Thousands of people waving the black, green, red and white Palestinian flag and chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” gathered at Pershing Square on Saturday afternoon to protest Israel’s escalating air and ground war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The event began with a series of speakers who decried the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Israeli bombing attacks since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants launched their bloody incursion into Israel, and called for an end to what they termed an Israeli occupation of the densely populated enclave on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
The crowd then began marching slowly down the middle of 6th Street, attracting hundreds more people who had arrived to show their support by joining the event led by groups that included the Palestinian Youth Movement, an independent, grassroots organization of Palestinian and Arab youths.
Demonstrators carry a gigantic black, green, red and white Palestinian flag in showing their support for Palestinians at Pershing Square in downtown L.A. on Saturday.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Among them was Salah Odeh, of Pasadena, who said he was supposed to have joined his University of La Verne teammates in a game on Saturday but decided that the situation in his home country is “bigger than football.”
He said it’s imperative that the people of Gaza be given humanitarian aid and that Palestinian fighters receive military assistance in the face of Israel’s bombing campaign in recent weeks.
“People are offering their prayers, and that’s good — but we need physical help. We need military assistance,” said Odeh, who wore a black-and-white keffiyeh on his head, a Palestinian flag around his neck like a cape, and a pro-Palestine shirt and necklaces.
Gaza, he added, “is an open-air prison where everyone has been given the death penalty simply because they are Palestinian.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march down 6th Street in downtown L.A. on Saturday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Many of the demonstrators were heartened by the size of Saturday’s protest, which they view as an indication that younger generations are rejecting media narratives that they say unfairly seem to portray all Palestinian people as terrorists.
Negar Mizani, of Los Angeles, was accompanied by her husband and 3-year-old daughter in their third street demonstration since the war erupted on Oct. 7 with an attack on Israel by Hamas militants.
She shared an impassioned plea. “We would like for the Israeli apartheid to end — and a cease-fire,” she said. “It’s about recognition of the humanity of the people of Gaza.”
Nearby, Roy Nashef, of Los Angeles, held up a sign calling on the media to differentiate between Hamas and the residents of Gaza. “I’m just here to grieve with everyone else,” he said.
The war has led protesters on both sides to take to the streets across California and around the world.
A week ago, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, then began marching down Hill Street chanting and carrying signs denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “war criminal.”
Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered two weeks earlier near the Israeli Consulate in West L.A. to condemn the bombardment of Gaza.
The next day, thousands marched to the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in solidarity with Israel. Los Angeles is home to the second-largest Jewish community in America, with more than 500,000 members, and while views on the conflict run the gamut, many have found themselves reeling by the events that have unfolded in recent weeks.
The latest bloodshed began Oct. 7 when Hamas launched its incursion into Israel, killing more than 1,400 people — mostly civilians — and taking more than 200 hostages. Since then, Israel has launched a barrage of airstrikes across Gaza that have destroyed neighborhoods as Hamas militants fire rockets into Israel.
On Saturday, Palestinian officials published the names of 6,747 Palestinians killed and pleaded for help in a humanitarian crisis, with more than 1 million people displaced.
Israeli officials said 230 hostages are still being held in Gaza by Hamas. On Saturday night, Netanyahu said that the military had opened a “second stage” in the war by expanding the bombardment and sending ground troops into Gaza.
Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this report.
They had gathered at Schemengees Bar & Grille to play cornhole, as they did every Wednesday. They laughed, they talked, they drank, they sent beanbags sailing.
Their latest meeting began as a festive outing for nine friends, many of them alumni of the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Falmouth, Maine. But when the evening ended, half of them were dead. The rest were left reeling.
“The Deaf community is so close, it’s a scarring time,” said Jimmy Fitts, who lost four friends in the shooting. “We’re stressed and feeling the weight of this — our whole community.”
Survivors of that terrible evening reached out to 41-year-old Fitts, who lives in North Carolina, shortly after the mass shooting. He awoke Thursday morning to a flurry of horrified texts. On video calls, he could see the terror on his friends’ faces as they recounted the assault.
Chris Dyndiuk was facing the door as the shooter entered wearing a tan hoodie and wielding an assault rifle.
“Before he could do anything, the shooter just started,” Fitts, who also is deaf, told The Times via video phone.
One of the men felt a bullet go by his head. Another felt one graze his arm. Dyndiuk told Fitts he and others in the group managed to escape when the gunman stopped shooting to reload.
“They all feel so shaken up by the fact that they were so near death,” Fitts said.
A memorial for the victims in the mass shooting in Lewiston who were deaf: Steve Vozzella, Joshua Seal, Bryan MacFarlane and William Brackett.
(Alexandra Petri / Los Angeles Times)
Among the victims was Joshua Seal, 36, the director of interpreting services for the Pine Tree Society, a nonprofit that supports Maine residents with disabilities; Bryan MacFarlane, 41, who had only recently moved back to Maine over the summer; Steve Vozzella, 45, who had been married only for a year; and William Brackett, 48, whose family described him as “a friend to many especially in the Deaf community he loved so much.”
In total, 18 people were killed in the shooting, which unfolded first at a bowling alley and then at the bar. Thirteen others were injured, including two deaf people.
The person authorities believe carried out the massacre, Robert Card, was found dead of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday, ending a manhunt that forced a swath of the state to shelter in place. Before the massacre, the 40-year-old appeared to be dealing with hearing loss. His sister-in-law Katie Card told news outlets that he had recently been fitted for high-powered hearing aids.
Since that time, she told NBC News, he said he began hearing voices. They said “horrible” things about him, she recounted, and his mental health spiraled.
“He was picking up voices that he had never heard,” she said. “His mind was twisting them around. He was humiliated by the things that he thought were being said.”
A “Maine Deaf Community Support” Facebook page was created the day after the shooting. By Friday, it had drawn more than 1,000 members. The page’s main photo — created by a CODA, the child of a deaf adult — featured an image of the state of Maine in black, with a red heart and the American Sign Language sign for “I love you.”
In posts on the page, people expressed frustration that they had been unable to see interpreters during coverage of early news conferences. They asked that interpreters from other states be brought in for funerals “so our interpreting community can grieve.”
On Friday, at an afternoon news conference, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck insisted that “for the consideration of the four deaf victims and their family, we are requesting that the ASL interpreter is in all frames for language access here in Maine and the U.S.”
“They are grieving and have a right to know the latest info in ASL,” he added.
That information came quickly through “The Daily Moth,” a website that delivers news in video using American Sign Language. In an email interview, host Alex Abenchuchan said he learned via text messages that there were multiple deaf victims in the shooting. He then connected with people in Maine and the family members of the victims, mainly using Facebook, he said.
Abenchuchan said it’s important to the Deaf community “to get the information they need in their first language, in the language that we are comfortable with and communicate with daily.”
His video about the four deaf victims had garnered more than 15,000 views by Saturday.
Although Abenchuchan, who is deaf, has done news recaps of mass shootings since starting “The Daily Moth” in 2015, he said “this is the first time that there were multiple deaf victims.”
“It is really heartbreaking for all of us to see that four deaf individuals were taken away in a senseless shooting,” he said in the email. “I think it’s important for people to know that being deaf is not just a disability — it is a sense of identity because we have a language and a culture. We are all connected with each other in some way.
“This tragedy has sent grief throughout the Deaf community in the U.S. and there is an outpouring of support for deaf people in Maine / the New England region.”
On Friday, Fitts was struggling to cope with the news. He and MacFarlane grew up together and both graduated from the Baxter School for the Deaf in 2000. They played ice hockey and would travel around participating in different leagues.
“He was such a good friend of mine and we all were so close,” Fitts said Friday.
“It’s hard to wrap our heads around what we even need right now. I haven’t slept in 24 hours myself. I have just stayed awake, staying on the phone talking with people, crying. It’s been impossible to shut my eyes and rest for even a second.”
Karen Turcotte, a mother of two deaf sons, is grappling with the fact that her son was supposed to be there with the group that night. He missed the outing only because his son had a soccer banquet.
The men who gathered Wednesday at the bar grew up together, she said, and all but one attended Baxter. Turcotte said she would often travel with the kids through high school to away games where they would play other deaf schools in soccer and basketball.
Brackett, one of the four deaf men who died in the shooting, graduated before her sons, she said, but they worked together on a pit crew for a race car driver in Oxford, Maine, for about four years.
“This Deaf community was very close,” Turcotte said.
About 100 people gathered for a Zoom vigil on Friday night, organized by the Maine Deaf Community Support Facebook page.
“There are no words or signs to express the feelings that we are all experiencing,” Terry Morrell, director of Maine’s Division for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Late Deafened, signed. “It’s so hard for any of us to come up with words that explain what we’re going through, and the most that we can do is to support each other and ourselves.
“When I say this loss is big, I mean immeasurable. It’s a huge loss for Maine.”
Attendees detailed the pain they’d experienced over the past days. One woman, a friend of Brackett‘s, described crying and not being able to work. Another friend of the victims said he has not been able to sleep since the shooting.
They also shared memories of their loved ones. Vozzella’s niece said he had moved to Maine to start a life with his wife and daughter. He was active in the Deaf community there, she said, and “cornhole was really, really special for him.”
Another mourner described MacFarlane — who loved to fish and hunt — as having supported him throughout his life and said he was “heartbroken” that he’s gone. Another person talked about Brackett’s sense of humor and painted him as a “very understanding person.”
One father detailed his pain for Seal’s wife and four children.
“Any kid needs their parent,” he said. He described Seal as “a wonderful man and a wonderful dad and a wonderful husband.”
As the vigil neared its end, a man shared a song:
“If I had seven minutes in heaven, I’d spend them all with you,” he signed, as another vigil-goer interpreted for hearing participants.
Afterward, he held out his thumb, index and little fingers, signing a message to his community and beyond: “I love you.”
Times staff writer Jeong Park contributed to this report.
Until a few days ago, Michael Schneider truly believed that his nonprofit, Streets For All, had solid enough political support to pursue what was certain to be an unpopular idea in L.A.: a study of whether it makes sense to rip up a Westside freeway and replace it with affordable housing and a humongous park.
He was a man about town, excitedly touting the letters and statements of “immense enthusiasm” from elected officials.
Like from the office of Mayor Karen Bass, who called the Marina Freeway — a three-mile, lightly trafficked stretch of Route 90 that was left unfinished after a plan to link it to Orange County was abandoned in the 1970s — a “freeway to nowhere.”
And from state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles), who described Schneider’s idea as “a forward-thinking project that would help alleviate L.A.’s need[s].”
Indeed, as someone who drives the Marina Freeway all the time, I’ve long thought there had be a higher and better use for the land than a mere shortcut from Marina del Rey to the 405 Freeway and over to South L.A. And so I was excited to hear that Streets For All was applying for a federal grant to study it for two years, tracking everything from environmental impacts to traffic to the opinions of nearby residents like me.
Now, though, my excitement as well as Schneider’s has given way to familiar feelings of frustration. True to form for NIMBY-indulging Los Angeles, the political support he believed was solid has suddenly turned porous.
That includes Bass: “I do not support the removal or demolition of the 90 Freeway,” she said in a statement last week. “I’ve heard loud and clear from communities who would be impacted and I do not support a study on this initiative.”
L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park agrees with her. After conducting a very unscientific poll of her Westside constituents, she wrote in her newsletter that: “The 11th District does not support the demolition of the 90 Freeway. Your voice is why Mayor Bass rescinded her initial support.”
L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell told me that, despite rumors to the contrary, she never decided to back a study or tearing down the Marina Freeway, which abuts her district in the unincorporated neighborhood of Ladera Heights. “But it’s a moot point now,” she said.
Meanwhile, Smallwood-Cuevas said she still supports a feasibility study, but cautioned this week that it can’t be at “the expense of transparent community-driven input and analysis.”
Similarly, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Culver City) said he’s never opposed to research. But there’s a difference between studying the impact of removing the freeway and, referring to several renderings of what Schneider envisions as Marina Central Park, “proposing an alternative design and resolution without a study having been completed.”
Streets for All, a local non-profit is proposing turning the 90 freeway, one of L.A. County’s shortest, and unfinished freeways, into a large public park with nearly 4,000 housing units.
(Courtesy of SWA / Streets For All)
“The 90 Freeway,” Bryan assured me, “is not going anywhere.”
It’s problematic that, at a time when roughly 75,000 people are sleeping in the streets countywide and vehicle emissions are exacerbating the effects of climate change, Los Angeles can’t summon the unified political will even to study — STUDY! — whether to replace a freeway with housing.
