The Brief

After a contentious summer of 2020 for the Magic Castle, Carly Usdin felt like they’d started to find their footing at the club again: They found a community of progressive members and was excited to apply for the Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

So when Carly got an emailed grievance claiming that their online criticism of Castle leadership and the environment, combined with “their obvious hate,” were grounds for removal, they wanted to fight back.

Carly Usdin in 2023.

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Natalie Chudnovsky

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LAist

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The grievance process at the Castle is simple. For $50, any member can file a grievance against another. If the Grievance and Ethics Committee finds the grievance valid, the $50 is returned to the member. If the grievance is found invalid, their money is lost.

“I'm a stubborn person,” says Carly. “And when it comes to matters like this, I can be petty. I wanted nothing more than for them to lose $50.”

Carly spent the next month preparing for their hearing, taking screenshots of the different relevant social media posts and writing out responses to each grievance point in a 12-page document. Their argument rested on the idea that pointing out the flaws of an institution didn’t mean that you hated it — quite the opposite.

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“If you don’t do everything in your power to change the things you love to make them better, then how can you actually love those things?” Carly wrote in their response document. “So long as I am a member, I am committed to making the AMA [Academy of Magical Arts] and the Castle a place where all are welcome and all feel welcome.”

In Carly’s recollection, there were a dozen people at their hearing. It took place on Zoom, because it was still the thick of the pandemic. After an introduction, one of the members who filed the grievance spoke, and then it was Carly’s turn to state their case. In some ways, it was a moment that mirrored their Castle audition — a tricky performance for established magicians who would decide Carly’s fate. And once again, Carly walked away unsure whether they’d been deemed worthy.

The decisions: the Castle’s and Carly’s 

In December 2020, Carly got the phone call from the grievance committee and was told they could remain a member.

But they’d also gotten another piece of news from the Castle. Carly would not be included in the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the committee they were most excited about seeing to fruition at the Castle.

Carly was satisfied they’d defeated the members who’d filed the grievance — the two men wouldn’t get their $50 back. But Carly was no longer interested in remaining a member of the Castle.

“The only thing that was gonna keep me in,” Carly says, “was if I knew I had a place to be heard. My pettiness was satisfied … those guys didn't get me kicked out, but now I'm going to leave.”

At the beginning of 2021, Carly chose not to pay the annual dues, effectively ending their Castle membership.

For Carly, the loss of the membership, and all the magic, hope and community that it represented, hit hard. But in some ways, it was also a relief.

“I don't have to have that ethical conflict of, ‘Why am I supporting this place?’” says Carly. “And like, sure, this is a place for magic. This is not a place for politics. But also, any space I enter, the people there, and me, we all have to reckon with who I'm perceived as, who I am. And the thing that became very clear to me over the last few years is that I won't go along with anything anymore.”

Another controversy for the Castle

 
In December 2020, the L.A. Times published an explosive investigation into allegations of sexism and racism at the Magic Castle.

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L.A. Times reporters spoke with 12 people — staff, members and guests — about their experiences. One woman guest described how she was called up to the stage by a performer who tried to touch her chest during his trick. A former cook said racial epithets were common in the kitchen.

One waitress alleged she was sexually harassed and then fired when she reported it to management.

Kayla Drescher, Carly’s friend and professional magician, was quoted in the piece, too, describing one infamous staircase where if you sat underneath, at the bar, you could see up someone’s skirt.

After a long summer of internal tensions and social media call-outs, it was a big deal for the Castle to receive bad press from L.A.’s biggest paper, and for its own members to share the secretive institution’s dirty laundry.

The Castle did take some corrective action after the L.A. Times article. They sent us a long list, which included an internal review, the hiring of a new general manager, the creation of a new human resources director position and a sensitivity and sexual harassment training for the board of directors, trustees and staff. The infamous staircase got some slats installed. One controversial painting was removed.

And then in May 2021, after more than a year of being closed for COVID, the Castle reopened.

The Diversity and Inclusion Committee

The Castle told us that of the 30 people interested in the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, 20 were interviewed by the board and ultimately nine selected, including Kayla Drescher.

Kayla Drescher performing magic.

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Courtesy of Kayla Drescher

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Kayla said that in the first year of the D&I Committee’s existence, she pushed through one victory: making the dress code gender-neutral.

