesters linked arms and marched toward him, Presman said, blocking him from accessing the heart of UCLA’s campus. Other activists, he said, unfurled kaffiyeh scarves to block his view of the camp.
“Every step back that I took, they took a step forward,” Presman said. “I was just forced to walk away.”
Pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate in UCLA’s Bruin Plaza after arrests were made at the Westwood campus Monday.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
It’s been a week since police swarmed the UCLA campus and tore down the pro-Palestinian camp, arresting more than 200 people. But the legacy of the encampment remains an issue of much debate, particularly among Jewish students, who make up nearly 8% of the university’s 32,000 undergraduates.
In the days leading up to April 30 — when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the camp with fists, bats and chemical spray, and police took hours to stop the violence — frustration had swelled among many Jews: Viralvideos showed activists restricting the passage of students they targeted as Zionists.
Some Jewish students said they felt intimidated as protesters scrawled graffiti — “Death 2 Zionism” and “Baby Killers” — on campus buildings and blocked access with wooden pallets, plywood, metal barricades and human walls.
The pro-Palestinian student movement includes various strains of activism, including calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, support for Hamas and demands that universities divest from firms doing business with Israel. But on campuses across the country, no word has become more charged than “Zionist.”
A pro-Israel activist peels a pro-Palestinian sticker off a sign on May 2 as a protest encampment was dispersed.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In its most basic definition, a Zionist is somebody who believes that the Jewish people have a right to statehood in their ancestral homeland as a place of refuge from centuries of persecution — in other words, that Israel, established as a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust, has a right to exist.
Using that definition, the Anti-Defamation League considers anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism. But protesters — including many Jews — draw a sharp distinction, arguing that it is Zionism that fuels Israel’s right-wing government and the assault on Gaza that they say amounts to genocide against Palestinians.
Some of the Jewish students who took part in the encampment played a role in excluding Zionists.
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, a small but rapidly growing group on campus, argue they had a moral responsibility to pressure university officials to divest from Israel.
UCLA facilities employees clean up and dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus May 2.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The camp and its checkpoints, they said, were not hostile to Jews. Restricting fellow students from entering was just a pragmatic move to protect protesters inside from physical, verbal or emotional abuse.
“We are committed to keeping each other safe,” said Agnes Lin, 22, a fourth-year art and art history student and member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Anyone who agreed to the UC Divest Coalition’s demands and community guidelines, she said, was welcome.
“What is not welcome is Zionism,” she added. “Or anyone who actively adheres to a very violent, genocidal political ideology that is actively endangering people in Gaza right now.”
In practice, students who supported the existence of Israel were kept out — even if they opposed Israel’s right-wing government and its bombardment of Gaza.
Senior Adam Thaw, 21, said activists blocked him and others from accessing a public walkway to Powell Library.
After telling him they were not letting anyone through, a male activist eyed his Star of David necklace: “If you’re here to espouse that this is antisemitism, then you can leave.”
Senior Adam Thaw is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“Who are you to tell me where I can and cannot go?” said Thaw, who is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
As complaints from Jewish students mounted, UCLA declared the encampment “unlawful.” In an April 30 statement, Chancellor Gene Block said most activists had been peaceful, but the tactics of some were “shocking and shameful.”
“Students on their way to class,” he said, “have been physically blocked from accessing parts of the campus.”
::
The campus was dark and hushed when Sabrina Ellis joined dozens of activists at 4 a.m. to set up the encampment on the lawn of Dickson Court.
After pitching tents and erecting barricades of wooden pallets and sheets of plywood, Ellis, a 21-year-old international student from Brazil, took shifts guarding the entrance.
Ellis didn’t call it a checkpoint. The goal was to exclude and physically block “agitators” — anyone who might be violent, record students or disagree with the cause.
“Our top priority isn’t people’s freedom of movement,” Ellis said. “It is keeping people in our encampments physically and emotionally safe.”
The longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace — who wore a large Star of David over her T-shirt and a kaffiyeh wrapped around her shoulders — said the camp “was not profiling based on religion.”
But as activists blocked Zionist students from public campus space, they faced charges that they engaged in viewpoint discrimination.
Sabrina Ellis, a junior and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, was part of the pro-Palestinian encampment from the beginning.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Before allowing anyone in, Ellis said, a protester read the demands of the encampment, which included calling for UC and UCLA to divest all funds from companies “complicit in the Israeli occupation,” boycott all connections with Israeli universities, sever ties with the Los Angeles Police Department and demand a permanent cease-fire.
Then, activists ran through their safety guidelines: Ask before taking a photo or video; wear a mask to limit the spread of COVID; do not post identifying information or photos; and no engagement with counterprotesters.
If students didn’t agree, “we would just kindly tell them that they’re not allowed to come in,” Ellis said.
Some Jewish students were shaken by the experience, arriving at Hillel upset and even crying.
“They were genuinely going about their day and couldn’t get access as protesters asked them, ‘Are you a Zionist?’ or looked at their necklace,” said Daniel Gold, executive director of Hillel at UCLA.
::
For pro-Palestinian activists who are Jewish, the camp was a peaceful space to promote justice, a welcoming interfaith community with therapist-led processing circles and candlelit prayer services.
Blue tarps and blankets were put down in the middle of the lawn for Islamic prayers and a Passover Seder and a Shabbat service.
On the first evening, about 100 activists, many Jewish, sat in a circle to pray, sing, drink grape juice and eat matzo ball soup, matzo crackers and watermelon.
“It was really beautiful,” said Lin, the art major. “We were trying to hold these spaces to show that Judaism goes beyond Zionism.”
An encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA’s Dickson Plaza on April 29.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Other Jewish students were more wary as they navigated the camp.
Presman, who moved to the U.S. when he was 12 and identifies as a Zionist, was alarmed when he scanned the quad on the first day. He saw signs saying “Israelis are native 2 HELL,” he said, and banners and graffiti showing inverted red triangles, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate a military target.
“Do people know what that means?” he wondered.
Tucking his Star of David under his T-shirt, Presman said, he entered and approached activists, introducing himself as an Israeli citizen.
“Maybe we can find common ground,” he said, asking, “one human being to the other?”
Some students put their hands up, he said, blocking him as they walked away. Others treated the conversation as a joke. One protester, he said, told him that everything Hamas did was justified.
Presman said he had one good conversation: An activist who identified as anti-Zionist admitted not being 100% educated on what Zionism was, but agreed that Israel should exist. They came to the conclusion the activist was a Zionist.
Pro-Palestinian encampment participants reinforce the camp barriers at UCLA on May 1.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
But most of Presman’s exchanges, he said, ended negatively when activists realized he was defending Zionism. He said he was called a “dirty Jew” and “white colonizer.”
Other students — even those who did not fully support the encampment — said they did not experience such slurs.
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
Entering the camp after a classmate vouched for her, Burnett was disturbed by anti-Israeli signs and graffiti that named Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the military wing of Hamas. But she also bonded with protesters, including a woman in a hijab.
“Of course, some protesters deny Oct. 7 or condone violence as long as it can be put under the guise of decolonial resistance, which is obviously horrific,” Burnett said. “But that’s not the case of many students inside the encampment.”