Equally problematic is the reason why.
I’m not talking about the blame that some have placed on Streets For All for being overzealous with its messaging and tactics. Or that, according to others, elected officials were too quick to surrender to the fears of their constituents, some of whom wrongly believe the removal of the Marina Freeway is imminent.
I’m talking about the fundamental disagreement in Los Angeles over the role and importance of community outreach. How much of it is enough? How soon should it be done? How much weight should it be given? And to what end?
These unanswered questions are ultimately why political support crumbled for studying the Marina Freeway, and it’s a troubling harbinger.
Most residents understandably want a say — or the say — in what happens to their neighborhood, whether it’s affordable housing on what’s now a freeway or a homeless shelter on what’s now a parking lot.
But given the size of the unhoused population and the scale of the housing construction needed to address it and lower rental prices for everyone else, I increasingly believe L.A.’s political leaders can’t keep putting so much stock in the opinions of residents. Not all development projects that are worthwhile or necessary will be popular.
“For so long, the loudest voices have usually derailed things,” Schneider said. “And all I’m saying is the loudest voices aren’t always the most correct voices.”
::
People don’t like change.
This is a truism that has led NIMBYs to file an untold number of frivolous lawsuits up and down the state of California.
It also has led Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature to repeatedly roll back local control over land use decisions — the latest being a law that lets nonprofit colleges and religious institutions bypass most local permitting and environmental review rules and rezone their land to build housing.
Even Bass, who has made homelessness her top issue, has pushed to cut through red tape and streamline the construction of housing and shelters, trying to extend the pipeline for unhoused Angelenos who have been moved into hotels through her Inside Safe program.
But the mayor said she’s still a big believer in “doing the hard work” of community outreach. She explained why when I shared my skepticism.
“This goes back to my days at Community Coalition,” she said. “We used to fight when the city tried to impose development on South L.A. without including South L.A., which is why you would think that I would say build everywhere, anywhere. But I don’t feel that way.”
Instead, she wants to get people involved in the process and build in ways that are in line with what each community wants.
“If I took a position that said, ‘steamroll everybody, just get housing done,’ we would tear the city apart,” Bass said, adding that residents would likely be against development for no reason other than it was forced upon them.
This is a big reason why she decided against supporting a study of the Marina Freeway. In talking to residents, she told me she heard only complaints — about the possibility of more traffic and longer commutes, and from Black people in South L.A., about losing a convenient corridor to Marina del Rey and the beach.
But most of all, Bass said she heard consternation that there had been no community outreach.
This came up in an online petition that went viral last month — even though it was packed with misleading assertions — written by Daphne Bradford, an education consultant from Ladera Heights who is running for supervisor against Mitchell in the March primary election.
“Ladera Heights is not just any neighborhood; it holds the distinction of being the 3rd most affluent African American community in the nation,” Bradford wrote, channeling her inner NIMBY. “Our community has worked hard to create a safe and prosperous environment for our families, and we believe that our voices should be heard when decisions are made that will affect us directly.”
Schneider sighed when I asked him about the petition.
“The whole point of the feasibility study is we would have almost two years of community outreach,” he said. “We’re a small nonprofit, we don’t have the resources to do the community outreach before getting the grant money.”
In the meantime, rumors about the Marina Freeway have overwhelmed the facts, and many residents have dug in their heels in opposition to whatever they think is happening. Mitchell suspects one reason for this is that Streets For All didn’t “do outreach the way we define outreach.”
The Marina Freeway, an unfinished three-mile stretch of road from Marina del Rey, is one of Los Angeles’ shortest thoroughfares. Now a local nonprofit is suggesting turning it into a large public park and thousands of affordable homes.
(Rendering courtesy of SWA / Streets For All)
“It can’t be 10 a.m. on a weekday, one meeting at the community center,” she told me. “You really have to get creative, partner with communities and not be afraid to reach out to people who will oppose you.”
But community outreach is a thorny issue, Mitchell acknowledges. Again, people don’t like change. And too many people want to “pull the drawbridge up” behind themselves and not let new housing into their neighborhoods.
“When people say outreach, they mean, ‘You didn’t ask me. And then when you asked me, you didn’t do what I said,’” Mitchell said. “That can’t be the expectation. But I do believe that every effort should be made to make sure that impacted communities are aware.”
Eventually, though, everyone will have to get used to the idea that our neighborhoods will look a little different to accommodate the housing that Los Angeles needs.
“These are really difficult decisions that we all kind of have to make,” Mitchell said.
::
Which brings me back to the Marina Freeway.
Despite the Streets For All being abandoned by much of the political establishment in Los Angeles, Schneider said its plan to conduct a feasibility study isn’t dead.
“We live in a democracy. You can’t stop somebody from studying something in the public space. That’s just not possible,” he said. “If we’re awarded the federal grant, we will do it. If we need to raise the money privately, we’ll do it. But we’re committed to exploring the idea because it’s worth exploring.”
Whether that study leads to removing the freeway and building thousands of units of affordable housing in Marina Central Park is another matter.
It’s a huge political decision, Schneider admits. One that will ultimately — undoubtedly and unfortunately — hinge on community outreach. After all, this is L.A.
An $18,500 stipend to help pay for graduate school. Student loan forgiveness. Free on-the-job training. All license fees paid. And the chance to serve the under-served — “with dignity.”
“Do Worthwhile Work,” the new marketing campaign of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, highlights these perks on its website in the hope that job candidates will see the benefits of public sector mental health work, and apply.
“Your work can change lives,” the campaign reads. “Leave today better than you found it, LA County DMH has a place for you.”
Many places, in fact: As of mid-September, the agency had a vacancy rate of 28%, with 1,890 vacant positions and just over 4,800 employees, according to county data.
For decades, the department didn’t need marketing campaigns or too many perks to get people to apply for jobs. But in recent years, the largest county mental health department in America has seen a decline in applicants.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for mental health practitioners was already exceeding the supply. Many in California were retiring, and master’s programs and medical schools were not turning out enough therapists, psychologists or psychiatrists to replace retirees, or meet the growing demand, according to recent research on the state’s behavioral health workforce.
If workforce trends continue, California is projected to experience a shortage of 5,000 mental health practitioners by 2026, according to research by consulting firm Mercer.
Cristina Rodriguez, a psychiatric social worker, counsels a client on a video call at the East San Gabriel Valley Mental Health Center.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Demand has only grown as more Americans than ever, struck by the uncertainty and misery brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, sign up for therapy. New therapists who would have traditionally started out in the public sector are being recruited by private companies that offer bonuses, flexible schedules and remote work — and patients who, while still struggling, aren’t unhoused or suffering from acute psychosis made worse by years of life outside.
Internally, the Department of Mental Health still hasn’t recovered from the 18-month countywide hiring freeze, implemented by the Board of Supervisors at the start of the pandemic to save money amid disaster. That left many important administrative positions unfilled. And it can still take months to get hired at the county because of civil service rules that dictate how hiring must be carried out.
Of the 103 people the department hired in August , it took an average of 227 days from the time the candidate submitted an application to when they started their job.
The department’s vacancies have stymied progress in addressing L.A. County’s homelessness crisis as pressure mounts from an impatient public. A lack of workers has meant longer response times from teams who respond to mental health crises called in on the 988 hotline. It has delayed care — in 2021, it took an average of 27 days to see a county psychiatrist in clinic. It has also led to burnout among existing staff, who work longer hours to make up for the lack of new talent, a point supervisors discussed at a recent meeting.
And it’s made implementing changes coming down from Sacramento challenging. On Dec. 1, L.A. County will launch Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court. If they don’t have enough staff hired, they’ll pull people from existing programs until hiring is complete, according to department documents.
“There is no doubt we have two crises — the immense mental health crisis in our communities and the challenge in our own Department of Mental Health to hire enough people to respond to it,” Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement. “My vision is that we will have enough mental health professionals to not only be in encampments working with people suffering from mental illness on our streets, but also enough to respond immediately to emergency mental health calls, and hiring has held us back.”
These challenges have forced the Department of Mental Health to get creative.
It has started holding hiring fairs where applicants get offers on the same day they interview. These events have especially targeted hard-to-fill positions — and are showing results.
In the last five months, Hahn said, the mental health department hired 272 people at fairs, including 37 to join its homeless outreach teams and 30 who will respond to emergency mental health calls, which have seen a recent improvement in response times.
These hiring events are like a speed-dating session between employers and applicants. On a recent Thursday at the department’s headquarters in Koreatown, dozens of recent master’s of social work graduates filed into a meeting room to hear elevator pitches from almost 20 mental health clinics.
Each hiring manager briefly explained the benefits of working at their location.
“We’re one of the busiest clinics” in our service area in Willowbrook, one manager said. “What helps in our work is to have purpose and meaning, and you can find it there,” a manager from a Compton clinic said.
A supervisor from a San Pedro clinic said it has “one of the strongest housing programs” in its area. “We like to celebrate,” a manager from a Long Beach clinic said, describing its many potlucks and nacho dinners. “We try to support one another.”
The energy among participants was jovial, a mix of nerves and polite laughter — until a social worker in the audience asked about caseloads.
The supervisor from a Skid Row clinic shot straight. If hired there, she said, they’ll have about 150 clients, which will include patients who come in twice a year for check-ups of their medicine regimen as well as clients in crisis who come in frequently.
“Many of these other clinics have that many [on their caseloads] too,” she added, to polite laughter around the room.
Marina Barrios, a substance abuse counselor, meets with a client at L.A. County’s East San Gabriel Valley Mental Health Center. The county is trying to fill hundreds of mental health positions.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)
Nicole Pyles sat nearby, reminding herself to start breathing again. Pyles, a recent graduate of the USC School of Social Work, had ranked that Skid Row clinic as her No. 1 choice before the event started.
“I thought, ‘Pssh, I got this, I’m not worried about it, I’ve had caseloads as high as 30 people,’ ” said Pyles, 47. “When she said 150 people, I think my heart jumped out of my mouth and was somewhere on the floor.”
Pyles previously worked as a substance abuse counselor, which doesn’t require a master’s degree to get certified and see clients.
But Pyles knew that for many of her clients, their addiction was much more complicated than brain chemicals making them crave a substance. She wanted to get to the root of the problem, namely the trauma fueling their addiction. Such work requires a master’s degree.
Pyles was happy enough, though, working in her last job with pregnant and postpartum clients struggling with substance use disorders.
That was until a client who’d diligently worked with the program for a few months asked for help. The client’s court date to keep custody over her newborn baby had been moved from Monterey Park to the Antelope Valley, and she needed a ride.
Pyles thought she could help with that. Her supervisor, though, told Pyles she was “enabling” this woman and declined the request.
In that moment, Pyles realized she wanted the power to help in a bigger and more meaningful way.
“A friend of mine told me, ‘If you want to make those calls, and you want to be able to make the decisions, you’ve got to get your education,’ ” Pyles said. “And that’s exactly what I did.”
After finishing her master’s at USC, she agreed to work at the downtown Skid Row clinic — committing to the county for a year after accepting an $18,500 stipend. “My goal is to remain at DMH, and move up to leadership,” she said.
These are the kinds of practitioners that Lisa H. Wong, director of the Department of Mental Health, said her department has started to attract.
The department and its contract agencies did take a hit early in the pandemic, when workers across the country reassessed the type of work they wanted.
Wong said when she worked as a clinical supervisor at a facility in Skid Row 15 years ago, she held recruitment events that brought in dozens of candidates who wanted to work there, even though “admittedly [it] is not for everyone.”
Comparatively, about a year and a half ago, when she held a recruitment effort for adult mental health positions across the county, she got just 13 applicants.
But in recent months, Wong said the department has noticed another shift.
“I know I’ve been accused of being an optimist at times, I do think the tide is turning,” Wong said, noting that hiring and promotions have increased 200% this year. “What we’re seeing now is sort of the blessing in disguise of the nationwide staffing shortage — who we’re getting now are those people who are the true believers, the urban missionaries.”
Beyond the hiring fairs, the department is also renewing academic affiliations with graduate programs, which will lead to more internships there, and for the first time, will start recruiting at conferences and campuses out of state.
The department went to recruit at the American Psychological Assn. conference in Washington, D.C., where LGBTQ+ clinicians told county staff they really wanted to move to California because they didn’t feel safe in their home states.
“But alongside that, we had a lot of people say, ‘I would love to move to California, I would love to live in L.A., but I don’t think I can afford it,’ ” Wong said.
