The Brief

Greg Gilday builds spaceships for a living. Not real ones, but the ones you can catch in the new Star Wars Ahsoka series.

But having lunch outside Walt’s Bar in Eagle Rock, Gilday sounded a little bit like he’s fighting a battle in a galaxy not so far away.

“As long as it takes to f*** you, we’re going to do that, you know,” Gilday said.

Gilday’s talking about the studios and streamers who this week started meeting again with the WGA. But as a welder and set builder, the Hollywood stalemate has kept Gilday out of work for months.

Digging into savings

“I’ve dug into my savings quite extensively and still have about $27,000 in debt that I did not have at the end of April, which is the last time I worked,” Gilday said.

But he said he’d still support Hollywood strikers until a fair deal is made, and so does pretty much everyone he knows.

“We’ve all had a nice bonding over this in the streets,” Gilday, who’s picketed a couple times himself, said.

Set builder and welder Greg Gilday outside Walt's in Eagle Rock.

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Robert Garrova

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LAist

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“I’m in it because I do believe this is true: It is a pivotal time in America where being an honest person does not pay off anymore. And just going to work doesn’t get you anything at all,” Gilday said.

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Reports of evictions and other hardships are starting to hit the headlines. But some help could be available for those who need a little extra financial help.

Listen: As Strikes Drag On, Financial Stress Sets In For Hollywood Workers

Reports of evictions and other hardships are starting to hit the headlines. But some help could be available for those who need a little extra financial help.

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Last month, he put together an outdoor swap meet where people directly or indirectly affected by the Hollywood strikes could make some cash.

Selling a prized doll 

“Because of him I was able to pay the rest of my bills this month,” Diandra Luzon, a film editor, said.

Luzon was one of some 70 vendors who showed up, everyone from makeup artists and costumers to accountants who get their business from the industry.

Luzon said she made $1,800 selling off DVDs from her prized Criterion Collection, a Darth Vader nutcracker she bought in Germany and a special doll she’d hoped to keep in the family.

Diandra Luzon's Cynthia doll.

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Courtesy Diandra Luzon

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“It was a little sad ... I got rid of a Cynthia doll from Rugrats ... I was like ‘when I have a girl someday I’ll give her that doll ... I don’t think that’s the extent we should have to go to survive. I don’t think it should ever go here,” Luzon lamented.

Out of editing work since November, Luzon said she’s gone through her savings, brought in a roommate and started Ubering for extra income.

It’s while she was driving for the rideshare that Luzon said she realized just how big the labor movement was getting in L.A., talking with striking hotel workers who are fed up with work volume and wages.

“It’s definitely at the precipice of these big corporations ... really needing to put value in their employees,” Luzon told LAist.

Meanwhile, the impact of the strikes spreads.

Business ‘domino effect’

“It’s becoming like a domino effect and now L.A. businesses are getting affected,” said Tiffany Luong, who runs a food pop-up called Vegan Banh Mi Thao, selling to bar patrons and people at outdoor markets.

Luong said sales and foot traffic have been dismal lately. It didn’t click that their business slump could be strike related until they looked closer at some of their Instagram followers.

“Like, a lot of people, their bios do say ‘writing, editing, styling, costume designers’ [and] a lot of these people are just out of jobs,” they said.

Some estimate that the drain on the greater L.A. economy from the strikes could be somewhere between $3-5 billion.

The nonprofit Entertainment Community Fund told How To LA’s Brian De Los Santos that it’s distributing between $400 - 700,000 dollars a week in emergency grants.

“The whole country — the whole world — has just gone through three years of an economic crisis. And people I think were just starting to rebuild their reserves, their savings for a rainy day. And it started raining before people were ready,” said Keith McNutt, executive director of ECF’s western region.

Thousands of Hollywood strikers marched from Netflix to the Paramount lot where SAG-AFTRA held a special rally.

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Robert Garrova

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LAist

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Back outside the bar in Eagle Rock, set builder Greg Gilday is hard at work planning for the next Hollywood strikes market in October. And he’s thinking about the reverberations of LA’s hot labor summer as we head into the fall.

“This ‘Eat the Rich’ mentality is gaining traction in my life and in my head, where it is a lot of resentment towards the haves at this moment because I think... wow, the disparity between working people and rich people is gigantic.”

For now, Gilday says he’s enjoying not being so tired for his kids. And counting on the phone to start ringing as soon as all this is over.

About the flea market

Gilday's second bazaar and flea market will take place Sunday, Oct. 15

• Location: HERITAGE PROPS outdoor parking lot at 10675 Vanowen St. Burbank
• Hours: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• More info here.

Hundreds of organizations are rallying at MacArthur Park on Friday in one of many events recognizing May Day, which is expected to draw thousands of people. 