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Burnett contrasted what she saw as a peaceful, friendly mood inside the camp with the pro-Israel counterprotests where people held up benign slogans, such as “Bring the Hostages Home,” but engaged in hostile behavior.
As counterprotesters converged for a Sunday rally, she said, a pro-Israel activist spat on her and told she should have been slaughtered in the kibbutzim on Oct. 7.
Just as some pro-Palestinian activists demonized all Zionists as evil and pro-genocide — ignoring the wide range of viewpoints within the Zionist community — Burnett thought some pro-Israel counterprotesters were dehumanizing student activists in the encampment and spreading a “mass hysteria narrative.”
As the encampment expanded — and organizers set up entrance points near Royce Hall and Powell Library — some Jewish students took videos that swiftly went viral.
“It’s time to go,” a protester wearing a yellow safety vest and kaffiyeh told a student in one video as he guarded an entrance near Powell Library. “You don’t have a wristband.”
UCLA has moved swiftly to create a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations, including the police department, in the wake of what have been called serious lapses in handling protests that culminated in a mob attack on a pro-Palestinian student encampment last week.
Chancellor Gene Block announced Sunday that Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief who has reviewed law enforcement responses in high-profile cases across the country, will serve as associate vice chancellor of a new Office of Campus Safety. He will oversee the Police Department — including Police Chief John Thomas, who is facing calls to step aside — and the Office of Emergency Management.
Braziel previously was tapped to review police actions in the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting; riots in Ferguson, Mo.; the shootout with police killer Christopher Dorner; and other cases. He will report directly to Block in a unit that will focus solely on campus safety — an arrangement that has proved effective at major universities across the country, the chancellor said. Previously, the campus police chief and the Office of Emergency Management reported to Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck.
Block also announced a new advisory group to partner with Braziel. Members include UC Davis Police Chief Joseph Farrow, the respected chair of the UC Council of Police Chiefs; Vickie Mays, UCLA professor of psychology and health policy and management; and Jody Stiger, UC systemwide director of community safety.
“Protecting the safety of our community underpins everything we do at UCLA. In the past week, our campus has been shaken by events that have disturbed this sense of safety and strained trust within our community,” Block said in a message to the campus community. “One thing is already clear: to best protect our community moving forward, urgent changes are needed in how we administer safety operations.
“The well-being of our students, faculty and staff is paramount.”
The move is intended to immediately address campus security shortfalls that left UCLA students and others involved in the protest encampment to fend for themselves against attackers for three hours before law enforcement moved in to quell the melee.
Three sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly, told The Times that Thomas failed to provide a repeatedly requested written security plan to campus leadership on how he planned to keep the campus safe in various scenarios, including rallies, skirmishes and violence. He failed to secure external law enforcement to assist UCLA police and private security in safeguarding the encampment area before the mob attack, despite authorization to do so with as much overtime payment as needed, the sources said.
Thomas also assured leadership that it would take just “minutes” to mobilize law enforcement to quell violence. It actually took three hours to assemble enough officers before they moved in to intervene.
Thomas, in an interview late Friday night, disputed that account as inaccurate and said he did “everything I could” to safeguard the community in a week of strife that left UCLA reeling.
A large group of counterprotesters, some dressed in black outfits with white masks, stormed the area Tuesday night through Wednesday morning and assaulted campers, tore down barricades, hurled wood and other objects into the camp and at those inside. Campers, some holding lumber and wearing goggles and helmets, sought to defend themselves with pepper spray and other means. Several were injured, including four Daily Bruin student journalists.
University of California President Michael V. Drake has initiated an independent review into UCLA’s response, which Block has said he welcomes. The chancellor also has launched an internal review of the campus security processes. A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom has also called for answers to explain “the limited and delayed campus law enforcement response at UCLA.”
Drake hailed the appointment of Braziel, saying he brings “a wealth of experience in community policing, emergency response operations, and institutional reviews.”
“I fully support this appointment and believe that it is an important step towards restoring confidence in our public safety systems and procedures,” Drake said in a statement Sunday.
The UC external investigation is expected to move quickly and focus more on lessons to be learned rather than individuals to be blamed, a UC source said.
But internal calls for Thomas to step aside are growing, the sources said. And the vice chancellor he reports to — Beck — is also being scrutinized.
Beck has not responded to requests for comment about his actions around the protests and encampment.
One UC source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, described Thomas as a “dedicated public servant” who had properly raised red flags about the encampment from the moment the first tents went up. But his warnings to take the encampment down went unheeded, the source said.
“To point a finger at the police chief is ridiculous,” the source said. “This completely falls in the lap of Michael Beck.”
The UC police union issued a statement Saturday reiterating that the external review should focus squarely on the failures of administrators, not law enforcement.
“UC administrators are solely responsible for the University’s response to campus protests, and they own all the fallout from those responses,” said Wade Stern, president of the Federated University Police Officers’ Assn., which represents the 250 officers of the 10 UC police departments. “UC’s written guidelines make clear that UC administrators decide what the response to campus protests will be, who will respond, and the role of campus police is only to implement that response.”
Several top LAPD leaders not authorized to discuss the incident told The Times that Thomas had tarnished the reputation of Los Angeles law enforcement with what they called his lack of planning and poor communication with other agencies. They said they had to scramble for officers and wait until enough could be assembled to safely intervene at about 1:40 a.m.
Critics said his attempts to justify his actions to The Times, while others were focused on addressing the crisis, showed selfishness and had fueled more calls for him to step aside.
Thomas said he was not ready to step aside. He asserted that he had provided daily briefings to campus leadership, the number of resources, the response protocol and assigned roles for those deployed.
He said he was restricted in planning because of a directive from campus leadership not to use police, in keeping with UC community guidelines to first rely on communication with protesters and use law enforcement as a last resort.
When campus leadership directed him to secure outside help and spare no cost for enough officers and private security to safeguard the community, Thomas said he attempted to secure it from the Los Angeles Police Department and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. But he said he was told by an LAPD lieutenant that problems with the payment system between the city and state prevented completion of the effort before the melee broke out.
Thomas acknowledged that he did tell leadership that it would take just minutes to deploy police forces, but he was referring to a general response — not a force large enough to handle the size of the crowds that clashed that night. But three sources confirmed he was directly asked how long it would take for outside law enforcement to quell any violence.
The Times reported Thursday that the UCLA Police Department had asked other campuses for additional police officers five days before the attack. The reporting was based on documents the paper reviewed and information from the head of the UC police officers union. Only a few on-duty UCLA police officers were on hand to protect the encampment Tuesday night. Questions are being raised as to why he did not increase the number of UC police that night after being directed to use whatever resources were needed to keep the community safe.
“I did everything I could to increase the police presence that we couldn’t provide because of our small department,” he said.
On the night of the attack, Thomas said he was watching a Dodgers game at home and was alerted to the mob violence by Beck. Thomas said he immediately called the LAPD to ask for deployment to the campus and notified his UCLA watch commander to call for mutual aid from law enforcement with the cities of Beverly Hills, Culver City and Santa Monica, along with sheriff’s deputies.