Wong said they will focus much of their attention on recruiting at historically Black colleges and universities, bringing current county staff who are alumni to talk about working at the department.
“We need more clinicians who look like our community,” Wong said. “I would love for an African American little boy to be able to meet with a Black psychologist, and know that not only can they open up and have some cultural understanding but also this is somebody he can aspire to be as well.”
Los Angeles is home to the second-largest Jewish community in America, with more than 500,000 members. And for the last few weeks, it’s been reeling.
Since the ambush by Hamas militants left more than 1,400 Israelis dead and saw the kidnapping of at least 200 others, Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip from vital resources and launched a barrage of airstrikes.
Jewish Angelenos are largely supportive of Israel, which declared war on Hamas, the local authority in Gaza, following the deadly Oct. 7 attack. Many also disagree with the military assault on Gaza, and are heartbroken over the mounting Palestinian death toll, which has exceeded 7,000, including nearly 3,000 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. About 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced, and Gaza’s healthcare system is teetering on the brink of collapse as water, fuel and vital medicines are running out, according to the World Health Organization.
The world is watching as Israel mounts an all-out invasion of Gaza.
The war is creating dual tragedies across the Israel-Gaza boundary. And in L.A.’s Jewish community — whose members hail from different backgrounds, ideologies, cultures and religious sects — people are coming together in unique ways.
Amid the anguish and anger, the confusion and conflicts, some have found a new kind of resolve and a newfound community.
Music as a healer
The crowd held its breath at Sinai Temple as Nilli Salem played an extended note on the shofar, an instrument typically made from a ram’s horn and used in important Jewish rituals.
“I really believe that artists are the healers of our time,” Chloe Pourmorady said outside the Westwood synagogue, where about 100 people gathered for a night of solidarity weeks after the initial attack on Israel.
Music is “something beyond words that connects people and brings comfort,” Pourmorady said.
Cantor Marcus Feldman, left, Chloe Pourmorady and Nilli Salem perform at a concert to support Israel at Westwood’s Sinai Temple.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
For many Jews in Los Angeles, there are few degrees of separation between the U.S. and Israel. The extent of death and warfare in the region, considered the Holy Land for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, has been staggering — and has hit close to home.
Pourmorady had initially planned a musical gathering for friends, but felt compelled to invite the public so the community could dance, sing and cry together.
“Music is being used as a tool for comfort, healing and prayer during this time of great sadness and anguish,” said Cantor Marcus Feldman, who oversees the musical department at Sinai Temple and who sang at the event, which included performances in both Hebrew and English.
Mikey Pauker shared his frustration and anger during the Sinai Temple gathering.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Emotions overtook many that night. Mikey Pauker’s voice broke before he started singing. He told the congregation that in the last few weeks, he’d been called a white supremacist for supporting Israel.
Azar Elihu, a former temple member, said the pain is universal, and she grieves for both sides.
“Even I feel for the Palestinians. I cried so much for the little boy that was killed in Chicago,” she said, referring to 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Muslim boy who was stabbed dozens of times in a deadly attack carried out by his family’s landlord.
But after the musical performance, Elihu said, “This felt like something of a healing.”
How do you talk to your children?
Nicole Guzik, a senior rabbi at Sinai Temple, said that in the weeks following the declaration of war, many in their Jewish community had drawn closer together, checking on one other. They ask: “Are you sleeping? Are you eating? Did you cry today?”
But they are also filled with outrage — and fear — as both antisemitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric abound online and in person.
While some in Israel have called for a full attack on Gaza, including a ground invasion, Sinai Temple congregants say they worry about innocent lives lost.
‘I also don’t want them to be afraid to go to school. I don’t want my daughter to be afraid to wear the Jewish star.’
— Amanda Kogan, of Sinai Temple’s board of directors
“I think what gets lost is that there isn’t a single Jew or Israeli who wants to see a single hair hurt on the head of any innocent civilian,” said Jason Cosgrove, who grew up in the synagogue and said he now finds himself explaining the war in Israel to his 7-year-old daughter and wondering when he will have to discuss antisemitism with her.
“I’m sparing her all of the gory details,” said Cosgrove, who finds himself taking breaks from the news when he can, but who also feels compelled to stay up to date on what’s happening. “I think you obviously can’t bury your head at a time like this.”
Amanda Kogan, who’s on the board of directors at Sinai Temple, also finds herself in the difficult position of trying to explain the war to her children. Her teenage daughter recently attended an event that involved a bus trip in Los Angeles, and the group was accompanied by an armed guard.
“I also don’t want them to be afraid to go to school,” Kogan said. “I don’t want my daughter to be afraid to wear the Jewish star.”
“War is not fair to the innocent people. It’s terrible,” she added. “We’re trying to explain all of this as best we can in a very balanced manner. And no matter what, it’s all horrific.”
Sinai Temple boasts roughly 5,000 members and includes a private Jewish day school with about 600 students, a recreation center and a mental health center that offers counseling to the community.
Duvid Swirsky joins other musicians and cantors in a meditation circle before performing at the Sinai Temple benefit.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Members say their support for Israel is unwavering, and have gathered supplies, including headlamps, tents, blankets and phone chargers to be sent in care packages, which also include notes from children.
But grief hangs heavily over the community.
“As you walk through the halls here, it feels like a house of mourning,” said Senior Rabbi Erez Sherman.
Sherman and Guzik, husband and wife, became senior rabbis about two weeks after the attack on Israel as they worked to console their congregants.
Working for peace
Estee Chandler was a child living in Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Syria and Egypt. At the time, she worried every time her parents left their house at night. She would sometimes hear air raid sirens go off and hide with the rest of her family in the unfinished basement of their apartment building.
“Even back then, we had those places to go in. Now, Israelis have safe rooms in their homes,” the 50-year-old said. “[But] Palestinians who are being bombed — they have nothing. They don’t have those rooms to run into. They have no way to protect their children.”
When Chandler awoke to the news that Israel had declared war with Hamas, she started reaching out to friends and family living overseas. Then, she reached out to her colleagues at Jewish Voice for Peace, whose Los Angeles chapter she founded nearly 13 years ago.
“My heart sank thinking about what we were surely going to start seeing in the hours, days and weeks to come, and unfortunately, that has all borne out,” she said.
“I don’t understand how people’s hearts can bleed … for only one-half of the people who are bleeding,” says Estee Chandler, who lived through the 1973 Yom Kippur War and has loved ones in Israel — and friends whose loved ones in Gaza have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Jewish Voice for Peace and another Jewish organization, IfNotNow, have staged protests outside the White House and the homes of other politicians, demanding a cease-fire. Hundreds have been arrested while protesting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
While working for former President Obama’s 2008 campaign, Chandler said she saw “the intersection between the Israeli lobby and the Democratic Party politics.” She was upset by “a lot of horribly racist things” that were happening and tried to educate herself as much as possible about Israel.
Chandler later discovered Jewish Voice for Peace, which was supporting a movement at UC Berkeley to divest from weapons manufacturers providing arms to Israel. The group contacted Chandler and asked whether she would be interested in starting an L.A. chapter.
The daughter of an Israeli father, Chandler has relatives and friends in Israel and some fighting in the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s national military. She also has friends whose family members were killed in Gaza by the Israeli airstrikes.
“My concern for my family’s safety and my friends’ safety doesn’t stop at any border,” she said. “It’s not a choice that has to be made. I don’t understand how people’s hearts can bleed in the same situation for only one-half of the people who are bleeding.”
One of Chandler’s friends is L.A. resident Hedab Tarifi, a Palestinian advocate and member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders. Tarifi has lost 69 family members in the bombings in Gaza.
‘I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t breathe. … I have to swallow my pain and my anger, and remind myself that they don’t have a voice while they’re being bombed and massacred.’
— Hedab Tarifi, a Palestinian advocate and member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders
“I have a roller coaster of emotions,” said Tarifi, who was born in Gaza and moved to L.A. in the mid-1990s.
“I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t breathe. I want to cry, but I can’t cry. I’m mad, and at the same time, because I have to be their voice, I have to swallow my pain and my anger, and remind myself that they don’t have a voice while they’re being bombed and massacred,” she said. “I need to pull myself together and be their voice.”
Chandler and other Jewish Voice for Peace supporters want a cease-fire. They have been protesting in Los Angeles and recently attended a county supervisors meeting where a resolution condemning Hamas and supporting Israel was unanimously adopted after tense public comments.
She has been disheartened by media portrayals of the war as simply a battle between Israel and Hamas, noting that the events of Oct. 7 “didn’t come in a vacuum.”
“You can’t say that anything that happened there is unprovoked. You have people who have been living under siege for 75 years, people who’ve been living in a state of constant ethnic cleansing.”
While her support of Palestinian rights may seem unconventional in light of her heritage, Chandler said she wouldn’t be deterred — even if friends and family have opposing views.
“My family loves me anyway,” she said.
‘Never again’
When Mor Haim finally turned on the TV on Oct. 7 — breaking her usual observance of Shabbat — she watched as Hamas trucks bulldozed through a neighborhood in Sderot, an Israeli city near Gaza where she lived until the age of 7. She immediately recognized the street where her cousin lived.
‘I’m scared to talk on the phone in public, [worried that] someone will recognize my accent and say, “Hey, she’s Jewish.” ’
— Mor Haim
“Life was sucked out of me at that second,” said Haim, 31. Luckily, none of her family was killed, but the grief has been no less soul-crushing. The brother of her cousin’s wife went on a run the morning of the ambush, and was killed. Many childhood friends were slain. A friend’s father died shielding his children.
“Even though I’m far away, I feel as if I’m physically there,” said Haim, a dual Israeli American citizen who lives in Woodland Hills.
Since that night, Haim said, she’s had panic attacks and has been unable to sleep well.
She said she tries to go about her daily life for the sake of her four young children. She’s found solace baking challah with friends and family or just sitting in silence with others who share her pain.
For Mor Haim, who lived near Gaza in Sderot, Israel, as a child, the Hamas attack hit too close to home.
But the images from that day are seared in her mind, and she is afraid.
“I’m scared for my safety. I’m scared for my children’s safety,” she said. “I’m scared to talk on the phone in public, [worried that] someone will recognize my accent and say, ‘Hey, she’s Jewish.’”
“We’ve kind of been in hiding,” she said.
Haim wants people to understand why the attack on Israel — carried out on the holiday of Simchat Torah, a day meant for rejoicing — cannot be ignored.
She said no one wants innocent people to die — “not our people and not their people in Gaza.”
But Jewish people can’t stand idly by, and Israelis must fight to defend their country, their people, she said.
“We said ‘never again’ when we went through the Holocaust. And this is the never again,” she said. “It feels like we’re screaming our life out and nobody’s hearing us.”
Novibet, a specialist in gambling technology and solutions, announced that it has appointed the experienced Al Alevizakos as its new chief financial officer. In his new position, the appointee will be responsible for the company’s finances, helping it maintain and bolster the profitability of its business.
As highlighted by Novibet, Alevizakos boasts a proven track record of managing top-performing teams on a global scale. His past experiences have seen him in a variety of leadership positions at multiple companies.
Alevizakos, who is also a co-founder of Cookie St, previously served as the managing director of AXIA Ventures Group, a leading regional privately-owned investment banking group. Prior to that, he had a two-year stint at TP ICAP, a leading data broker. His earlier positions include a four-year tenure at KBW, preceded by three years as an analyst at Mediobanca and three years at the business consultancy Deloitte.
Novibet Welcomed Alevizakos to the Team
Novibet welcomed the new hire on board, praising his expertise. According to the company, Alevizakos’ corporate experience and commitment to excellence and sustainable growth will be a “vital ingredient” to the company’s growth journey.
His extensive expertise in capital markets, investment banking, and corporate finance and his broad experience in pivotal leadership finance positions instill in us the confidence that, together, we will embark on a journey to steer Novibet to new heights! Welcome to the team, Al!
Novibet statement
Alevizakos also shared his thoughts on his new position, saying that he is “absolutely thrilled” to join Novibet as its new group chief financial officer. According to him, this job is an “incredibly exciting opportunity” that would allow him to work with a very dynamic and innovative team.
Alevizakos praised Novibet’s robust business and drive for innovation, saying that he is eager to add to Novibet’s growth and success.
Novibet’s commitment to excellence and its forward-thinking approach are truly inspiring, and I look forward to working closely with the talented individuals here to help steer the group towards new heights.