The rally began at 10 a.m. with speakers, and then the event will march to City Hall around noon. Westlake is no stranger to International Workers’ Day, said Victor Narro, project director with the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center, which sits across the street from MacArthur Park.

“We’re dealing with so much this year, and I think May Day is going to be a chance for us to come together,” Narro told The LA Local ahead of the rally. 

Advocacy groups from different backgrounds, like immigrants’ rights, housing, LGBTQ rights, and economic justice, will unite for the cause of workers’ rights, Narro said.

“It’s really an inclusive march,” he said. “This really is unlike any other march.”

Organizers also hope to make the event safe for undocumented immigrants and emphasize that they are taking security seriously.

“You just don’t know with this administration,” he added. 

Organizers are calling for a boycott and will rally under the banner, “Solo El Pueblo Shuts it Down – No Work, No School, No Shopping” with the march ending at Gloria Molina Grand Park at the foot of City Hall. 

This year’s May Day also marks the 20th anniversary of La Gran Marcha, when millions of people took to the streets around the country to protest proposed legislation that would have included making it a felony offense to be an undocumented immigrant.

The event is still fresh in a lot of people’s minds, including Juan Aguilar, a supermarket worker who came to the United States in 1989 and participated in the 2006 march in downtown L.A.

“I was really impressed by the number of people there. And I didn’t feel afraid. People weren’t afraid,” he said at a sign-making event for this year’s May Day rally at the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in Koreatown. 

He feels it’s so much different now. Back then, Aguilar said, people were only afraid near the border.

“Once you were inside the country, you could move freely. Now it’s everywhere,” he said. “People are afraid because raids can happen at any moment. At work, on the street, leaving court, anywhere.”

The fear in the community has prompted Aguilar to participate in this year’s rally.

Friday will also be Jay Lee’s first time participating in the May Day rally and march. He pointed to the role labor movements have played in shaping migration and identity within Korean communities.

“Korea’s got this huge history of labor,” Lee said. “The existence of the Korean diaspora here is inherently tied to the labor movement in Korea.”

For Lee, a Korean American, this year’s May Day is especially significant. It marks the first year South Korea has designated May 1 as a mandatory public holiday for all workers, including those in the public sector. Previously, only private-sector workers had the day off.

He said this year’s march is also about solidarity across communities.

“We’re going to be marching with Black workers, the Latino centers, the Filipino centers,” Lee said. “We’re going to be all marching together as one voice, and I think that’s really cool.”

The LA Local has reporters on the ground. Check back for updates, and see more photos and video on our Instagram.

The two chicks growing in Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest have been named.

The offspring of famous parents Jackie and Shadow will be called Sandy and Luna, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs a popular YouTube livestream of the nest and is working to preserve acres of land in the area.

The organization announced the results of this year’s chick naming contest Friday after inviting the eagles’ fanbase to submit suggestions with a donation last month.

Keeping with tradition, the final votes were left up to Big Bear Valley third-grade students. A list of names was selected randomly from the nearly 64,000 public fundraiser submissions and delivered on ballots to the students, who are studying bald eagles in school, earlier this week.

Sandy was the most popular name entered into the contest with more than 3,700 submissions, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The name is an homage to Sandy Steers, an environmental advocate who helped launch the eagle livestream and the nonprofit’s late executive director. She died in February, a few weeks before the pair of eggs were laid.

“Please know that although Sandy would not have wanted us to outright name one of the eaglets Sandy, she would have been honored that you and the students went through the process and named one of the 2026 eaglets after her,” the organization wrote on Facebook Friday to its more than 1.2 million followers.

Chick naming traditions

Sandy and Luna have been known as Chick 1 and Chick 2, respectively, since they hatched in early April.

Once the eaglets arrived, Friends of Big Bear Valley was swarmed with hundreds of requests to name one of the chicks “Sandy.”

But it’s a right of passage for the Big Bear third graders to name the chicks, and the tradition was “one of Sandy’s greatest joys,” according to Jenny Voisard, Friends of Big Bear Valley’s media manager.

Jackie and Shadow, the adult birds whose parenting saga each nesting season has captured human attention around the world, have had previous chicks named Stormy, BBB (for Big Bear Baby), Simba, Spirit and Cookie through a similar process.

“Last year, because Jackie and Shadow did not have chicks the previous two seasons, she opened it up to the other grades that didn’t get to participate when they were in the third grade,” Voisard said in a statement. “That was Sandy. Education was extremely important to her.”

Last season’s eaglets were dubbed Sunny and Gizmo by the Big Bear elementary students, who voted on 30 finalists pulled from about 54,000 name choices crowdsourced in a week-long fundraiser.