When he arrived on scene, he said, 19 officers from UCLA, the LAPD and three of the mutual aid agencies had arrived but had not moved in to quell the violence. An LAPD lieutenant told him the force was too small; Thomas said he asked why they couldn’t go in with the forces they had, and the lieutenant told him he was directed to wait.
It took more than 90 minutes for sufficient forces to arrive and intervene. The next day, UCLA called in police who dismantled the encampment and arrested more than 200 protesters early Thursday morning in clashes that lasted hours.
The campus will resume normal operations Monday. Faculty are being encouraged to resume in-person instruction as soon as possible but may continue remote classes through Friday without departmental authorization. Law enforcement officers are stationed throughout the campus, according to a BruinAlert sent Sunday morning.
But sources said that tension over the protests and the fraught politics have continued to bitterly divide both campus members and the outside community, making it difficult to speak freely. They said they hoped Block’s actions would represent a turning point.
“The chancellor made it clear that Bruin community safety comes first and his swift, decisive actions are really welcomed,” a source said.
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
TROY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Last night a homeless encampment fire endangered first responders and the surrounding community in Troy. NEWS10 spoke with local officials and to the homeless person involved, now without a camp, on what’s being done to ensure everyone’s safety.
The woman who claims to live there says she thinks this was arson. “I’ve lived here in the woods actually for about a year now. They’ve made us move three different times. And this time me and my boyfriend went out on our date night, which is at a soup kitchen, honestly. And we’re only gone an hour. And we came home to our tent in flames,” said the homeless woman.
There’s a growing concern for safety in Troy after the fire department responded to the homeless encampment fire which involved some explosions. “Last night was deep in a wooded area so that in itself is different for us trudged through a wooded area in our gear to get to a location that we can’t see so we don’t even really know what we have.” said Troy Fire Chief, Richard Cellucci. He also said his crews and neighbors heard popping noises that were a concern. “They did hear some things popping off so to speak I wouldn’t really classify them as major explosions but just some kind of popping off so they were a little concerned about what they would be approaching.”
Since Mayor Carmella Mantello took office, she says her Quality-of-Life Team has helped relocate these folks as best as possible. But some of the homeless have not appreciated this. “The first thing she did is mayor was targeting the homeless and I don’t understand why. I think there’s far much bigger problems in Troy than the homeless people,” said the homeless woman.
Mayor Mantello said, “The fact of the matter is it puts our community in danger and our job as an elected we want to find shelter, food, respectable shower, bathroom for these folks. But at the same time we can’t let these encampments you know, harm our community.”
Amy LaFountain Executive Director at Joseph’s House says her team is doing all they can to help the homeless community. “Our Troy Outreach team goes to all these places where people could potentially be staying outside, and we make sure they know what’s available and it’s for them to choose if they want that or if they’re ready for it,” said LaFountain.
However, some folks feel that we can all do a little better when it comes to a shared community. “I’m hoping for the best. We’ll see. I definitely don’t want anything bad to happen,” said one Troy resident.
“We all can do more for humanity. I think that there should be more food programs, food insecurity is real. Housing insecurity, even myself I just trying to look for a living around it can be tough. And I’m someone who graduated with a degree,” said another Troy Resident.
Nonetheless, Mantello says she is committed to keeping residents safe. “We cannot allow what happened last night to turn into something even much, much more catastrophic,” said Mantello.
With the help of bulldozers, items including tents, chairs and yoga mats were removed Thursday morning from the UCLA encampment occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters and shoved into a large gray dumpster.
Packages of unopened plastic water bottles lay on the grass. Nearby, two white trucks held pieces of wood that had been used by protesters to barricade the camp. A group of four UCLA graduate students walked over to Dickson Court, the area on campus where the encampment once stood, carrying medical masks and other supplies for protesters, only to learn the camp had been taken down.
They decided they would give the donations to one of the other Southern California universities with encampments.
Such camps have spread to college campuses across the nation in a student movement unlike any other this century. Protesters are calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza. On Tuesday, police arrested at least 25 protesters at Cal Poly Humboldt, where war demonstrators had taken over buildings, spurring school officials to close campus.
“I think it’s really important to stand up for what you believe in,” said a 29-year-old UCLA graduate student who requested anonymity because of the fear of reprisals. “I’ve been here a few times to give donations to people here in the encampment, and every single time, people have met me with grace and a lot of respect.”
She and her friends have brought donations of water, chips, masks and protective eyewear to the protesters throughout the week.
“I feel honored that our school is partaking in something that’s making a difference, hopefully,” said a 24-year-old graduate student who was part of the group.
Outside Dickson Court, pro-Israeli students also gathered to watch the clean-up process.
A 20-year-old UCLA undergrad, who requested anonymity because he said he feared being attacked, participated in a counterprotest on Sunday. A crowd of people from the Jewish community gathered in front of the camp and sang the Israeli national anthem, brought out a DJ and held a dance party, he said.
The undergrad, who said he is Jewish, was disheartened by the encampment, he said. But he stressed that he didn’t participate in any of the other counterdemonstrations and condemned the violence that began Tuesday night just before midnight.
Over several hours, counterdemonstrators hurled objects — including wood and a metal barrier — at those inside. Fireworkers were launched into the camp, and some counterprotesters tried to force their way in. Fights broke out, and the pro-Palestinian side used pepper spray to defend themselves.
“It was deplorable,” the undergrad said of the attack on the encampment. Violent counterprotesters “need to be punished under the maximum extent of the law. They do not represent our movement, and as such they must be punished for not acting in accordance with the law and the values they purport to uphold.”
He said he’d lost a lot of friends since the Israel-Hamas war broke out because of their different perspectives.
“It’s unfortunate because, for me, this is quite personal because I am from the Middle East,” he said. “I have family in Israel, I have family in Iran, and seeing the chaos break out in the region where my ancestry is from, it’s cutting to see individuals who have no connection to the ongoing violence say that I don’t know what I’m talking about or they can’t be friends with me because of their political stance.”
With the camp now razed, some protesters told The Times on Thursday they feared the pro-Palestinian protest’s momentum in Westwood might have stalled.
“There’s a lot of anger and frustration and desire to keep protesting, but we’re really still figuring out what that would look like,” said a 19-year-old UCLA freshman who declined to give her name.
Many seemed eager to return to protesting at UCLA, though what awaited them was unclear. A current and former student from Occidental College said they’d heeded “a call for bodies” at UCLA put out Wednesday night but figured they wouldn’t be called again with the encampment gone.
Some staff seemed more optimistic the protests would quickly be revived.
“I might go back on Friday,” said a staff member who was arrested Thursday, though she noted her plans might be dampened by sleep deprivation. When she was arrested, she said she was standing with 10 to 15 faculty or staff who were booked along with her.
Like many on Friday, the staff member declined to give her name due to fear of retaliation from the university, saying she worked in a part of the school where some colleagues seemed wary of the protests.