The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) announced that Carl Brincat, its current chief executive officer, will be departing from the regulatory body. In the meantime, the MGA will issue a public call to determine his successor.
According to the MGA, Brincat will not be seeking renewal of his current contract, which is set to expire on January 25, 2024. His yet-to-be-appointed successor is therefore set to step into the office on January 26, 2024.
As mentioned, the leadership succession plan will see the MGA issue a public call for applications. The MGA hopes to ensure a seamless transition of responsibilities from Brincat to his successor.
The MGA also added that prior to stepping into the office, the new CEO will spend several weeks shadowing Brincat.
Brincat: Leaving the MGA Was a “Very Hard Decision to Make”
In the meantime, the Maltese regulator’s board of directors thanked Brincat for his exceptional leadership and contributions. Ryan C. Pace, chairperson of the MGA, lauded Brincat as someone who has contributed a lot to the MGA and the Maltese gaming industry as a whole. Pace said that the MGA team is very thankful for the strong foundation left by Brincat, saying that they will allow the regulator to pursue its strategic goals.
Brincat also commented on his departure, saying that the decision to leave didn’t come easy.
Leaving the MGA is a very hard decision to make. The past 9 years have been a rollercoaster of experiences which contributed to the person I am today, and it has been a privilege to lead the Authority for the past 3 years.
Carl Brincat, outgoing CEO, MGA
Brincat added that he is very proud of the work that he and his team have done together. He praised the people he worked with for their passion and said that he is looking forward to working with them for a few more months.
Brincat also said that he is certain his successor will find the MGA team just as fantastic and will work with the rest of the MGA to drive further improvements. The outgoing CEO concluded that he will continue to follow the future of the MGA with interest.
On a final note, the MGA expressed its commitment to serving the Maltese gaming sector and “unlocking new opportunities for innovation and excellence.
The Richmond, Calif., City Council voted early Wednesday to support the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip with a resolution that accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing and collective punishment” nearly three weeks after war broke out in the Middle East.
The resolution is believed to be the first show of support by a U.S. city for the Palestinian people after the Oct. 7 attack carried out by Hamas on Israel.
Some 1,400 people died in Israel during the initial attack this month, and more than 200 Israeli and foreign nationals are being held captive in Gaza, according to Israeli officials. Since then, roughly 6,000 people have died in Gaza amid intensifying Israeli airstrikes, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.
The city of Richmond, in the San Francisco Bay Area, passed its resolution of support in a 5-1 vote that started Tuesday evening and ended around 1 a.m. Wednesday after a five-hour public hearing. The resolution calls for a cease-fire and for humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza. It says “the state of Israel is engaging in collective punishment against the Palestinian people in Gaza in response to Hamas attacks on Israel” — while also highlighting Richmond’s support for Jewish people in the local community and its recognition of the atrocities carried out by Nazis during the Holocaust.
On Tuesday evening, as Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez opened the hearing for the resolution, people in the audience were shouting, calling out “Nazi!” and other comments that were drowned out in the noise. The disorder derailed the meeting, and a brief recess was called.
Richmond has taken strong stands in the past on international conflicts. In the 1980s, the city chose to divest from apartheid South Africa in a display of opposition to systematized racial segregation, and council members voted to support Ukraine last year during the Russian invasion.
“We are one small city weighing in on a conflict that has the attention of the entire world and on which global superpowers are pouring in money, political attention and military aid,” Martinez said. “The people of [the] United States, whose government and tax dollars directly support Israel’s military, have an immediate moral obligation to condemn Israel’s acts of collective punishment and apartheid state.”
Councilmember Cesar Zepeda cast the lone vote not to support the resolution, recognizing the issue as divisive.
“Let’s call out the atrocities that Hamas has done on the Israel communities and the atrocities the Israeli government has done on the Palestinian people,” Zepeda said, requesting a revised resolution. He said he wanted the city to “bring everyone together in a community for peace.”
Although a majority of speakers backed the council’s resolution, others disagreed with how the City Council broached the topic and language that was used.
“I think it’s shameful that you had to have public feedback until you finally included the 1,200 people in Israel who were butchered and set on fire,” Lucinda Casson from Temple Beth Hillel in Richmond said to the council. Before the meeting, the city’s resolution was amended to include information about the Israeli people who were killed by Hamas militants in border neighborhoods.
Another woman, who asked for an Israeli flag to be held up behind her as she spoke, said she was ashamed of Richmond and scared.
“You have put me in this situation,” she said as she asked the council to reject the resolution.
Others thanked the council for taking a stand against the ongoing war. A man who identified himself as Yusef reminded the council that the conflict between Palestinians and Israel is nothing new.
He said nobody realized “the Palestinian people have been hurting for 75 years and no one [says] a word.”
Before the council meeting, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia asked the council to table the resolution and work together with the Muslim and Jewish communities to develop a resolution that “validates the voices of both communities.”
The Jewish Community Relations Council in San Francisco condemned the city’s actions and in a statement said that, although the council had amended the resolution, it remained “inflammatory and biased.” The group also noted “the vitriol of resolution supporters” at the meeting.
The Arab Resource & Organizing Center in San Francisco thanked Richmond for taking a stance on the issue.
“We are you with you as the tide shifts across the US, as more decision makers echo the calls of the masses and rise up in support for Palestinian freedom,” the group said in a statement. “We have a long way to go, and we are proud that the Bay Area is leading the charge.”
An L.A. County judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging L.A.’s “mansion tax” on Tuesday, marking the end of a months-long legal challenge from the luxury real estate community that looked to declare the measure unconstitutional.
The transfer tax known as Measure ULA was passed in November and took effect April 1, bringing a 4% charge on all residential and commercial real estate sales in the city above $5 million and a 5.5% charge on sales above $10 million, pumping millions into housing and homelessness-prevention efforts.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Barbara Scheper issued a tentative ruling dismissing the challenge on Monday after hearing arguments from both sides, and she officially dismissed the lawsuit on Tuesday, according to court documents.
The ruling is a big win for housing activists, who say that L.A. desperately needs the money raised by the tax.
“This is a great day for Los Angeles,” said Joe Donlin, who serves as director of the United to House LA coalition, which brought the measure onto the ballot in November. “The judge’s ruling confirms what we knew all along: ULA is the law of the land and it’s the will of the people. And it reminds us of the power of the people to shape our city’s future for the good.”
Donlin said he was surprised the ruling came out so soon.
“Before the hearing, we thought it might take weeks or months, but this was a positive sign that the judge didn’t feel compelled by the plaintiff’s arguments,” he said.
Advocates for Measure ULA gather outside Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A. on Monday. A judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the measure.
(United to House LA)
Greg Bonett, senior staff attorney for the Public Counsel who worked to defend the measure, applauded the decision, calling it “a resounding victory for the power of the people to initiate transformative solutions to address our city’s housing and homelessness crises.”
The judge’s ruling is a blow for many in the luxury real estate community, who claim that the transfer tax has frozen the market and stifled development.
Keith Fromm, an attorney for Newcastle Courtyards, one of two groups challenging the measure, said he plans to appeal the decision.
“The order contains numerous errors of law which the appellate courts will hopefully recognize and correct,” Fromm said. “The ruling is simply one step in a very long journey to justice.”
The legal battle — which was headed by two main groups: Newcastle and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. — became a national conversation, as other cities looked to L.A. to see how it would implement such a tax.
Other cities such as San Francisco, New York City and Culver City have implemented transfer taxes, but L.A.’s is unique in scope and scale, not just taxing home sales but all property sales above $5 million.
Voters approved the measure with a 57% majority in November, and the tax became a hot-button issue immediately after.
Advocates argue that the tax is a way for luxury property owners to contribute to solving L.A.’s housing crisis, while opponents say it discourages development and pushes owners out of L.A. and into cities that don’t have the tax, such as Beverly Hills, West Hollywood or Santa Monica.
“With Measure ULA, we are now going to lose billions of dollars every year in economic development and property tax revenue in order to raise less than $500 million through the tax,” said Jason Oppenheim, a real estate agent with the Oppenheim Group and star of Netflix’s “Selling Sunset.”
The luxury real estate market froze in the months after the measure took effect, as many luxury homeowners looked to find loopholes to avoid paying the tax. Many hired accountants to find workarounds, such as dividing their homes into three parcels and selling them separately to stay under the $5-million threshold at which the tax kicks in.
Many homeowners held off on selling their homes, hoping the lawsuit would overturn the tax. As a result, funds raised by the tax have fallen dramatically short of original projections since sales have slowed.
In November, proponents of the tax estimated it would raise roughly $900 million a year. In March, a report from the city administrative officer lowered that number to $672 million. Then in April, Mayor Karen Bass’s first budget proposal, a $13.1-billion plan, included only $150 million in projected revenue from Measure ULA.
The number was chosen out of caution, as the city wanted to funnel as much money as possible toward housing and homelessness issues but not so much that it wouldn’t be able to pay it back if the measure were ruled unconstitutional.
But with the court’s latest ruling, spending will likely increase.
On Wednesday, the L.A. City Council’s budget, finance and innovation Committee will meet to discuss the implementation process, and the ULA coalition will propose that $12 million be reallocated to short-term emergency assistance for renters.
In August, the City Council passed a $150-million spending plan for funds raised by Measure ULA. It was the first time funds were specifically allocated since the tax was passed in November, and the plan sent money to six programs: short-term emergency rental assistance, eviction defense, tenant outreach and education, direct cash assistance for low-income seniors and people with disabilities, tenant protections and affordable housing production.
Japan is home to an untold number of conveniences and delights that American consumers regularly go without: Faster public transit! Better sunscreen! Lychee KitKats! But as we head into sick season, one Japanese invention would be especially welcome on the U.S. market: an antiviral pill that appears to shorten COVID symptoms, might protect against chronic disease, and doesn’t taste like soapy grapefruit.
Ensitrelvir, a drug made by the Osaka-based pharmaceutical company Shionogi, was conditionally approved in Japan last November. Like Paxlovid, ensitrelvir works by blocking an enzyme that the SARS-CoV-2 virus uses to clone itself inside the human body. But for the millions of Americans who will likely get COVID in the coming months, the new drug is almost certain to be out of reach. In 2021, Pfizer waited just five weeks for Paxlovid to receive its emergency use authorization. But ensitrelvir is still sitting in the approval pipeline, stuck in another round of clinical trials that may run well into 2024.
Existing data (not all of which have been peer-reviewed) show that people with COVID who promptly take ensitrelvir, marketed as Xocova in Japan, test negative about 36 hours faster than people who take a placebo. Fever, congestion, sore throat, cough, and fatigue disappear about a day earlier too. Even smell and taste loss appear to resolve more quickly. The company also has some tentative evidence suggesting that the drug can help protect patients from developing long COVID.
These findings were not enough for the FDA, but they are extremely encouraging, says Michael Lin, a bioengineering professor at Stanford University who works on drugs for treating coronavirus infections. Xocova “looked as good or a little bit better than Paxlovid,” he says. For instance, Pfizer’s clinical trials failed to show that Paxlovid clears symptoms any faster than a placebo in people who aren’t at high risk of developing severe COVID. Shionogi’s did just that.
Reshma Ramachandran, a family physician at Yale, told me that if the early Xocova results hold up in additional trials, she’d be inclined to prescribe it to her vaccinated patients in place of Paxlovid, simply because the evidence supporting its use is more direct. She said she’d be especially keen to give Xocova if the long-COVID finding can be reproduced.
No lab or pharmaceutical company has yet published a study that pits Xocova against Paxlovid head-to-head in treating COVID, so it’s impossible to say with certainty which one is better. You can’t draw conclusions just by comparing Pfizer’s clinical-trial results with Shionogi’s: Their drugs were tested in different populations with different levels of immunity at different points in the pandemic when different variants were circulating. Shionogi also required clinical-trial participants to start taking Xocova within three days of feeling sick, whereas patients in the Paxlovid trials began their treatment up to five days after symptoms started. Daniel Griffin, an infectious-disease specialist at Columbia University, told me that timing is everything when it comes to antivirals: In general, the sooner a patient starts taking a drug, the better it works.
A Pfizer spokesperson told me that the efficacy and adverse-event rates of Paxlovid and Xocova cannot directly be compared, and emphasized Paxlovid’s power to stave off hospitalization and death. (Xocova’s clinical trials were not able to provide meaningful data on those outcomes, which are now much rarer than they were in 2021.) “Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve known it will take multiple treatment options and preventative measures for the world to overcome the challenges of COVID-19,” he said in an email.