What’s next for Sandy and Luna

The nonprofit asked people to submit gender neutral names because the sex of each eaglet is not yet known.

Sandy and Luna are nearly 4 weeks old as of Friday, but once the eaglets reach around 9 to 10 weeks old, there should be signs that can help Friends of Big Bear Valley make an educated guess.

One of Jackie and Shadow's chicks peaks out from behind its parent on April 5.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Big Bear's famous bald eaglets on April 7.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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The chicks in the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake on April 12.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Sandy and Luna, formally known as Chick 1 and Chick 2, stretching in the nest on April 30.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Some of the signs the nonprofit looks out for include the chick’s size, ankle thickness and vocal pitch.

Generally speaking, female bald eagles are larger than males. Female bald eagles also tend to have larger vocal organs — the syrinx — which leads to deeper, lower-pitched vocalizations, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The only definitive way to know the eaglets’ sex is through a blood test, which nonprofit officials have said is unlikely. There is no human intervention in the nest during nesting season, according to Voisard.

When the eaglets are around 10 to 14 weeks old, they could fledge, or take their first flight away from the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake.

But as the nonprofit often reminds fans, nature is in charge of the timeline — a previous eaglet named Simba took 16 weeks to fledge.

Fledglings from Southern California have been spotted as far north as British Columbia, as far east as Yellowstone and as far south as Baja California, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

Big picture progress

Friends of Big Bear Valley is continuing to lead a $10 million fundraiser to buy more than 62-acres near the nest to preserve it from a planned housing project called Moon Camp.

Instead, the organization and the San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust want the land to be placed under a permanent conservatorship.

Officials say “Save Moon Camp” is the most ambitious fundraising effort in the history of Friends of Big Bear Valley. It’s raised more than $2.3 million as of Friday.

California’s billionaires are not the only ones fighting back against the state’s largest health workers union this election season. Now the clinics are too.

The California Primary Care Association, which represents more than 2,300 community health clinics, and Open Door Community Health Centers filed a lawsuit Thursday to stop Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West from placing an initiative on the November ballot that would dictate how clinics spend money.

The clinic measure is less prominent than the billionaire-backed fight against a wealth tax, but recently came closer to appearing before voters.

The clinic’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that the union’s ballot measure would interfere with federal laws and regulations that place strict spending requirements on nonprofit health clinics that serve low-income patients.

Joey Cachuela, general counsel for the clinic association said in a statement the initiative threatens patient care. “We are filing this preelection challenge and need the courts to act to prevent this drastic measure from ever going to the ballot. Patient lives are at risk,” Cachuela said.

A spokesperson for the healthcare workers union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Elizabeth Sophy, far right, who is a part of Father Joe’s Villages Street Health Team, examines Devlin Chambers at an encampment in downtown San Diego on March 22, 2024. Chambers, 60, said he has a pinched nerve in his back.

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Kristian Carreon

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CalMatters

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Earlier this month, union members turned in more than 1 million signatures to qualify the “Clinic Funding Accountability and Transparency Act” for the ballot. The union collected nearly double the number of signatures required to place the proposal before voters.

Under California’s election rules, proposals that gather enough signatures qualify for the ballot after the Secretary of State’s office verifies their validity.

The union proposal would require federally qualified health centers to spend 90% of revenue on services that fulfill the stated mission to “provide primary and preventive care to low-income and underserved populations.” It would also punish clinics that do not adhere to this spending formula and place the money in a state-operated account that could later be used for worker training and staffing programs.

“It is the intent of this initiative to create a reasonable minimum standard of mission-directed

spending … to ensure clinic patient service delivery and workforce stability is prioritized over management and overhead spending,” the initiative states.

Union leaders and members argue that clinics spend too much money on executive pay and administrative overhead and too little on patients. They also contend that some clinics spend only half of their revenue on direct patient care, an allegation that clinics call misleading.

“We have one message for our clinics: Put patients first. It’s time for an end to wasteful spending. It’s time to make sure clinics are putting their money in patient care and not CEO-pay,” said Brisa Barrera, a medical assistant from Santa Rosa Community Health during an April rally to celebrate delivering the signatures.

The clinic association, however, argues that the initiative would illegally force hundreds of community health centers to close by stripping nearly $2 billion from health systems.

Tory Starr, chief executive of Open Door Community Health Centers, which operates clinics in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, said the measure would be “devastating” to the organization’s rural patients and would result in layoffs, reduced services and closures.

A nearly identical version of the ballot initiative failed to pass in the state Legislature earlier this year.

The initiative is one of three measures the union has submitted to the ballot. Another aims to limit health care executive pay at $450,000, and SEIU-UHW is also backing the “billionaire’s tax” that has drawn ire from both Democrats and Republicans.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.