Some students said they were unclear whether they would face academic repercussions from protesting — although they said they’d seen some unambiguous emails from the university saying there could be “disciplinary action including suspension or expulsion.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Harvard University became the latest institution to contend with a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on campus. Sister station WCVB’s news helicopter was overhead when a protest march on the university’s historic campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suddenly became a rush to establish an encampment. Members of the group rushed inward onto a triangular piece of grass and began a scramble to assemble tents.No officials were seen attempting to interfere with the effort. The group, Harvard for Palestine, had advertised its intention to hold a rally at noon in front of Massachusetts Hall, a three-century-old dorm on Harvard Yard. Like other groups demonstrating on campuses around the country, they are demanding Harvard divest from companies that supply Israel in connection with that nation’s monthslong conflict with Hamas. Harvard for Palestine was suspended by the university and the group was ordered to cease all activities earlier this week, The Harvard Crimson reported. The university also restricted access to Harvard Yard.Police in New York City arrested more than 100 protesters last week amid a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University, and that institution is continuing to negotiate to clear the encampment. Standoffs persist at other universities across the country, including California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters this week used furniture, tents, chains and zip ties to block a building’s entrance and barricade themselves inside.Encampments have also popped up at Emerson College, Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In response to the unrest, Brandeis University announced it would extend its deadline for students to apply for transfers. Former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned in January in part because of intense criticism over Harvard’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in Israel. At a Congressional hearing on Dec. 5, she and the leaders of other universities struggled to answer a question about whether calls for genocide against Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct.Gay later apologized for the poor wording in her testimony, as did University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, who also resigned.Gay was the first person of color and the first Black woman to serve as president of America’s oldest institution of higher learning but her tenure was the shortest presidency in the history of Harvard. Numerous pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests have unfolded on the campus, sometimes simultaneously, since October.
On Wednesday afternoon, Harvard University became the latest institution to contend with a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on campus.
Sister station WCVB’s news helicopter was overhead when a protest march on the university’s historic campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suddenly became a rush to establish an encampment. Members of the group rushed inward onto a triangular piece of grass and began a scramble to assemble tents.
No officials were seen attempting to interfere with the effort.
The group, Harvard for Palestine, had advertised its intention to hold a rally at noon in front of Massachusetts Hall, a three-century-old dorm on Harvard Yard. Like other groups demonstrating on campuses around the country, they are demanding Harvard divest from companies that supply Israel in connection with that nation’s monthslong conflict with Hamas.
Harvard for Palestine was suspended by the university and the group was ordered to cease all activities earlier this week, The Harvard Crimson reported. The university also restricted access to Harvard Yard.
Police in New York City arrested more than 100 protesters last week amid a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University, and that institution is continuing to negotiate to clear the encampment.
Standoffs persist at other universities across the country, including California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters this week used furniture, tents, chains and zip ties to block a building’s entrance and barricade themselves inside.
Encampments have also popped up at Emerson College, Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In response to the unrest, Brandeis University announced it would extend its deadline for students to apply for transfers.
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned in January in part because of intense criticism over Harvard’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in Israel. At a Congressional hearing on Dec. 5, she and the leaders of other universities struggled to answer a question about whether calls for genocide against Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct.
Gay later apologized for the poor wording in her testimony, as did University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, who also resigned.
Gay was the first person of color and the first Black woman to serve as president of America’s oldest institution of higher learning but her tenure was the shortest presidency in the history of Harvard.
Numerous pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests have unfolded on the campus, sometimes simultaneously, since October.
For three decades, Jamie Nelson has considered Ojai her personal paradise. It’s where she raised her children and cherishes the springtime, when the air smells like jasmine and orange blossoms.
“Lots of times, I’ve said, ‘God, I think Heaven probably smells like this,’” Nelson said of this artsy tourist town of 7,500 people.
Now, Nelson, a 74-year-old grandmother who has heart problems and bad knees and leans heavily on a cane, is homeless. She lives in a tent outside the historic Ojai City Hall, where a growing encampment filled with older people has vexed a community known for spiritual retreats, chakra-aligning crystals and organic farms.
“I was scared to death of coming here,” said Nelson, who moved to City Hall in November. “I was so afraid, because I’m older. And I got here and the people are just — they’re very precious. They are very good and very intelligent, and just had things happen.”
Thirty people live on the wooded eight-acre campus. Half are older than 55, and eight are older than 65. And — despite some locals’ assertions that they are refugees from bigger cities like Ventura and Santa Barbara — most are longtime Ojai residents, said Rick Raine, the city’s new homeless services coordinator.
“They say, ‘You’re bringing in people!’ No, people have always been here,” said Raine, who was Nelson’s neighbor years ago.
Rick Raine, Ojai’s homeless services coordinator, created a community room at the City Hall encampment where residents can find fresh coffee and conversation.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
The affordable housing shortage is nothing new in Ojai, but the issue received increased attention last year after a septuagenarian member of the City Council was priced out of her rented house, declared herself homeless and was investigated by a grand jury for no longer living within her council district.
In this 4.4-square-mile city, homelessness used to be more spread out, with people sleeping in their cars or bundled in blankets in the open-air shopping arcade. Now, the crisis is harder to ignore because it is concentrated at the City Hall encampment, which has become a flashpoint as the city pours money and resources into making the setup more livable.
Local politicians and law enforcement officials say they cannot move the encampment because of decisions by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Ojai has no dedicated homeless shelter, and — in cases from Boise, Idaho, and Grants Pass, Ore. — the court determined it was unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment for cities to criminalize camping in public spaces when there are not enough shelter beds.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last month to review the lower court’s decision in the Oregon case and to decide whether cities can enforce camping bans. A ruling is expected this summer.
Melissa Balding is among the homeless residents at Ojai’s City Hall encampment who are trying to keep the property tidy.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
For now, the lower court rulings “really bind us with what we can do,” Ojai Police Chief Trina Newman said. Officers, she said, have responded to reports of theft, loud music, drinking and homeless people trespassing on neighbors’ property.
“We have individuals that have their share of difficulties: Addiction. Mental health problems. When you get a certain amount of people in a small area, there’s going to be problems,” she said.
“But our hands are tied.”
William Holden has encouraged homeless people in Ojai to shelter at the City Hall encampment. “It’s not a new problem,” he says of homelessness. “It’s just been moved to where you can see it.”
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
Ojai’s City Hall is an architectural gem and point of local pride. Originally a family home, later gifted to the city, it was built in 1907 as a Craftsman-style house and later remodeled to fit in with the Mission Revival architecture that Ojai became known for.
Today, scores of tents spread out just beyond the building’s stately arches and wide patios. Many of the campers try to keep the property tidy, picking up trash and cutting the grass with a manual push mower. Some keep tchotchkes — small statues, faux flowers — outside their tents to make the place feel more homey.
Over the last year, the number of people living at the encampment exploded, from about five people to 30.
At a City Council meeting in September, William Holden, a resident of Ojai for 23 years, pushed his elderly chihuahua, Fievel Mouskawitz, in a pink stroller up to the microphone.
“I did this,” Holden, 61, said of the encampment, where he now lives.
“I invited these people who were sleeping in their cars, these people that were under the bridge, to come back here, because I’ve heard the police are not making us move like they do when you’re in an unregistered motor vehicle or sleeping where you’re not supposed to be sleeping.”
“It’s not a new problem,” he added. “It’s just been moved to where you can see it.”
City officials confirmed that word of mouth helped grow the camp, which sits on environmentally sensitive oak woodland grounds that slope down to a creek. The ground is soft, muddy and, in some portions, at risk of a landslide if it gets too saturated, Raine said.