Even if Xocova turns out to be no more effective than Paxlovid, it still has several practical advantages. For one thing, it is literally easier to swallow. Paxlovid must be taken twice a day for five days, and each time you have to gulp down three pills: two containing nirmatrelvir (which actively combats the virus), plus one containing ritonavir (which slows the metabolism of nirmatrelvir, keeping it in your system longer). Xocova is taken just once a day for five days, and after the first three-pill dose, it’s one pill at a time. Paxlovid can also cause dysgeusia, a.k.a. Paxlovid mouth—a sour, metallic, taste that may last for hours after swallowing. Xocova seems to taste just fine.
Experts hope that Xocova will be more widely accessible than Paxlovid, too. Pfizer announced last week that the price of Paxlovid will soon rise from $529 to $1,390 when the drug enters the commercial market. Shionogi hasn’t decided on Xocova’s price in the U.S. market, but there’s reason to think it will be cheaper. In Japan, the only market where both drugs are currently available, a course of Xocova costs 51,851 yen (about $346), and Paxlovid is nearly double the price, at 99,027 yen (about $661). And whereas Japanese health authorities—like those in the U.S.—have recommended Paxlovid for use by patients at high risk of severe COVID, Xocova has been shown to benefit people with infections regardless of their risk status. Finally, whereas Paxlovid’s reach is limited by its many harmful interactions with other drugs, Xocova might pose fewer problems because it doesn’t contain ritonavir, Lin told me. The newer drug’s interaction profile is still being ironed out, but a company spokesperson pointed me to a running list from the University of Liverpool. (According to that source, you should avoid taking Paxlovid and Adderall at the same time—but going on Xocova is fine.)
Xocova may also sidestep one of patients’ most commonly voiced concerns about Paxlovid: that it will make their COVID go away and then return. One recent observational study of COVID patients found that symptoms rebounded among 19 percent of Paxlovid takers, versus 7 percent of nontakers. By contrast, Shionogi has reported that symptom rebound was vanishingly rare in its clinical trials of Xocova.
Neither Shionogi nor the FDA would give me an estimate of Xocova’s approval timeline in the U.S., but earlier this year, the company’s CEO estimated that it might get the nod in late 2024. This past spring, the FDA gave the drug “fast track” status, which means Xocova will be eligible for an expedited review process once the company submits its application. (The FDA declined to comment on Xocova’s prospects for approval, citing federal disclosure laws.) Until then, it’s running more clinical trials in the U.S. and abroad. One of them, conducted in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, will evaluate the drug’s performance in hospitalized patients. Another will evaluate its efficacy against long COVID, among other things.
To some experts, Xocova’s track is not nearly fast enough. David Boulware, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Minnesota, told me that the FDA appears to be “slow walking” the approval process. Lin, too, would like to see more action. But it’s not clear how, exactly, that would happen. “I think the FDA is doing all that they can,” Ramachandran said; an emergency use authorization for Xocova isn’t a realistic option, given that the COVID public-health emergency has expired. Plus, Griffin said, caution is prudent when dealing with new drugs. “We want to make sure it’s safe. We want to make sure it’s effective,” he told me. “We also don’t want to fall into the trap we fell in with molnupiravir,” an earlier antiviral that looked promising at first, but ultimately offered disappointing benefits to COVID patients (though a surprising utility for cats).
If the FDA were to approve Xocova tomorrow, demand for Paxlovid likely wouldn’t disappear, experts told me. Lin said the two drugs might compete for users, like Motrin and Aleve. People who are in danger of being hospitalized or dying from COVID could still opt for Paxlovid. “But there’s a much larger group of people who just feel crummy, and they just want to feel better,” Griffin told me. For them, Xocova could make more sense. They just won’t have a choice until the FDA approves it.
At every party, no matter the occasion, my drink of choice is soda water with lime. I have never, not once, been drunk—or even finished a full serving of alcohol. The single time I came close to doing so (thanks to half a serving of mulled wine), my heart rate soared, the room spun, and my face turned stop-sign red … all before I collapsed in front of a college professor at an academic event.
The blame for my alcohol aversion falls fully on my genetics: Like an estimated 500 million other people, most of them of East Asian descent, I carry a genetic mutation called ALDH2*2 that causes me to produce broken versions of an enzyme called aldehyde dehydrogenase 2, preventing my body from properly breaking down the toxic components of alcohol. And so, whenever I drink, all sorts of poisons known as aldehydes build up in my body—a predicament that my face announces to everyone around me.
By one line of evolutionary logic, I and the other sufferers of so-called alcohol flush (also known as Asian glow) shouldn’t exist. Alcohol isn’t the only source of aldehydes in the body. Our own cells also naturally produce the compounds, and they can wreak all sorts of havoc on our DNA and proteins if they aren’t promptly cleared. So even at baseline, flushers are toting around extra toxins, leaving them at higher risk for a host of health issues, including esophageal cancer and heart disease. And yet, somehow, our cohort of people, with its intense genetic baggage, has grown to half a billion people in potentially as littleas 2,000 years.
The reason might hew to a different line of evolutionary logic—one driven not by the dangers of aldehydes to us but by the dangers of aldehydes to some of our smallest enemies, according to Heran Darwin, a microbiologist at New York University. As Darwin and her colleagues reported at a conference last week, people with the ALDH2*2 mutation might be especially good at fighting off certain pathogens—among them the bug that causes tuberculosis, or TB, one of the greatest infectious killers in recent history.
The research, currently under review for publication at the journal Science, hasn’t yet been fully vetted by other scientists. And truly nailing TB, or any other pathogen, as the evolutionary catalyst for the rise of ALDH2*2 will likely be tough. But if infectious disease can even partly explain the staggering size of the flushing cohort—as several experts told me is likely the case—the mystery of one of the most common mutations in the human population will be one step closer to being solved.
Scientists have long been aware of aldehydes’ nasty effects on DNA and proteins; the compounds are carcinogens that literally “damage the fabric of life,” says Ketan J. Patel, a molecular biologist at the University of Oxford who studies the ALDH2*2 mutation and is reviewing the new research for publication in Science. For years, though, many researchers dismissed the chemicals as the annoying refuse of the body’s daily chores. Our bodies produce them as part of run-of-the-mill metabolism; the compounds also build up during infection or inflammation, as byproducts of some of the noxious chemicals we churn out. But then aldehydes are generally swept away by our molecular cleanup systems like so much microscopic trash.
Darwin and her colleagues are now convinced that the chemicals deserve more credit. Dosed into laboratory cultures, aldehydes can kill TB within days. In previous research, Darwin’s team also found that aldehydes—including ones produced by the bacteria themselves—can make TB ultra sensitive to nitric oxide, a defensive compound that humans produce during infections, as well as copper, a metal that destroys many microbes on contact. (For what it’s worth, the aldehydes found in our bodies after we consume alcohol don’t seem to much bother TB, Darwin told me. Drinking has actually been linked to worse outcomes with the disease.)
The team is still tabulating the many ways in which aldehydes are exerting their antimicrobial effects. But Darwin suspects that the bugs that are vulnerable to the chemicals are dying “a death by a thousand cuts,” she told me at the conference. Which makes aldehydes more than worthless waste. Maybe our ancestors’ bodies wised up to the molecules’ universally destructive powers—and began to purposefully deploy them in their defensive arsenal. “It’s the immune system capitalizing on the toxicity,” says Joshua Woodward, a microbiologist at the University of Washington who has been studying the antibacterial effects of aldehydes.
Specific cells show hints that they’ve caught on to aldehydes’ potency. Sarah Stanley, a microbiologist and an immunologist at UC Berkeley, who has been co-leading the research with Darwin, has found that when immune cells receive certain chemical signals signifying infection, they’ll ramp up some of the metabolic pathways that produce aldehydes. Those same signals, the researchers recently found, can also prompt immune cells to tamp down their levels of aldehyde dehydrogenase 2—the very aldehyde-detoxifying enzyme that the mutant gene in people like me fails to make.
If holstering that enzyme is a way for cells to up their supply of toxins and brace for inevitable attack, that could be good news for ALDH2*2 carriers, who already struggle to make enough of it. When, in an extreme imitation of human flushers, the researchers purged the ALDH2 gene from a strain of mice, then infected them with TB, they found that the rodents accumulated fewer bacteria in their lungs.
The buildup of aldehydes in the mutant mice wasn’t enough to, say, render them totally immune to TB. But even a small defensive bump can make for a massive advantage when combating such a deadly disease, Russell Vance, an immunologist at UC Berkeley who’s been collaborating with Darwin and Stanley on the project, told me. Darwin is now curious as to whether TB’s distaste for aldehyde could be leveraged during infections, she told me—by, for instance, supplementing antibiotic regimens with a side of Antabuse, a medication that blocks aldehyde dehydrogenase, mimicking the effects of ALDH2*2.
Tying those results to the existence of ALDH2*2 in half a billion people is a larger leap, several experts told me. There are clues of a relationship: Darwin and Stanley’s team found, for instance, that in a cohort from Vietnam and Singapore, people carrying the mutation were less likely to have active cases of TB—echoing patterns documented by at least one other study from Korea. But Daniela Brites, an evolutionary geneticist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, told me that the connection still feels a little shaky. Other studies that have searched for genetic predispositions to TB, or resistance to it, she pointed out, haven’t hit on ALDH2*2—a sign that any link might be weak.
The team’s general idea could still pan out. “They are definitely on the right track,” Patel told me. Throughout most of human history, infectious diseases have been among the most dramatic influences over who lives and who dies—a pressure so immense that it’s left obvious scars on the human genome. A mutation that can cause sickle cell anemia has become very common in parts of the African continent because it helps guard people against malaria.
The story with ALDH2*2 is probably similar, Patel said. He’s confident that some infectious agent—perhaps several of them—has played a major role in keeping the mutation around. TB, with its devastating track record, could be among the candidates, but it wouldn’t have to be. A few years ago, work from Woodward’s lab showed that aldehydes can also do a number on the bacterial pathogens Staphylococcus aureus and Francisella novicida. (Darwin and Stanley’s team have now shown that mice lacking ALDH2 also fare better against the closely related Francisella tularensis.) Che-Hong Chen, a geneticist at Stanford who’s been studying ALDH2*2 for years, suspects that the culprit might not be a bacterium at all. He favors the idea that it’s, once again, malaria, acting on a different part of our genome, in a different region of the world.
Other tiny perks of ALDH2*2 may have helped the mutation proliferate. As Chen points out, it’s a pretty big disincentive to drink—and people who abstain (which, of course, isn’t all of us) do spare themselves a lot of potential liver problems. Which is another way in which the consequences of my genetic anomaly might not be so bad, even if at first flush it seems more trouble than it’s worth.
When Norelis Vargas heard about housekeeping work at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, she did not hesitate to sign up.
Vargas, 39, who migrated from Venezuela and entered the U.S. about three months ago seeking asylum, had been living with her husband and four children for months at Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter on Skid Row, and needed the income. But when she arrived at Four Points by Sheraton on Oct. 6, Vargas said she was surprised to find a group of hotel employees picketing.
“I thought, it’s good they are fighting for their rights,” Vargas said. But she said she felt uncomfortable. “The people outside, it was their job, and I was the one replacing them.”
Vargas is among those from Skid Row’s migrant population who have been recruited in recent weeks to work at unionized hotels in Santa Monica and near Los Angeles International Airport where workers have gone on strike. In addition to the Four Points by Sheraton hotel, migrants were hired at the Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica and the Holiday Inn LAX, according to interviews with migrants employed as temporary workers and organizers with Unite Here Local 11.
Now Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels based on information brought to him by Unite Here Local 11, which represents workers involved in the largest U.S. hotel strike. Gascón said he is concerned about potential wage theft and violations of child labor law.
“We are going to make sure this is investigated thoroughly. It will be a fair and impartial investigation,” Gascón said at a news conference Monday in front of Le Meridien Delfina.
“If there are violations of the law, there will be severe consequences for this. We want to make sure that our community understands there will be no tolerance for the exploitation of refugees,” Gascón said, citing reporting by The Times on the issue.
Gascón recently claimed the endorsement of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in announcing his reelection campaign.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced at a Monday news conference that he is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At Monday’s news conference, state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) expressed outrage over the allegations against the hotels and staffing agencies.
“It makes me furious,” said Durazo, who represents Central and East L.A., and once served as president of Unite Here Local 11.