“I personally rewrote the dress code,” Kayla says. “So men can wear dresses and skirts, women can wear pants and suits. And if you’re neither of those things, you can wear whatever the hell you want.”

Kayla says that otherwise, the first year was rough going. A lot of time was spent trying to convince other members of the committee that there were problems, she said, and ideas seemed to go nowhere.

“It just felt like we were banging our head up against the wall for nothing,” Kayla says.

Then in 2022, internal elections led to a shakeup in leadership and Kayla became the new head of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. It was a moment when she thought she could turn things around, and she started by inviting new people to join, including magician Paul Draper.

Draper recalled that in its second year, the committee was working to define itself and prioritize which goals to bring up to the board. Kayla says she felt good about the new iteration of the committee, but when it came time to take action, they ran into a wall.

The problem, according to both Kayla and Paul, was that the D&I Committee didn’t have any real power. It was set up as an advisory committee, presenting recommendations to the people actually in charge of the Castle, the board of directors.

“And so it very quickly became, ‘Well the fire from the L.A. Times article has died down, do we really need to do any of this?’” Kayla says.

LAist tried contacting all the members of the Castle’s 2022 D&I Committee. Besides Paul and Kayla, no one wanted to speak on the record.

We also asked the Castle’s general manager, Hervé Lévy, who joined in 2021, about these issues.

Unlike the folks on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Lévy is a paid employee of the Castle. He says he’s been working to create a better culture there, as well as clearer systems for people to report incidents. He is also openly gay and says that he felt embraced by the Castle right away.

When we asked why the D&I Committee’s recommendations were not implemented, Hervé said that the committee's vision lacked clarity.

“It was not presented the right way,” says Hervé. “So yes, they were turned down because the ideas weren’t that great. And you know what? You don't wanna implement bad ideas.”

When we asked which ideas he felt needed improvement, Hervé could not immediately provide an example.

The brick wall

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LAist was provided a list of priorities the D&I Committee drafted for the Castle’s board of directors in August 2022. Recommendations included the implementation of a DEI calendar, as well as goals for the future, like including more information about a more diverse array of magicians in its building tours.

One of the D&I Committee’s recommendations was that booked performers be required to take a training — according to Kayla, she wanted to require the same sensitivity and sexual harassment trainings that staff received. The document’s stated reason for the training is because “there have been many reports or issues surrounding sensitivity from magicians performing all over the Castle,” and also suggests an implementation plan.

Magician performers at the Castle are booked a week at a time, and are often coming from all over the country to perform in the space. Kayla felt that this kind of training was important to get different performers on the same page about appropriate language and interactions.

She felt this would help prevent problematic patter, sexual harassment and other incidents like the ones reported on in the L.A. Times, and that happened to her and Carly at the Castle.

Kayla was also going to get a rare chance to make a presentation to the Board of Directors in the fall of 2022 — but she and another D&I Committee member would get exactly 20 minutes, so she decided to focus on a few concrete recommendations, including the one about harassment and sensitivity training.

When she presented to the board, Kayla says she immediately felt dismissed. Following that presentation, Kayla decided not to renew her Magic Castle membership.

“Every time something happens, whether it be at the Magic Castle or in the industry, a layer of a brick gets put down, and for now you can just easily step over that layer of brick,” says Kayla of the prejudices she’s faced in the magic world. “And eventually the layers get taller and taller. You have to climb over it, or somebody has to help you. But eventually the wall gets so big, it's just not worth your time. And that is what happened with me and my Castle membership.”

When we asked Lévy about the training recommendation, he initially said that it would be “very complicated to do training for someone’s who’s here for only a week,” and that instead the Castle has a phone call with performers about language and not touching guests — not a “formal training,” but “setting expectations.”

General Manager/COO of the Magic Castle Hervé Lévy in the Magic Castle, on Oct. 13, 2021.

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Valerie Macon

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AFP via Getty Images

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When we asked in March 2023 whether Hervé would want to implement a formal training, he said he would and that it’s “definitely coming.”

When we checked in October 2023, the Castle told us they still hadn’t implemented a training for booked performers, but were working to roll out a training in January 2024. They also said they did not intend to require training for members. A Castle rep said that policies about appropriate behavior are “clearly defined” for members when they join and “reiterated from time-to-time in internal communications.”