This fall, the City Council allocated $200,000 to deal with the crisis, and Raine was hired to be the city’s first homeless services coordinator. He opened a break room at the encampment where he brews a fresh pot of Folgers coffee every morning. He keeps blankets, coats, boots and extra food on hand — for the people and their pets.
The city added portable toilets, and, in late January, Raine and a slew of volunteers built eight sturdy wilderness tents in the parking lot, off the muddy ground. Raine said he chose eight of the older, more vulnerable campers — including Nelson — for the 8-by-10-foot tents, each of which sits on a fire-treated platform and includes a storage shed.
Four more tents will go up in the coming weeks.
Homeless services coordinator Rick Raine is working with volunteers to erect wilderness tents to shelter the most vulnerable campers in Ojai’s sanctioned homeless camp.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
Overall, the town has been supportive of the city’s efforts, said Mayor Betsy Stix. “We’re a loving, caring community, and I think that — it’s so personal,” she said, adding that some municipal employees have a high school classmate living at the camp.
Last month, the city applied for $12.4 million in state grant funding to build tiny homes and provide case management and security. City leaders have promised to relocate the encampment once the money and expansion plans are in place.
But furious neighbors don’t believe them.
“We understand that city staff has stated that the neighbors are fully on board with this plan. That could not be further from the truth,” read a letter sent last month to the City Council and city manager that was signed by 47 people who live near City Hall.
One neighbor, a 73-year-old woman who has owned her house for 39 years, told The Times that the city made no effort to talk to nearby residents.
The woman, who did not give her name because she feared being harassed by people in the encampment, said she worried about fires, with people cooking under the trees and some using propane heaters in their tents. She said she also worried about vulnerable senior citizens living among other campers “who are real bullies.”
Jerry O’Dell returns to his tent, right, at a homeless encampment at Ojai’s City Hall.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
Another neighbor — a 43-year-old single mother of three who also declined to give her name — said a man from the camp lunged at her 12-year-old daughter as she rode a skateboard and that her children “do not feel safe.”
“We feel like our neighborhood has been taken over,” she said. “It’s completely changed the vibe here. There’s a port-a-potty right on the corner that doesn’t give the homeless people any privacy. It doesn’t feel like a compassionate solution for them or for us.”
During Ventura County’s point-in-time census in January 2023, Ojai recorded 44 unhoused people. That’s a 42% increase from five years prior — but a steep decline from the 82 people counted in 2007, when the annual survey began. In all of Ventura County last year, there were 2,441 homeless people, the highest number since the count began.
The sharp rise, as in so many places in California, has coincided with skyrocketing housing costs.
The average home price in Ventura County was $834,180 in December 2023, up 38% from December 2018, according to Zillow. The median rent was $2,373 in December 2023, up nearly 23% from 2018, according to data from the real estate firm Apartment List.
In Ojai, the housing shortage has been compounded by strict slow-growth laws, which — along with a ban on chain stores — were intended to maintain the small-town charm. Before an apartment complex opened in 2019, the city had gone for more than a decade without building any multifamily housing.
In December, the City Council approved a 50-unit development that will be Ojai’s first entirely affordable housing project in 30 years. This month, the council tightened a ban on short-term vacation rentals, arguing they are driving up housing costs.
“We natives have worked and volunteered hundreds of hours to keep our town small,” said Councilwoman Suza Francina, a yoga teacher who has lived in Ojai for 67 years. “The irony is that now we’re so desirable and internationally known that people want to invest. The new wave of people, they come here and can afford second and even third homes.”
Longtime residents, she said, are being priced out — including herself.
Ojai City Councilwoman Suza Francina, second from right, nearly lost her seat last year after she was priced out of her rental housing and temporarily moved into a garage room at a friend’s home outside her district.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
In late 2021, Francina, 74, lost the two-bedroom house she had leased for eight years when an investor purchased it, she said. Francina had been paying $1,650 a monthin rent. She later saw it listed for $4,000 a month.
Francina, a former mayor, had spent more than a decade on the City Council. To keep her seat, she had to stay within her district, a roughly two-square-mile portion of south Ojai.
Francina could not find an affordable rental that would accept her two small dogs, Benny and Honey. While she searched, she moved, rent-free, into a small room with no kitchen above a friend’s garage that was in Ojai but not in her district. Francina put most of her belongings in storage and said she was homeless, arguing that people who are couch-surfing fit the description.
She was investigated by the Ventura County Grand Jury, which, in a report last May, said her seat was legally vacant since she did not find housing in her district within 30 days. But she was not removed from office.
Late last summer, Francina rented a bedroom in a house in her district for $950 a month plus utilities, along with a $300-per-month storage unit. The situation, she said, “broadened my whole perspective on how hard it is if you don’t have a home base, and how quickly it affects your mental health, how you can go downhill very quickly.”
Kristen Wingate, who grew up in Ojai, became homeless while recovering from a neck surgery.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
Kristen Wingate, who was born in Ojai and has spent most of her life here, also lost her rental house. But unlike Francina, she wound up in the City Hall encampment.
Wingate, 52, has degenerative disc disease. Two years ago, after a neck fusion surgery, she went on state disability. But the money ran out after a year, she said, and she was not medically cleared to go back to her job at a local hardware store. She said her application to receive Social Security disability benefits was denied, a decision she is appealing.
While she was recovering, she said, the owner of her rental house, which was split into three units, sold it. Tenants had to leave.
Wingate lived in her Toyota Camry for a while and, in August, moved into a tent at City Hall with Roscoe, her 50-pound pug and Boston terrier mix. The size of the camp broke her heart, she said, and “everything is just too expensive here” in this town she grew up in. A friend she has known since she was 6 also lives at the encampment.
Kristen Wingate tends to her dog, Roscoe, outside her tent in Ojai.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
Wingate’s brown tent sits near a wooden gazebo with chipped white paint. Her sister got married there decades ago. Now, there are tents on either side.
Nelson lives nearby in one of the new white tents, beneath an enormous eucalyptus tree, with her 3-year-old chihuahua mix, Mae Mae.
Bespectacled, with shoulder-length gray hair and a quick laugh, Nelson said she lost her husband to pancreatic cancer six years ago. She ran out of money, moved out of her house, then out of a hotel. She moved to City Hall just before Thanksgiving.
She is stoic, a trait from her south Texas upbringing. Asked if the last few years had been tough, she downplayed her situation: “A little tough, yeah. But the people here always made it better. And being in Ojai just made it all better.”
She hopes the city is able to build tiny homes for people in the encampment. For now, she waits.
On a recent Tuesday night, at a City Council meeting inside City Hall, a discussion about giving grant money to local artists dragged on for more than an hour. Then protesters — including one soaked in faux blood who collapsed and performed the motions of dying — called for a cease-fire in Gaza, half a world away.
Just outside, temperatures dipped into the 40s. In her tent, Nelson piled on blankets, held her dog close and went to sleep.
Times staff writer Andrew Khouri contributed to this report.