The hotel’s actions are “indefensible,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the advocacy organization Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles. “Staffing agencies, companies taking advantage of the desperation of the individual to try to begin their life, and then not pay them their proper earnings, not give them a full accounting of their hours worked — we see this every day here in L.A.”
Since more than 15,000 workers began intermittent strikes at about 60 Southern California hotels in early July, employers have been replacing those union members with managers and temporary workers recruited through apps, such as Instawork, staffing agencies and by other means.
For the record:
4:33 p.m. Oct. 23, 2023An earlier verison of this story misspelled Hannah Petersen’s last name as Peterson.
Unite Here organizer Hannah Petersen, who has been working with the migrants, said some hired at Le Meridien Delfina were among hundreds of migrants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shipped on buses to L.A. this year as a political stunt meant to harness anti-immigrant sentiment and deride “sanctuary” cities across the country. Frank Wolf, a pastor at Echo Park United Methodist Church, is among those who have greeted migrants arriving on buses from Texas.
“They were exhausted and they were tired and they were scared when they came to Los Angeles,” he said at the news conference. “It’s heart-wrenching to find out that some of these very workers that we welcomed on those buses are being exploited.”
Refugees and asylum seekers are legally allowed to seek work in the U.S. Federal labor law allows employers to hirereplacement workers during unfair labor practice strikes and economic strikes, but unions typically condemn the use of so-called scab labor.
Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, said employers who hired migrants “had stooped to a new low” by tapping a vulnerable group of workers to undermine employees striking for a living wage.
“I can’t believe they are forcing these people, who are so desperate, to cross the picket line,” Petersen said. “Instead of addressing L.A.’s housing crisis, the hotel industry prefers to exploit the unhoused as strikebreakers to avoid paying their own workers enough to afford housing themselves.”
Owners and operators of the three hotels did not respond to requests for comment. Real estate investment group Pebblebrook Hotel Trust owns Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica, and Capital Insight owns Four Points LAX. Highgate Hotels operates both hotels. The Holiday Inn LAX is owned by a subsidiary of Chinese firm Esong Group and is operated by Aimbridge Hospitality.
Eleven people living at the Skid Row shelter confirmed they had been hired at hotels where employees were protesting outside. Most had migrated from Venezuela or Colombia. Many did not provide their names, fearing repercussions.
They described heavy cleaning loads and long hours. Some said they were given no prior information on how much they would be paid hourly, although others said they were told on their first day that they would be paid $19 an hour. Migrant workers said they were not told and did not know the name of the agency that recruited them.
Venezuelan migrant Sebastian Atencio, 34, showed up at Le Méridien Delfina Santa Monica on Sept. 26 during a recent wave of strikes. Atencio said he was given a heavy workload and forced to work without breaks. He was hired to wash dishes at another hotel — but they also asked him to clean bathrooms during the same shift, which he said he felt was unsanitary.
One migrant worker, a 17-year-old student at Belmont High School who requested anonymity, said he skipped two days of school to clean rooms at the Holiday InnLAX.
He and his mother, who secured work as a housekeeper at the Holiday Inn, received payment via banking app Zelle from an agency called Arya Staffing Services Inc. Aimbridge Hospitality did not respond to questions about whether staffing agencies it used had secured appropriate permits to employ minors.
A review of an Oct. 13 pay stub for a worker hired at the Four Points by Sheraton shows that person obtained hotel work through staffing agency AV Professional Services.
Alinne Espinoza, who is listed as the registered agent for both staffing agencies, said her business is properly licensed and operates legally.
“Our company works with many different types of people that come from our local community,” she said in an email. “We work hard on a daily basis to incorporate as many people as possible into the labor market under competent, dignified and just conditions.”
Unite Here Local 11 organizer Hannah Petersen speaks with workers outside the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.
(Suhauna Hussain / Los Angeles Times)
Outside the Skid Row shelter on a recent evening, Petersen introduced herself in Spanish to a group of migrants who had been hired at striking hotels. Several pushed strollers. Young children crowded around their parents, one sucking a green lollipop.
“My name is Hannah,” she said to the group. “The union is out there fighting for the rights of immigrant workers.”
Many migrants living at the shelter had told her they wanted permanent jobs, she explained, and so that day she and other organizers would be gathering information to help them create their resumes.
Some of the shelter’s residents approached the organizers, who were armed with clipboards, and fielded questions about the migrants’ work experience, scribbling their answers down. Other migrants, concerned that the organizers were working for immigration authorities, left.
Petersen, the daughter of the union’s co-president, said she first encountered homeless migrant workers Sept. 27 when she was protesting alongside Unite Here Local 11 members at Le Meridien Delfina.
Hotel housekeepers, front desk workers, cooks and other employees are seeking new contracts with higher wages and improved benefits and working conditions. The union members say they don’t earn enough to afford housing near their jobs.
But hotel operators say the union is overreaching in its demands for raises and employer support of housing initiatives unrelated to hotel operations, including a measure set for the 2024 ballot that would require hotels in Los Angeles to rent vacant rooms to homeless people. American Hotel & Lodging Assn. Chief Executive Chip Rogers called it a “dangerous demand,” citing a September poll the industry group commissioned in which 72% of respondents said they would be reluctant to book a hotel room in Los Angeles “if hotels there are forced to house homeless people next to paying guests.”
Petersen said it is hypocritical for hotels to oppose homelessness measures while employing unhoused people as replacement workers during the strike.
Keith Grossman, an attorney representing a group of more than 40 Southern California hotel owners and operators in negotiations with Unite Here Local 11, said in an email that hotels “did not knowingly use unhoused individuals, if they even did so.”
“I do wonder how a hotel is supposed to know whether a person is homeless if they list an address and show up bathed and clean and sober?” he said. “This appears to be another red herring generated by Local 11.”
Unite Here Local 11 has previously criticized hotels’ strike-time use of Instawork, an app that matches businesses with short-term, seasonal workers in hospitality.
In July, the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Instawork and hotel management company Aimbridge. In one allegation, the union said the company violated federal labor law by disqualifying workers hired through the app from future work when they miss a single shift, even if they do so to participate in legally protected activity, such as respecting a strike.
Vargas, the worker hired at the Four Points hotel, was among a handful of people remaining that evening outside Union Rescue Mission. The rest had dispersed, distrustful and worried that union organizers were sent by immigration authorities. Vargas said she hoped the other residents would come around.
“I’m going to be the one who finds good work so they know it’s not a lie,” Vargas said.
The legacy of Los Angeles’ most famous mountain lion continues Sunday at Griffith Park with the eighth annual P-22 Day.
Wildlife supporters will unite at Shane’s Inspiration playground from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to enjoy live music, food trucks, muralists and native-plant giveaways.
Organized by the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougars campaign, the free, family-friendly festival hopes to honor the famed mountain lion who amassed a celebrity-worthy following and kick-started campaigns to save wildlife throughout Southern California.
Beth Pratt, a regional executive director in California for the National Wildlife Federation, has celebrated the renowned puma at the park since 2016.
At the start of Sunday’s festivities, she took to the hills where P-22 once roamed.
Pratt recalled more than 13,000 people attending last year’s celebration for L.A.’s most famous cat. But this is the first time P-22 Day has been held since the cougar’s death, so this year’s crowd might be the biggest yet.
“The loss is still really raw for a lot of people,” Pratt said. “During the other seven [festivals] he was here snapping and listening to the music we were playing.”
Not literally, joked Pratt, who sports a tattoo of the cougar’s face on her arm.
But wildlife supporters could bank on the big cat coming down from the mountaintop to amaze onlookers who were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him over the years.
P-22 first captured the world’s attention in 2012, when a motion-sensing camera caught an image of his hindquarters and tail in Griffith Park.
He survived a parasitic infection and a cramped range in Griffith Park, but officials with the National Park Service and the state’s wildlife department captured P-22 after he started to show increasing “signs of distress,” including three attacks on dogsin a month and several near-miss encounters with people walking in Los Feliz and Silver Lake.
Thought to be about 12 years old at the time of his death, the mountain lion was “compassionately euthanized” in December 2022. He was suffering from a number of health issues at the time as well as from internal injuries that officials believed occurred after he was hit by a car.
The cougar’s popularity only grew through the years after his picture was first seen in The Times and in other news coverage over the years.
By order of the Los Angeles City Council, every Oct. 22 is celebrated as “P-22 Day.”
Pratt hopes P-22’s legacy is the link that connects Southern California to all wildlife.
“We want to do more,” she said.
Thankfully, Pratt finds partners in nearly 70 other organizations planning to educate the public on P-22 Day.
“That is P-22’s legacy,” Pratt exclaimed, “showing people in a real way — off the scientific paper — how they can make a difference in the lives of amazing predators.”
There are plenty more events planned throughout Los Angeles during Urban Wildlife Week, but the hike retracing P-22’s journey is among the toughest, according to Pratt.
“The whole reason they do it is to show how hard it is for a person to do it, much less a mountain lion,” Pratt explained.
“It goes to show,” she said, “there’s a lot more we can do to make it a little easier for them.”
For Cindy Montañez, the seeds of her drive to fight for her community were planted before she was even born.
Her grandfather, a miner in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, died before she could meet him — an early death caused by his line of work. Her immigrant parents settled in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, where factories spewed chemicals and companies dumped waste with little care for the Latinos who lived nearby.
“My dad told us, ‘Whatever you do, you’ve gotta fight against the people who oppress our people and the exploitation of the land, because the two go together,’” Montañez said in an interview earlier this year.
She took that advice to heart by blazing trails in both politics and environmental activism. After serving in the California Assembly, Montañez used her connections and iron will to bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the San Fernando Valley and other underserved communities to clean up polluted areas and beautify neighborhoods.
The San Fernando City Council member died Saturday morning after a long battle with cancer, according to a family spokesperson. She was 49.
At UCLA in 1993, Montañez and a teenage sister were among those who went on a 14-day hunger strike that helped to establish a Chicano Studies department. She became the youngest San Fernando council member at 25, then the youngest woman elected to the California State Assembly at 28.
After leaving Sacramento, Montañez became an assistant general manager at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, playing a crucial role in pushing the agency to use cleaner energy and create better water-capture methods. Shy by nature but at ease in any crowd, she became CEO of TreePeople in 2016, making her one of the few Latinas in charge of a large, U.S.-based environmental nonprofit.
Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions for the Natural Resources Defense Council, first met Montañez while she was in the Assembly. He credits her for “marrying environmental justice with conservation” by getting politicians and wealthy funders to care about environmental justice in inner cities and getting working-class people into the open spaces that Montañez so loved to explore.
“The work she did was nothing short of extraordinary,” said Gold, who helped Montañez get appointed to the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability’s board of advisors.
“Cindy had a lot of courage, and she demonstrated that courage again and again,” said United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, who first met Montañez at the UCLA hunger strike, which sparked a personal and professional friendship that lasted decades. “People followed her. She was never about promoting herself. She was about doing the work.”
Richard Alarcon, a former L.A. councilmember and San Fernando Valley-area state Assembly member and senator, first met Montañez after he read about how she and a sister chained themselves to a tree in an attempt to save it from being cut down. Soon after, he hired her as an intern.
“She contributed to women’s empowerment, she contributed to the environmental movement, and she never wavered to her commitment to grassroots mobilization,” Alarcon said. “She and I had many discussions about trying to create a bridge between the greater environmental movement to recognize the challenges that poor and minority communities had in taking on environmental issues. And she built it.”
Cindy Montañez in 2014 in Panorama City
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
In a written statement, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called Montañez “a relentless trailblazer who led with conviction and a vision of a better Los Angeles for all.”
“I saw her tenacity up close many times,” Bass wrote. “She was by my side when we fought together in Sacramento, making difficult decisions to help our state, and she advised me when I served in Congress on a range of issues impacting our city. Throughout it all, one thing was always clear — Assemblywoman Montañez’s heart and soul were always dedicated to the people of Los Angeles.”
The fourth of six children, Montañez grew up in a household where healthy living was emphasized as way to survive the tough, toxic environment they lived in. For years, the family would get up every morning at 5 a.m. to run together. They also would drive to the Central Valley on weekends to pick crops, then sell them back home. At 12, Montañez began to spend her summers volunteering anywhere and everywhere: street and park cleanups, Special Olympics, in juvenile hall, at hospitals, even to help with Pope John Paul II’s 1987 visit to Los Angeles.
She entered UCLA as a mathematics major and quickly joined the school’s vibrant Chicano activist scene.