Still on the D&I Committee

The last time we talked to Paul Draper in March 2023, he was still on the D&I Committee.

He said it was still slow going. For example, the committee wanted to get a spot in the monthly emailed newsletter, so they could tell other members about their work and highlight lesser-known magicians.

The first article was just going to be an introduction. He said it took 10 months of meetings, revisions and back-and-forths before the introduction was included in the emailed newsletter.

When we brought up the pace of change to Hervé, he said changes happen slowly in order to account for everyone’s opinions.

“So yes,” he said, “it's gonna be slow process, but we need to do it right.”

We asked to interview the new head of the D&I committee who replaced Kayla, but he declined.

We checked in with the Castle one last time in October 2023 to see if any new D&I Committee recommendations had been implemented. They had none to report.

A different perspective on the Castle 

While we spoke off the record to other former Castle members whose experiences of the Castle were similar to Kayla and Carly’s, we also spoke with several members whose interactions with the Castle were overwhelmingly positive and who felt that the Castle did make meaningful changes after 2020.

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Georgia Lyle is one of those members. Georgia is a retired physics teacher, magician and a trans woman. Like Carly, she initially came to magic by way of the Castle, when her friend invited her for a night out at the club.

Georgia was in her 50s and exploring her gender identity and starting to experiment with feminine gender expression. She still remembers what she wore that first night at the Castle — a silver dress that went just below the knee.

“I was very self-conscious,” says Georgia. “I would go to a showroom and I would very intentionally go to the back row because I didn't want to get called upon. And the thing that struck me was that at the Castle, everybody was very nice. Everybody treated me really well and nobody made a fuss over me.”

Georgia started going to the Castle more frequently, eventually taking lessons and finally passing her audition and becoming a member. The membership card held special significance, because it was her first piece of ID with her correct name.

Georgia is actively involved at the Castle now, performing, teaching and giving tours. And for Georgia, the Castle is a place of acceptance.

“I find that I have never been treated badly in the club,” says Georgia. “My feeling as a trans woman is that the club provided me the experience that I wanted, which was basically the ability to be myself. And I'm respected because of the things I do. I'm respected because I do magic.”

After the summer of 2020, Georgia felt that the Castle owned up to its issues. So did magician and mentalist Michael Gutenplan.

“I personally have never had problems with homophobia or being discriminated against because I'm gay in the magic world,” says Michael. “But I think the older members of our magic world sometimes need a reminder that the world has changed … I feel that there are people that want the world to instantly change for their benefits, and I wish it would, but the truth is, change takes time.”

When asked about other members’ experiences of sexism and racism, both Georgia and Michael said that they hadn’t personally had bad experiences at the club. During the summer of 2020, on that members-only Facebook group, there were other members who offered their experiences as counterpoints to members who said they’d had problematic ones.

We asked Hervé how he thought about how to prioritize feedback — how to take the bad experiences of the few seriously. He said that he takes everyone’s experiences very seriously.

We also asked Georgia about how she grappled with how Carly’s experience was so different from her own.

“That is a dilemma,” she says. “Because you know, I have my perspective, but it's the perspective of somebody who's older and I'm imposing, so I think there's a lot of people who would not do things with me that they might do with somebody who's younger and more attractive,” says Georgia. “I think most people who are or were members of the Magic Castle had a fairly major investment in becoming a member. You don't do it lightly. So if they are feeling uncomfortable, that definitely needs examination.”

Kayla and Carly today

Carly Usdin in 2023, with all their decks of cards.

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LAist

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Kayla Drescher moved to Chicago and now performs at the Chicago Magic Lounge.

“There are posted signs everywhere that tell you what to do if you wanna report bad behavior,” says Kayla of her new performance space. “There's a team meeting every single day that reminds people to use non-binary gender inclusive language as a performer … then when something does happen, like we had a drunk guest who got a little bit handsy, and that guest was asked to leave.”

Kayla says she’s found a different, more progressive magic community, elsewhere.

Carly Usdin’s suitcase of magic stuff.

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Meanwhile, it’s been three years since Carly left the Castle. And even longer since they’ve done any magic tricks.

During the last interview for this story, in their home, Carly pulled out dusty boxes of magic materials: pieces of rope, sponge rabbits, white handkerchiefs, books on magic and over two dozen different decks of cards.