A court order limiting San Francisco’s ability to clear street encampments of people who have nowhere else to go will remain in effect while litigation continues, a federal appellate court ruled Thursday.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals marked a substantial win for the Coalition on Homelessness, a progressive advocacy organization that secured a preliminary injunction by challenging San Francisco’s policies for clearing encampments as fundamentally unjust and illegal under past court decisions protecting the rights of homeless people to sleep in public in certain situations.
Thursday’s ruling is the latest decision in a sprawling legal debate over homelessness in the American West and how local jurisdictions may legally address it. The debate has pitted progressive activists and advocacy groups against liberal leaders such as San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who have been frustrated along with many of their constituents by the spread of encampments in downtown areas and other neighborhoods since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In its decision Thursday, the 9th Circuit panel declined to consider several arguments in favor of stricter enforcement measures that San Francisco and a coalition of other California cities had raised in recent filings, saying they hadn’t been properly raised or substantiated with facts in the lower district court. The judges did acknowledge, however, that the injunction only applies to “involuntarily homeless” people, or those who have not been offered alternative housing or shelter by the city, and ordered the lower court to clarify that point.
In recent months, San Francisco has tried to justify its continued operations to clear encampments, saying they are inhabited by people who have been offered shelter or housing.
The appellate judges also ordered the lower court to specify that the injunction prohibits the city from “threatening to enforce” its enjoined laws, but does not bar the mere presence of police officers near encampments.
John Do, a senior attorney for the ACLU of Northern California representing the coalition, said Thursday’s order should help ensure that San Francisco continues ramping up resources and offering shelter and housing to homeless people, rather than simply criminalizing poverty.
“It’s a resounding win,” he said.
Jen Kwart, a spokeswoman for San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu, said they appreciated that the appellate court “confirmed again and further clarified that the injunction only applies to people who are involuntarily homeless, not those who have refused an offer of shelter.”
However, Kwart said their office was “disappointed” by the court’s decision not to consider arguments posed by the city in the appellate process, including around the scope of its restrictions — which she said left critical legal questions about solving homelessness unanswered.
“Cities cannot reasonably be expected to solve homelessness while operating under this uncertainty,” Kwart said. “At some point, a court will need to clarify the law in this area, and it is disappointing that in the midst of an intense homelessness crisis, we all must continue to wait for that clarification.”
Breed’s office declined to comment on the pending litigation, but released figures Thursday claiming a 22% increase in the number of people connected to shelter or housing last year, and that 64% of people who city personnel interacted with at encampments “declined offers of shelter or reported already having shelter or housing.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a statement, said the ruling would “only create further delays and confusion as we work to address homelessness.”
Liberal judges have argued that the constitution — and specifically the 8th Amendment’s provisions against cruel and unusual punishment and excessive fines — protects homeless people’s right to sleep in certain public spaces, with certain protective gear, when they have no where else to go. Conservative judges have rejected that idea, arguing that there is a long legal tradition of local jurisdictions enforcing “anti-vagrancy” laws.
Circuit Judge Lucy H. Koh, who wrote the court’s opinion Thursday, was joined by Circuit Judge Roopali H. Desai; both were appointed by President Biden. Circuit Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, who was appointed by President Trump, dissented.
Koh wrote that the litigation “raises difficult and important legal questions with real stakes for San Francisco and the thousands of unhoused individuals who call San Francisco home.” But, Koh added, the appellate court could not delve into city arguments about geographic and time limits on encampment restrictions that were never made in the lower court.
Moving forward, the lower court should consider whether the city’s rules “leave involuntarily homeless individuals with a realistically available place to go,” Koh wrote.
Koh wrote that her panel was bound by past 9th Circuit precedent on the 8th Amendment in such matters, but noted the Supreme Court may soon be reviewing the existing precedent.
Bumatay, in his dissent, wrote that the 9th Circuit has repeatedly misinterpreted the protections of the 8th Amendment as it relates to homeless encampments, endangering public safety in the process.
It “cannot be cruel and unusual to prohibit homeless persons from sleeping, camping, and lodging wherever they want, whenever they want,” Bumatay wrote. “While they are entitled to the utmost respect and compassion, homeless persons are not immune from our laws.”
Newsom has called on the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to take up the Grants Pass case and rule in favor of local municipalities trying to rein in public encampments. He said Thursday’s ruling reinforced the need for such intervention.
Do, the coalition’s attorney, called Newsom’s position “deeply, deeply troubling.”
“It is incredibly unfortunate and shameful for our policy leaders to scapegoat unhoused people for their own policy failures,” Do said. “Homelessness didn’t come out of the ether. It’s a direct result of the lack of investment in affordable housing.”
A string of tents and makeshift shelters sat for years west of the 110 Freeway, across the street from an elementary school in the Vermont Vista neighborhood.
Then, one day in February, workers cleared the encampment, which stretched about four blocks from Colden Avenue to Century Boulevard, movingdozens of people indoors.
Today, a single tent remains, along with about five people living in a pedestrian tunnel under the freeway.
Longtime residents said the neighborhood is quiet again, and the sidewalks are clean.
“It was an ugly sight, but now things are better,” said Andrea Ceron, 59. “We still deal with other problems, like police chases and prostitution.”
Intake worker Maria Ajtun, right, takes down information from a client for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program at All Peoples Community Center in Los Angeles.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
South L.A. has been a rare bright spot amid the city’s homelessness crisis.
While homelessness increased in other parts of the city, South L.A. had 10% fewer unhoused people than the previous year, according to the annual point-in-time count conducted last January.
Officials and service providers attributed the drop to the hard work they have put in for years coming to fruition, with the help of funding infusions, in an area where most residents are Latino or Black and many live below the poverty line.
Mayor Karen Bass’ signature homelessness initiative, Inside Safe, has also made a dent, with more encampment cleanups in South L.A. — including the one in Vermont Vista — than in any other part of the city.
While Inside Safe has cleared long-standing encampments, most who lived in them are still in temporary housing or are back on the street. The problem remains vast, with nearly 13,000 unhoused people in South L.A., according to the point-in-time count.
Bass took office in December 2022, so the progress made by Inside Safe isn’t reflected in the 10% drop from the point-in-time count. But her supporters say the program, as well as her sense of urgency on homelessness, is setting up South L.A. for more success.
Homelessness outreach workers from 2nd Call visit Olga V. Romero, who lives in her car with her 23-year-old son.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
City Councilmember Curren Price, who represents large parts of South L.A., credited the drop in homelessness to increased collaboration among elected officials and a willingness to try different strategies. Bass, he said, has “set a very positive and inclusive tone” and worked well with county supervisors.
But backsliding is all too easy, he warned.
“That 10% is a nice number to throw around, but we know it could go back up easily, and so we can’t get complacent,” he said. “We know we have to keep identifying the financial resources, because these properties need to be built and services need to be provided, and if that stops, then all of our efforts are going to be for nothing.”
Nearly 70% of South L.A. residents are renters, and the median household income is $47,692, compared with more than $76,000 citywide.
Amid rising rents, inflation and the end of pandemic renter protections, more people are at risk of becoming homeless as eviction cases work their way through the courts.
“A lot of folks are one check away from being in real trouble,” Price said. “They can’t make the car payment, they can’t pay their rent or house payment, kids need clothes, food, medicine, etc. So it’s a very delicate situation that we’re in.”