“Education is important to me,” she told the Associated Press nine days into the hunger strike. “That’s why I’m starving myself for it.”
The connections she made during that time propelled her toward politics. She began working for Alarcon, the first Latino to represent the San Fernando Valley in Sacramento. His mentorship helped Montañez win a seat on the San Fernando city council in 1999, then achieve her Assembly milestone three years later.
“This victory is a victory for our community, not for me,” Montañez told a jubilant crowd at a primary night election party in 2002, on her way to winning the Assembly seat. “The northeast Valley is going to continue to be a beautiful place to live and work because we’re going to continue to work together. Se los digo de todo corazon (I tell you this from the heart).”
In the Assembly, Montañez made national headlines for authoring the so-called Car Buyers Bill of Rights, a consumer protection bill that was among the first of its kind in the nation. But in the environmental movement she had long embraced, there were few people who looked like her or cared for places like her hometown.
“The L.A. River was getting all the attention,” Montañez told The Times earlier this year. “So I [said], ‘Hey, here I am in Sacramento, voting [to protect] preserves in Santa Monica. We gotta do something for our [San Fernando Valley] communities.”
“She developed the concept that the beach starts in Pacoima,” said Steve Veres, a former UCLA classmate who worked for her as an Assembly staffer and is now a trustee on the Los Angeles Community College District board. “She used all the relationships that she had made in her life to make things happen for not just her community, but others.”
Then-San Fernando mayor Cindy Montañez, in a 2002 photo
(Myung Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Montañez made sure that state funds were allocated to build parks in working class neighborhoods. And she planned to accomplish more — she told the media that she wanted to run for the L.A. City Council and eventually Congress. But two other rising San Fernando Valley politicians truncated her political career.
In an interview a few months before her death, Montañez said she had no regrets about the abrupt end to her political rise.
“Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you how happy I am,” she said. “How proud I am of the team we put together to truly move people and educate folks and have fun. In politics, it’s all fighting.”
She used her Rolodex as TreePeople CEO to convince the Assembly last year to pass a $150-million bill to help schools combat climate change with more trees, shade structures and gardens. Her cheerful presence at community tree-planting events became a regular part of Valley life.
“Every tree that we plant,” she told The Times, “I think about the tree that may help somebody.”
In the weeks leading up to her death, former colleagues and political heirs publicly honored her. The California Legislature declared her birthday, Jan. 19, to be Cindy Montañez Day. The San Fernando and L.A. city councils renamed as Cindy Montañez Natural Park the area around the Pacoima Wash, which Montañez had long advocated remaking as a green space. Last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District voted to rename Gridley Street Elementary in San Fernando in honor of Montañez.
Assemblymember Luz Rivas didn’t meet Montañez until after getting elected to Montañez’s former seat, but was already familiar with her legacy.
“She inspired people to run or serve in their community, because she was like a lot of us are,” Rivas said. “She was standing up as an environmentalist and owning that identity at times when young Latinos didn’t see themselves as environmentalists. She pushed what that definition is.”
The two began to speak more regularly when Montañez rejoined the San Fernando City Council in 2020. Rivas said she would continue to look to her as an inspiration.
“[She] and I are the exact same age,” Rivas said. “So it hits me: Am I doing what I want to do? Am I doing enough?”
Montañez is survived by her parents, Margarita and Manuel Montañez, along with siblings Ezequiel, Maribel, Miguel, Robert and Norma.
Jim Meduri answered a terrifying phone call in January from a man pretending to be his son.
The caller, who sounded on the verge of tears, said he’d been in a car accident. Meduri was convinced his son had been arrested for driving under the influence and injuring a pregnant woman and her daughter.
The San Jose resident later spoke to people impersonating a defense attorney and a courthouse clerk, who told him his son might be sent from the Bay Area to Nevada because of an mpox outbreak at the jail. Panicked and in a rush, Meduri agreed to send bail money through cryptocurrency. The fake lawyer directed Meduri, 65, to an ATM where people can buy the digital currency bitcoin. He inserted $15,000 in cash into the machine, scanned a code provided by the scammers and transferred the money.
When Meduri realized he’d been duped, his money was gone.
“They played on fear and what a parent would do to help their kid, and it was elaborate,” said Meduri, who was able to get most of his money back with help from the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office.
Meduri’s misfortune is just one example of how scammers are using bitcoin ATMs to swindle victims out of thousands of dollars, fraud that law enforcement officials warn is on the rise.
The machines, in convenience stores, gas stations and even bakeries, are an easy way for people to buy cryptocurrency quickly with cash, which is harder to track than a wire transfer or check. As scammers exploit the convenience these machines provide, bitcoin ATMs are also attracting the attention of lawmakers, regulators and consumer advocacy groups looking to protect people from fraud and exorbitant fees.
Starting in January, California will limit cryptocurrency ATM transactions to $1,000 per day per person under Senate Bill 401, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law. Some bitcoin ATM machines advertise limits as high as $50,000. The new law also bars bitcoin ATM operators from collecting fees higher than $5 or 15% of the transaction, whichever is greater, starting in 2025. Legislative staff members visited a crypto kiosk in Sacramento and found markups as high as 33% on some digital assets when they compared the prices at which cryptocurrency is bought and sold. Typically, a crypto ATM charges fees between 12% and 25% over the value of the digital asset, according to a legislative analysis.
“This bill is about ensuring that people who have been frauded in our communities don’t continue to watch our state step aside when we know that these are real problems that are happening,” said state Sen. Monique Limón (D-Goleta), who co-authored the bill.
Although similar scams have existed long before the rising popularity of cryptocurrency, the use of these digital assets by fraudsters has been increasing, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Since 2021, more than 46,000 people reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams, the agency reported in 2022.
Victims of bitcoin ATM scams say limiting the transactions will give people more time to figure out they’re being tricked and prevent them from using large amounts of cash to buy cryptocurrency. But crypto ATM operators say the new laws will harm their industry and the small businesses they pay to rent space for the machines. There are more than 3,200 bitcoin ATMs in California, according to Coin ATM Radar, a site that tracks the machines’ locations.
“This bill fails to adequately address how to crack down on fraud, and instead takes a punitive path focused on a specific technology that will shudder the industry and hurt consumers, while doing nothing to stop bad actors,” said Charles Belle, executive director of the Blockchain Advocacy Coalition.
While California lawmakers have striven to balance the need to support the cryptocurrency industry and protect consumers, recent legislation has hewed toward tighter state regulation. Another law would by July 2025 require digital financial asset businesses to obtain a license from the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation.
When signing the legislation, Assembly Bill 39, Newsom included a message that said the law needed further refinement to provide clarity to consumers, businesses and state regulators.
“It is essential that we strike the appropriate balance between protecting consumers from harm and fostering a responsible innovation environment,” he wrote.
In 2022, months before the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Newsom vetoed a similar bill that would have required cryptocurrency companies to get a state license, citing concerns a new regulatory program would be costly and the actions were premature.
Erin West, a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney who helped Meduri recover his money, said scammers turn to bitcoin ATM machines because they accept large amounts of cash. The value of bitcoin can also rise, giving fraudsters a way to increase their plunder.
Scammers use different tactics to trick people into handing over their money, including creating a false sense of urgency and winning over their trust. Some befriend or seduce their victims through social media or dating apps, luring them into a web of lies that include fake emergencies. Other times, the scam starts with a text message directing victims to a fake cryptocurrency investment site.
West said her team has been able to recover $2.5 million for scam victims like Meduri by tracking down the cryptocurrency exchange that was involved in the transaction. After Meduri put $15,000 into a kiosk operated by Bitcoin ATM Services, the digital money ended up in the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The exchange complied with a search warrant, allowing her team to retrieve the stolen funds from Binance and return them to Meduri.
Although it’s possible for cryptocurrency victims to get their money back even if it travels overseas, West said it’s rare. Some cryptocurrency exchanges are more cooperative with law enforcement than others, she said.
“This whole thing is a speed game,” said West, who is part of a task force called REACT — Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team — that combats high-tech crimes. “Can we get the victim in front of a competent investigator who knows how to find things on the blockchain in the least amount of time?” Blockchain is a type of shared digital database that stores information about crypto transactions.
An 80-year-old retired teacher in Los Angeles, whom The Times previously interviewed, said she hasn’t been able to recover $69,000 she sent to scammers through a bitcoin ATM over multiple days in May. The stolen funds ended up in Seychelles-based cryptocurrency exchanges KuCoin and Huobi.
The scam started when Mrs. K, who wants to remain anonymous because she’s more wary about giving out her personal information, got a loud pop-up alert that her computer was infected with a virus. After calling a fake tech support number and later talking to a person impersonating the FBI, Mrs. K thought her Chase bank account had been taken over by foreign Chinese hackers involved in a child pornography case. To keep up the elaborate ruse, the scammers also sent Mrs. K fake Chase bank emails.
“If it wasn’t this convoluted mishmash, I probably would have been a little smarter and not fallen into this trap,” Mrs. K said. “I feel so disappointed in myself that I just fell hook, line and sinker.”
Mrs. K said the FBI impersonator told her to withdraw $75,000 in cash over three days from her Chase checking account and not tell anyone. If workers at the bank asked, the scammer told Mrs. K to say that she was withdrawing cash for construction.
The FBI impersonator convinced Mrs. K she could help law enforcement catch the child predators if she converted the cash to cryptocurrency and transferred the funds to a digital wallet the agency would monitor. The intricate lie eventually led Mrs. K to a Coinhub Bitcoin ATM machine at a doughnut shop in Highland Park that accepts up to $25,000 in cash daily per person.
By the time she realized it was a scam, Mrs. K had sent $69,000 to the fraudsters. She reported the crime to police but hasn’t been able to recover her money.
Under federal law, bitcoin ATM operators are typically considered money services businesses, so they’re required to register with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. The agency collects and analyzes financial information to combat money laundering and other illegal uses. The businesses must also maintain an anti-money-laundering program and report suspicious activity to the agency.
Logan Short, the chief executive of LSGT Services, which does business as Coinhub Bitcoin ATM, said in an email the company does “everything in its power to protect consumers, but unfortunately fraud is not 100% preventable in any industry.” The Las Vegas company is registered with FinCEN but faced allegations that it operated crypto ATM machines in Connecticut without the required state license.
Bitcoin ATM Services, which operates the kiosk used by Meduri, says on its website that it is registered with FinCEN. The Times couldn’t find a record of Bitcoin ATM Services being registered as a money services business with FinCEN. A company called Cash ATM Services that has the same mailing address as Bitcoin ATM Services was registered. Bitcoin ATM Services did not respond to a request for comment.
Law enforcement has cracked down on unlicensed crypto ATMs,but it can be tough for consumers to tell how serious the industry is about addressing the concerns. In 2020, a Yorba Linda man pleaded guilty to charges of operating unlicensed bitcoin ATMs and failing to maintain an anti-money-laundering program even though he knew criminals were using the funds. The illegal business, known as Herocoin, allowed people to buy and sell bitcoin in transactions of up to $25,000 and charged a fee of up to 25%.
Cryptocurrency regulations vary by state. California has long exempted crypto ATMs from licensing requirements for businesses engaged in money transmission.
Crypto ATM machines serve people who don’t have a bank account or just want the convenience of buying cryptocurrency at a gas station, convenience store or other shop, said Ayman Rida, CEO of Cash2Bitcoin, who works with cryptocurrency ATM operators including in California on complying with state regulations. The fees ATM charge are higher than online exchanges, he said, to cover certain expenses. That includes the cost of leased space, machine maintenance and cash management.
Crypto ATM operators aren’t opposed to having clearer rules and guidelines, he said, but they are against capping fees and transactions. Crypto ATM operators typically require more forms of identification if a customer makes a transaction of more than $1,000, and in some cases flag high-value transactions, which could help stop scammers.
“Scammers are getting smarter,” he said. “My question for the regulators is, why are you killing an industry when scams also happen to other industries but they’re not doing anything about it as well?”
As for Meduri, he’s just relieved his son wasn’t really arrested and in a car accident. Oddly enough, finding out it was all an elaborate lie came with a sense of relief.
“My wife and I were just wrecked that day,” he said. “I didn’t even care. I was happy he was OK.”
Two people were found shot to death Friday night in North Hollywood in a possible murder-suicide, Los Angeles police said.
Officers responded to reports of shots fired in the 6500 block of Riverton Avenue about 7:45 p.m., said Officer Melissa Ohana, an LAPD spokesperson.