Carly said that enough time had passed between them and their Castle days that they mostly just felt nostalgic.

“I miss doing this a little bit,” says Carly, as they glance at the cards. “When I go to put all this away later, I'll maybe leave one deck out.”

This is a digital companion piece to Imperfect Paradise: The Castle. To listen to the audio version of this episode, click here. 

MacArthur Park got an unexpected guest Tuesday: Justin Bieber, who joined several members of his band for an impromptu performance.

Social media videos show Bieber, 32, sitting on the grass, playing percussion and singing as people gather around. He performed several songs to a handful of people, including his 2025 hit “Yukon,” according to videos from the impromptu performance.

A source close to Bieber told E! News that he visited the park to distribute gift cards and other resources to unhoused people. A spokesperson for the singer could not be immediately reached for comment.

Bieber, who headlined Coachella earlier this year, played a stripped-down performance with his band. Some people in social media video walked by the set, while others recorded the set.

His surprise appearance adds a different kind of attention typically focused on MacArthur Park. In the last several months city officials, law enforcement and community groups have taken different approaches to addressing conditions at the park and activating the space.

For Brenda Aguilera, director of the Community Transformation Collective, the reaction to Bieber’s visit is part of a larger conversation about the changes at the park. 

Her organization has been working with a neighborhood volunteer group of about 60 MacArthur Park-area residents since March. The group includes parents, caregivers and vendors who meet regularly to identify neighborhood priorities and work with city agencies and community organizations.

Residents involved with the group have reported greater awareness of available services and said they feel safer in the park, Aguilera said. But she added that the people who live in and around the park should be at the center of any assessment of how conditions are changing.

“They’re not in the park. They don’t live in those neighborhoods, so they have to speak to the local community members to hear about their perspectives,” Aguilera said, referring to elected officials.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli pointed to Bieber’s performance as a sign of progress at the park.

Bieber performing an impromptu set at the park is “a testament to the progress we are achieving to take back the park from drug dealers and enliven it for families,” Hochman wrote on X.

Essayli wrote: “Bieber in MacArthur Park. That’s progress. Amazing what can happen when criminals and drug dealers are removed from public spaces.”

Over the summer, the Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents carried out a multi-phase operation targeting drug activity in and around the park, including a June operation that resulted in 13 arrests. Hochman also held a picnic at the park over Labor Day weekend after saying he would return with his family if he believed it was safe enough.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s office, however, pointed to a longer history of work at the park in response to Bieber’s visit.

“We’re excited to see Justin Bieber enjoying MacArthur Park, just as countless other Angelenos do every day, experiencing what nearly four years of sustained investment and community partnership have made possible,” said Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez.

The councilmember has invested more than $27 million in the park, including Peace Ambassadors, round-the-clock clean teams, overdose response, street medicine, youth programming, arts and culture and infrastructure improvements, according to Hernandez’s office.

“MacArthur Park’s progress belongs to the residents, workers, promotoras, outreach teams, and community organizations who do this critical, lifesaving work every single day,” Roochnik said.

Community Transformation Collective’s promotoras are among those working directly with residents, Aguilera said, helping connect them with services and providing what she described as “warm handoffs” to organizations that can offer support.

For Aguilera, that community perspective matters when officials assess what is happening at the park.

“It’s not up to us or these elected officials that are in these government bodies to just speak on behalf of our communities,” she said. “They could speak about their efforts, but they can’t speak about the entire perspective. It’s really those that live there that could share that perspective.”

The post You better Beliebe it. Justin Bieber played a set at MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.

Michael Angel Alvarez made headlines earlier this year when he was arrested while working as a peace ambassador for the nonprofit Healing Urban Barrios in MacArthur Park. Federal prosecutors alleged Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City.”

But they didn’t charge him for violent or gang-related crimes.

He spent three months in custody under a different charge: illegally possessing body armor. He pleaded not guilty, and a trial date was set.

Alvarez was released from custody this month, nearly a week after a federal judge dismissed his case on Sept. 9, ruling that a juvenile court finding that Alvarez killed a man while a minor could not be counted as a violent felony conviction that would make owning body armor illegal.