Karen McGee of 2nd Call checks in with a woman sleeping outside a McDonald’s in South Los Angeles.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Karen McGee, a homelessness outreach worker with the South L.A. nonprofit 2nd Call, said many of the people she helps are families or senior citizens who couldn’t keep up with rising rents. Most are desperate to get off the streets.
“They want any help they can get,” she said.
In February, in addition to Vermont Vista, Inside Safe cleared a large encampment at 88th Street and Western Avenue, where people lived near a vacant lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. Since then, no tents have reappeared at the site.
Many of the large encampments in South L.A. targeted by Inside Safe were along the 110 Freeway’s underpasses and overpasses. A few tents have returned, but as of December, most areas remained clear.
“We had to rely on the police,” said Mary Action, 86, who lives near the former Vermont Vista encampment. “It was a real mess. There was drug use, fighting and a shooting.”
Chontae Peters, right, who is living in her car, reacts as Teanna Mosqueda, an ambassador with 2nd Call, provides her with information on how to get help.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Valentin Gonzalez, another Vermont Vista resident, said that for two weeks, a homeless man lived up in a tree outside his home.
“I ended up cutting the branches off to get him to leave,” said Gonzalez, 61. “It was really bad here.”
Getting people off the streets is an arduous and time-consuming process. Sometimes, outreach workers speak with unhoused people frequently to earn their trust so they will accept help.
“We go to the same areas, whether the encampments are there or not,” McGee said. “Sometimes we show up, and people have either moved or got the help they needed.”
The South L.A. planning area, as defined by the point-in-time count and other homelessness measures, includes not only neighborhoods like Crenshaw and Watts but cities such as Compton, Lynwood and Paramount.
The area is riddled with social problems that include overcrowded housing, gang violence, drug use and inadequate access to healthcare, some of it with roots in discriminatory practices such as redlining. Service providers have historically had a hard time getting funding.
“You have organizations in the Westside and Hollywood that have been around for decades and have strong boards and these private funding networks that support them as well,” said Katie Hill, deputy director of HOPICS, the lead homeless services agency in the area. “We hardly have any private fundraising at all to help us with this issue, because the community doesn’t have money.”
But the $1.2-billion city bond measure Proposition HHH and the quarter-percent county sales tax Measure H have brought an infusion of cash.
The additional funding helped boost HOPICS’ annual budget to $105 million. About 15% of the money goes to subcontractors who provide homeless services, and at least 30% goes to financial assistance for low-income families.
HOPICS has expanded its payroll to more than 430 employees and increased its outreach teams, which provide services that include housing and street medicine, from four members to 22.
Juana Romero, who works on a HOPICS outreach team, attributes the decrease in homelessness to this street-level expansion, as well as to programs like Inside Safe.
“It’s all very helpful,” she said. “The resources are there to pull people off the streets and bring them inside.”
Hundreds of new public housing units have been built, or are in the process of being built, in South L.A. And residents are being prioritized for permanent housing over people from outside the area, said Veronica Lewis, director of HOPICS.
Since 2015, the number of emergency shelters in the South L.A. area has increased from 60 to 205, and permanent supportive housing projects went from 20 to 71, according to city records.
City Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, whose district includes portions of South L.A., said that when the Measure H money arrived, nonprofits that had been working on homelessness in the area were ready to step up.
“When there’s availability of resources, you have people who know what to do with those resources and are prepared to carry it out,” he said.
Harris-Dawson added that residents of South L.A. are more supportive of housing developments than those from other parts of L.A. County.
“And then I think our social service agencies are pretty strong and are doing a really good job of keeping track of folks that are on the street, so that when units do become available, they can find them and get them in,” he said.
Programs that prevent people from falling into homelessness have also been vital in South L.A.
Children play at the All Peoples Community Center, which provides various services for South Los Angeles residents such as rental assistance, financial coaching and tax preparation. It is one of several in South L.A. that has played a key role in reducing homelessness.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
At All Peoples Community Center in Historic South-Central, about 90% of clients are in need of emergency rental assistance, said Julio Ramos, director of the Family Resource Center, one of 16 centers that help low-income families, many of whom are on the verge of homelessness. The centers, which are run by nonprofits and receive city funding, also provide financial education and other services.
“We’re getting clients that are 25 months behind on rent,” Ramos said. “Utilities as well, especially when they’re included with the rent.”
Last year, the City Council approved funding for four additional centers.
Neery Montes, 40, who has two sons, was in a panic when she arrived at the All Peoples center last winter. She had lost her job at a bakery and was seven months behind on rent and utilities, owing about $9,600 for a small one-bedroom in South Los Angeles.
Nerry Montes recounts being threatened with eviction while seven months pregnant to a counselor at All Peoples Community Center.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Her new landlord was threatening to evict her and had raised her rent, despite the pandemic-related rental freeze and eviction moratoriums.
“It was a very difficult time for me,” she said. “I was dealing with anxiety and depression.”
Montes said she worried about ending up homeless, as she had been before, when she fled from her husband.
Case manager Jessica Sanabria-Rosales signed up Montes for several food programs as well as emergency rental assistance. Montes was able to stay in her apartment and pay off 83% of the past rent. The center created a payment plan for the balance.
With more outreach workers on the streets, the labor-intensive work of earning a homeless person’s trust continues.
As a HOPICS team stopped at the site of the former encampment in Vermont Vista, LeAndre Hewitt rode up on his bicycle.
Outreach Services coordinator Mychal Johnson had placed Hewitt, 34, in shelters several times. Each time, Hewitt, who has struggled with drug and mental health issues, was kicked out, Johnson said.
This time, in a first, Hewitt was initiating the conversation and requesting shelter.
The HOPICS workers found a spot for Hewitt at Safe Landing, an interim housing facility with beds and 24/7 clinical care that opened about a year ago.
The group discussed what to do with Hewitt’s bicycle, which didn’t fit in the van.
Finally, Hewitt threw his bike on the curb and hopped in the van.
For as long as people have watched tents take over sidewalks and RVs deteriorate under freeways, politicians have been making promises about solving homelessness in Los Angeles.
And for just as long, those same politicians have been breaking them.
This is undoubtedly why, back in March, as Mayor Karen Bass was approaching her first 100 days in office, only 17% of Angelenos believed her administration would make “a lot of progress” getting people off the streets, according to a Suffolk University/Los Angeles Times poll. Far more — 45% — predicted just “a little progress” would be made.
I was thinking about this deep well of public skepticism while listening to Bass, all smiles in a bright green suit on Wednesday morning, enthusiastically explain why the progress she has actually made is a reason for renewed optimism.
Flanked by members of the L.A. City Council outside a school in Hollywood, she announced that her administration had, in its first year, moved more than 21,694 people out of encampments and into interim housing. That’s an increase of 28% over the final year of former Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration, taking into account the work of various government programs, including Bass’ signature one, Inside Safe.
In addition, the majority of those directed to motel and hotel rooms, congregate shelters and tiny homes have decided to stay, rather than head back out onto the streets.
“We have tried to set a new tone in the city. This is an example of that new tone. Forty-one people used to sleep here, and now it’s clear,” Bass said Wednesday over the shrieks of schoolchildren. “Students and parents don’t need to walk around tents on their way to school, and the Angelenos who were living here do not need to die on our streets.”