Officers who arrived at the scene found a 48-year-old woman dead from gunshot wounds, she said. Nearby, they discovered a 46-year-old man with “apparent self-inflicted wounds” whom the police are investigating as the suspect in the woman’s death.
LAPD’s Valley Bureau Homicide will determine whether it is a murder-suicide, Ohana said.
KTLA-TV reported that police had said the woman was found inside a running SUV, and the man was found two houses away from the vehicle. Ohana said she could not confirm those details.
The protest began with a prayer. Several thousand Muslims knelt in rows before the Capitol building yesterday afternoon, their knees resting on the woven rugs they’d brought from home. Women here and men over there, with onlookers to the side. Seen from the Speaker’s Balcony, this ranked congregation would have looked like colorful stripes spanning the grassy width of the National Mall.
“We are witnessing, before our eyes, the slaughter of thousands of people on our streets,” Omar Suleiman, the imam who led the prayer, had said beforehand. “We are witnesses to the cruelty that has been inflicted upon our brothers and sisters in Palestine on a regular basis.”
The prayer group was part of a demonstration hosted by more than a dozen self-described progressive and religious organizations to call for an Israel-Hamas cease-fire. After Hamas massacred more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, in its October 7 attack, Israeli bombardments of Gaza have reportedly killed more than 4,000 Palestinians, the great majority of whom were also civilians.
Although the protest’s organizers spanned a broad spectrum of faiths and group affiliations, it appeared that most of the rally attendees were Muslim, judging by the sea of multicolored head scarves and traditional dress. But progressives of other faiths were there, too, waving the red, white, and green flag of Palestine. Rally-goers called for President Joe Biden and the United States to stop supporting Israel’s blockade and air assault on Gaza. (The first convoy of trucks carrying aid entered Gaza through Egypt this morning, the United Nations reported.) As I moved through the crowd, we heard speeches from Gazan expats and representatives of progressive groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Movement for Black Lives, the Working Families Party, and the Center for Popular Democracy.
“Enough is enough,” Alpijani Hussein, a Sudanese American government employee who wore a long white tunic, told me. He and a friend carried a banner reading BIDEN GENOCIDE. Every time Hussein, a father of four, sees coverage of children killed in Gaza, he told me, he imagines his own kids wrapped in body bags. “I’m a father,” he said. “I can feel the pain.”
For nearly two weeks, the world has watched, transfixed, as a litany of horrors from the Middle East has unspooled before our eyes. First, the footage from October 7: the tiny towns on the edge of the desert, bullet-riddled and burning. Parents shot, their hands tied. Women driven off on motorcycles and in trucks. The woman whose pants were drenched in blood. And approximately 200 people—including toddlers, teenagers, grandparents—stolen away and still being held hostage.
Then, more death, this time in Gaza. The body of a boy, gray with ash. Rubble and rebar from collapsed concrete buildings or their ghostly shells. TikTok diaries from teenagers with phones powered by backup generators. “They’re bombing us now,” the teens explain, somehow sounding calm. Almost half of Gaza’s population are under 18; all they have known is Hamas rule—the Islamist group took over in 2007—and a series of similar conflicts. A barrage of rockets fired by Hamas and other militants; a wave of air strikes from Israel.
But this time is different: Israel has never been wounded this way—October 7 represented the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust—and over the protest hung a frantic sense that the vengeance had only just begun. Hackles were up and, at one point, a police car drove by, sirens blaring. Two women near me clutched each other nervously, but the officer drove on without stopping.
Inside the Capitol, a plain consensus prevailed: Many members of Congress from both parties have opposed a cease-fire and expressed strong support for the U.S. providing military aid to Israel. But outside, things weren’t so simple; they never are. None of the people I met said they supported Hamas, and certainly not the recent atrocities. But many said that the violence cuts both ways. “Israel is a terrorist country in my eyes—what they’ve been doing to the Palestinians,” Ramana Rashid, from Northern Virginia, told me. Nearby, people held placards reading ISRAEL=COLONIZERS and ZIONISM=OPPRESSION. Many protesters told me they did not believe that Israel has a right to exist. At various points in the protest, the crowd broke into the chant “Palestine will be free! From the river to the sea!” (Whatever that slogan might mean for protesters—an anti-colonial statement or an assertion of homeland—for most Israelis it is clearly denying the Jewish state’s right to exist.)
“A cease-fire is the minimum to save lives,” a D.C. resident named Mikayla, who declined to give her last name, told me. “But what we really need is an end to the occupation.” Leaning against her bike, she shook her head no when I asked whether Egypt should open its doors to fleeing Palestinians. “If Egypt lets Gazans leave the Gaza Strip, then that is the definition of ethnic cleansing,” Mikayla said.
Other protesters I spoke with expressed concern only for ending the daily suffering of Gazans. The humanitarian crisis came first; the rest, the political stuff, would come later.
Sheeba Massood, who’d come with her friend Rashid from Northern Virginia, burst into tears when I asked why she’d wanted to attend. It was important to pray together, she told me. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Muslim, if you’re Palestinian, if you’re a Christian, if you’re Jewish,” Massood said, “we are all witnessing the killing of all of these children that are innocent.” Everything else, she said, was politics.
When I asked the demonstrators what might happen in the region, practically, after a cease-fire was enforced, most of them demurred. “I’m not a politician to know all the details and technicalities of it,” a Virginia man named Shoaib told me. “But I think just for one horrible thing, you don’t just go kill innocent kids.”
Every person I met was angry with Biden. The president has been unwavering in his support for Israel since October 7, and in an Oval Office address on Thursday, he reiterated his case for requesting funds from Congress for military aid to Israel. That same day, a senior State Department official resigned over the administration’s decision to keep sending weapons to Israel without humanitarian conditions.
In his remarks on Thursday, Biden spoke of the need for Americans to oppose anti-Semitism and Islamophobia equally. Friday’s demonstrators, so many of whom were Muslim Americans, were not impressed with that evenhandedness.
“Mr. President, you have failed the test,” Osama Abu Irshaid, the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, said from the podium outside of the Capitol. Ice-cream trucks parked nearby for tourists played jingles softly as he spoke. “You broke your promise to restore America’s moral authority.” Frankie Seabron, from the Black-led community group Harriet’s Wildest Dreams,led the crowd in chants of “Shame” directed at Biden. “This is a battle against oppression,” she said. “We as Black Americans can understand!” The crowd, which was beginning to thin, cheered its agreement.
As is generally the case, the program went on far too long. After two hours of speeches, the enthusiasm of an already thinned-out crowd was waning. The temperature dropped and raindrops fell, gently at first, then steadily. Finally, after organizers distributed blood-red carnations to every rally-goer, the group began the trek to the president’s house.
The demonstrators marched slowly at first up Pennsylvania Avenue, struggling with their banners in the driving rain. But as the remaining protesters got closer to the White House, the rain paused, and the sun peeked through the dark clouds. The protesters laid their flowers in the square before the White House gates—an offering and a demand for a different future for Gaza.
To get a sense of how progressive ideals don’t always reflect actual practice, try burying a dead relative in Southern California. You’ll find that even in this land where people talk about sustainability, saying farewell in an environmentally responsible manner is, for most people, nearly impossible.
I came to grips with that reality in August, when my mother died from an unexpected illness. Making the final arrangements was my job, and I valued the experience as much as one can while gripped by grief.
My mother, a nurse and devout Lutheran, spent her life caring for the world around her and the people whom Jesus called “the least of these brothers and sisters.” I felt strongly that her remains should be handled in a way that reflected her values and, to some extent, mine.
As funeral director and poet Thomas Lynch wrote, “By getting the dead where they need to go, the living get where they need to be.”
And where are the living? On a planet in serious peril, where resource- and land-intensive burial practices reflect the overconsumption that put us in this mess. So, in the days just before my mom’s death, and with the clock ticking fast, I explored “green burial” options in Southern California that minimize environmental impacts.
That involved ditching the local (and very expensive) mortuary giant Forest Lawn — where seemingly everyone in Glendale, my mom’s hometown, goes to spend eternity — and calling smaller funeral homes that advertise eco-friendly options.
I settled on a small business in Hollywood that partners with a natural burial cemetery — where the land is minimally disturbed and traditional embalming isn’t allowed — and even offers an intriguing “human composting” option. Crucially, prices for the most common services are listed prominently on the funeral home’s website (note to other mortuaries: Please do this).
But the eco-friendly options had serious drawbacks. The natural burial cemetery is near Joshua Tree (gorgeous, but 120 miles away), and human composting — a process that accelerates decomposition and, within a month, turns a body into nutrient-dense soil — isn’t yet legal in California and would have required shipping my dead mother to Washington state.
Burial options that require two-hour flights or three-hour car drives don’t strike me as green. Even in this era of heightened environmental consciousness, the most accessible disposal options are not the sustainable ones. Our final choice: local cremation.
Still, the future for handling the dead in an environmentally sound way isn’t totally dim. Last year, California passed a law to allow human composting starting in 2027. And, although there are only two fully natural burial grounds certified by the Green Burial Council in all of California (none of them near Los Angeles), more “traditional” cemeteries are offering some environmentally friendly options.
Sarah Chavez, executive director of the L.A.-based advocacy group the Order of the Good Death, told me these cemeteries and California lawmakers are responding to an increasing demand for burials that not only conserve resources, but are also more meaningful to the people seeking them.
She said the $20-billion U.S. funeral industry has commodified death in a way that has made people scared of their dead loved ones, convinced that only trained, very expensive professionals must take over the moment a relative dies.
I told Chavez my family resisted this routine, even if we didn’t get a green burial. The funeral home accommodated our request to sit with my mom for several hours before it sent workers to pick her up. In that time, the few of us there had a mini-funeral.
We alternated between tears, laughter and prayers, all while my mom was there with us. Her body was not hazardous waste to be swiftly disposed of.
Chavez said our experience reflects a grassroots change in death services. Her group supports families taking a more active role in burials. She said many people entering the funeral industry now are women who recognize the need for change, which I noticed in making my arrangements as well.
From this desire for more control, we’ll get more green burial options in the future. Just not in time for my mom.
A teenage girl accused of shooting five people outside a Denver club last month was arrested this week in San Bernardino County, according to authorities.
The girl, whose age was not released by police, was arrested Thursday in Barstow, about 115 miles from Los Angeles, according to a Denver Police Department news release. She was arrested on eight counts of first-degree attempted homicide.
She is accused of shooting five people on Sept. 16 in the 1900 block of Market Street, authorities said. All five people survived their injuries.
Police said the girl had tried to get into a bar but was rejected by the club’s security personnel because they thought she wasn’t using her real ID. She left the line and then shot toward the club as she was leaving, authorities said.
Police believe that she had tried to shoot toward security personnel and that those who were wounded were not the intended targets.
The Denver Police Department worked with the FBI’s L.A. SWAT team, the FBI’s L.A. Desert Cities Safe Streets Task Force and the Barstow Police Department to apprehend her. Because she is a minor, her booking photo and arrest affidavit were not released.
René Jansen, the current board chairman of the Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), will not reapply for the position once his term expires. As announced by the authority, Jansen has opted not to continue his work because he will reach retirement age at the end of 2023.
According to the KSA, the outgoing chair’s current term is set to expire on October 1, 2024, meaning that he still has several months remaining at the helm of the Dutch regulator. However, he will likely vacate the position on July 1, 2024.
The KSA is already on the lookout for Jansen’s successor. The next KSA chair will be appointed by the Netherlands’ Minister for Legal Protection and will serve a mandate of six years, according to the announcement.
The KSA added that the recruitment of a new chair will be done through the General Administrative Service (ABD). Interested parties can file applications by November 12, 2023. The approved candidate is set to step into the office on July 1, 2024, the same date as Jansen’s resignation.
Jansen Said His Successor Will Have a Lot to Do
René Jansen commented on his departure, expressing his thoughts on the matter. He noted that the recent years saw him fully committed to the Kansspelautoriteit’s mission to protect the Dutch market from fraud and gambling harm. He said that it has been a pleasure to lead the KSA but added that there will be many great challenges to his successor.
Jansen added that the KSA has a huge responsibility toward the Dutch market. This management position, he added, is challenging and “requires creativity, innovation and decisiveness.” Above all, the KSA’s mission has great social value, Jansen concluded.
In other news, the KSA just published its 2022 Market Scan and provided insights into the performance of the regulated Dutch market. The scan complements the recently published industry report that highlighted the need for evolving responsible gambling practices.
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