It was a convincing message, backed up by a thick packet of numbers distributed to reporters at City Hall a few hours later.
But numbers are funny. They can be crunched in many ways and interpreted to mean many different things.
As my Times colleague David Zahniser pointed out, all of the people who now live in interim housing are still considered homeless by the federal government. And while Bass had originally thought most of them would be there for only three to six months, it’s now looking more like 18 months to two years. Permanent housing is that scarce.
So, numbers-wise, don’t expect a decline in the next annual homelessness count, which is scheduled for January. There might even be an increase, thanks to the expiration of pandemic-era tenant protections. As of the last count, there were more than 46,000 unhoused people living in the city, mostly in encampments.
But again, numbers are funny. They tend not to mean half as much as what people see and experience for themselves, just like the disconnect between public perceptions of crime and actual crime data.
So, when Bass declares at a news conference that “we have proved this year that we will make change,” and she talks about the encampment that used to be where she’s standing, and all the encampments that her administration has cleared, even if a few more tents have popped up down the street, skeptical Angelenos just might believe her.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s not such a bad thing.
“What I see most powerfully is increased hope,” Va Lecia Adams Kellum, chief executive of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, told reporters on Wednesday. “Hope among the folks who are living in those encampments who had given up and [thought] they’ll always live in that level of despair. Hope that the community now believes that we could possibly get out of this terrible crisis.”
Kellie Waldon, 54, cries near what’s left of her encampment, left, as Skid Row West is dismantled under the 405 Freeway along Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles in October. Waldon was hoping to receive housing through the city’s Inside Safe program, like others in the encampment had. “You get your hopes up and you don’t know what to believe,” Waldon said.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Hope is a thing difficult to quantify, especially among people who have been homeless for years, and have suffered so much and have been let down so often by government.
I’ve talked to some who took a chance and decided to leave their tents and RVs, and are now thrilled to be in a motel room with a door, running water and air conditioning. Others have had it with curfews and jail-like rules, and are getting tired of waiting on promised permanent housing.
I’ve also talked to those who have been booted out of interim housing for one reason or another, and are back on the streets. They are feeling hopeless, like many cash-strapped Angelenos who are on the verge of an eviction.
But peak hopelessness? That’s what we saw on the first days of December.
At a hastily called news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore announced that officers were searching for a man who had fatally shot three homeless people — one sleeping on a couch in an alley and another while pushing a shopping cart.
“This is a killer preying on the unhoused,” Bass said.
Moore and Bass didn’t know then, but their suspect, Jerrid Joseph Powell, had already been arrested by Beverly Hills police after a traffic stop in which his $60,000 BMW was linked to a deadly follow-home robbery.
Police have yet to elaborate on Powell’s alleged motive, but Bass brought up the horrific case several times on Wednesday — and with good reason. Violence and acts of cruelty against people living on the streets are increasingly common not just locally, but nationally.
Advocates blame this trend of nastiness on the pandemic-era surge in homelessness, particularly in unsheltered homelessness, and the subsequent spike in interactions between housed and unhoused residents. Fear and frustration can lead to dehumanization and that, in turn, can lead to violence, said Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
“I do really worry that it’s become normalized in public discourse to speak about people experiencing homelessness as, like, a problem for those who are not homeless — as opposed to fundamentally a massive societal failure that’s left usually older, vulnerable people terrified and totally unprotected,” she told me. “And I do think that there is a connection, like the more we dehumanize people, the less protected they are.”
Stephanie Klasky-Gamer has watched this happen in real-time as president and CEO of L.A. Family Housing. The seeming permanency of encampments, and the trash, fires and unsanitary conditions they often generate, have led to what she describes as widespread impatience.
“I don’t mean big, systemic impatience, like ‘I wish we could end homelessness faster,’” she said. “It’s the ‘I’m just sick of seeing you in front of me’ kind of impatience.”
On some level, she gets it, though. As does Kushel. As do I.
“It has to be OK to say, ‘Yeah, this sucks that I’m walking my kids to school and I’m walking over people in tents,’” Kushel told me. “But there has to be a way to hold that with being able to recognize how we got to this position and also how we’re going to get out. And to sort of restore [our] collective humanity.”
For Klasky-Gamer, this has meant focusing on what has changed since Bass became mayor.
“I know how much good is getting done,” she told me. “The frustration I may feel at seeing the tent every day I turn the corner, at least I can temper it knowing that 10 people yesterday moved into an apartment. These three people haven’t. But these 10 did.”
RVs in an encampment along West Jefferson Boulevard near the Ballona Wetlands in Playa del Rey in 2021.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
The mayor has told me many times that getting people off the streets isn’t just a humanitarian imperative — and, as a serial killer reminded us, a safety imperative. It’s also a demonstration to a fed up public that progress is possible.
“What distresses Angelenos the most are encampments. That’s where people were dying on the street,” Bass told reporters. “And to me, what was clear, was that we come up with a way to get people out of the tents.”
Some will dismiss that. They’ll insist that all her administration is doing is reducing visible homelessness to score easy political points. And that instead of doing the hard work of actually helping L.A.’s most vulnerable residents get back on their feet, the mayor is hiding them so that they’ll be forgotten and abandoned in interim housing.
In this city, defined by its haves and have nots, I understand the cynicism and skepticism. But that’s why what Bass does next, namely expanding and stabilizing the city’s crumbling supply of permanent housing, will matter even more than what she has done thus far.
“We’ve got to somehow make people believe again that this is solvable,” Kushel told me, “and it is solvable.”
Hope can be elusive. But Annelisa Stephan was looking for it anyway when she came to the Ballona Wetlands on a recent Saturday morning.
She and more than 100 other volunteers — many of them from the nearby neighborhoods of Playa Vista and Playa del Rey — had descended on the Westside ecological reserve to dig holes, spread soil, and put in plants and trees.
Just a few months ago, RVs had been parked here along Jefferson Boulevard, bumper to bumper in a sprawling encampment that dozens of unhoused people had come to call home.
They built a close-knit community, looking out for one another and mourning one another after deadly fires. But they also decimated the Ballona Wetlands’ freshwater marsh with everything from battery acid to trash to human waste, and scared off nearby residents who once walked the trails.
And then one day, after almost three years, the encampment was gone, replaced by concrete barricades and metal fencing. The residents were mostly sent to interim housing and the RVs were mostly towed away.
“It’s like, hard to know what to think or feel,” Stephan told me. “I’m happy that the land is being stewarded, but just sad about the suffering that so many people face.”
She lamented the “fervent, anti-homeless mania” that she has heard from some of her neighbors.
“It’s just been really a painful time,” Stephan said.
Not far away, L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park, whose Westside district includes the Ballona Wetlands and got elected on promises to aggressively crack down on homeless encampments, was more circumspect.
“At the end of the day, everybody wants the same thing, which is to get folks off the streets and into safe settings and connected to the help that they need,” she said. “There’s a lot of different points of view about how we get there. And I think that’s where a lot of the conflict and the division lie.”
She paused, as traffic whizzed by on Jefferson Boulevard.