Alvarez spoke with LAist after his recent release, saying he believes the case against him was politically motivated and shows a lack of understanding about what it takes to intervene with gang members to reduce violence in communities. He acknowledged gang affiliation, but said he was not a gang leader and had not committed any crimes since being released from prison in 2024.

Federal prosecutors told LAist in a statement they are looking into options to appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss the recent indictment against Alvarez. No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. has responded to LAist’s requests for comment about Alvarez’s assertion that the case was politically motivated.

Before the federal prosecutors filed their case against Alvarez, the L.A. County District Attorney’s office filed a separate case against him on May 20 in Los Angeles Superior Court also based on possessing body armor. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for Oct. 27. He pleaded not guilty. A spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office did not comment on whether they intend to continue pursuing the case now that the federal case has been dismissed.

Why the federal case was dismissed

Alvarez was a minor when he was found guilty of a gang-related murder in 2002. At 15 years old he was charged and tried as an adult. He was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting and killing a man in Pico-Union. He was sentenced to 50 years to life. But after a change in state law increased the age at which minors could be sentenced as adults to 16, Alvarez’s case was sent back to juvenile court and he was released in 2024. At that point, he had served about 24 years.

On Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang found that same law that led to Alvarez’s release also bars the court from considering him to have been convicted of the killing, because juvenile court determinations are not criminal convictions. Without a violent felony conviction, Alvarez is not prevented from owning body armor by state or federal law. She dismissed the federal prosecutors’ case against him.

What Alvarez is saying following his release

In an interview with LAist last week after his release, Alvarez said he thinks federal prosecutors wanted to score political points by targeting community violence intervention work, not because he posed any risk to public safety.

“ I almost got killed as a result of trying to change the community for the best,” said Alvarez, who showed photos to LAist of what he described as stab wounds in his abdomen and arms that were taken in February 2025. He said that assault took place while he was working in MacArthur Park. “ And for whatever reason you had the individuals who are part of the Republican Party who went after me because of the Democrats, the people that I worked for.”

Alvarez’s former employer, Healing Urban Barrios, has not responded to LAist’s requests for comment since the case was dismissed. Christina Navarro, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, said in a statement to LAist back in May of this year that Alvarez was innocent until proven guilty and that the organization was continuing its work despite the allegations against him.

“We are not stepping back,” Navarro wrote in the statement. “We are doubling down.”

Healing Urban Barrios was contracted to work at the park by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter. Her office says community violence intervention workers have been effective for decades in interrupting cycles of violence in ways traditional law enforcement cannot.

Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez, told LAist in May they were not aware of allegations against Alvarez before his arrest and that peace ambassadors are employed and supervised by community-based organizations.

Alvarez was removed from the peace ambassador program earlier that same month, she said.

“We will always take misconduct seriously and hold our partners to high standards, but we will not allow an individual case, or efforts to politicize it, to undermine proven community-based public safety work,” Roochnik said Friday in an emailed statement.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who heads the office that brought the case, has been critical of the city’s gang intervention program.

Federal prosecutor Bill Essayli heads the U.S. Attorney's office in L.A.

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Allen J. Schaben

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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“The hardworking tax payers of Los Angeles deserve better than to see their money shelled out to a convicted gang murderer,” Essayli wrote on social media on May 29, the day his office announced the charge against Alvarez.

Essayli was appointed by the Trump administration to lead the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. and was previously a Republican member of the California State Assembly, where he represented part of Riverside County.

Spokespersons for the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. have continued to speak out against Alvarez since the body armor case was dismissed. In statements sent to LAist via email by spokespeople Ciaran McEvoy and Shawn Lewis, the department called Alvarez ”a convicted murderer and a documented member of the 18th Street gang” who was indicted by grand jury on the body armor charges.

“These facts are not in dispute. It is unfortunate that he now benefits from a California law that effectively allows him to erase his murder conviction, something his victim cannot do.”

Adding: “He has no legitimate role serving as a ‘peace ambassador’ in a public park or receiving taxpayer-funded compensation.”

The department said they are currently considering their options to appeal what they called “a narrow technical legal issue.”

About the case

Most people can legally own and wear body armor in the United States — it’s typically worn as a vest, either made of durable fibers like Kevlar or with steel or ceramic inserts designed to stop bullets. It becomes illegal to own or possess body armor under federal and state law if a person has been convicted of a violent felony.

But U.S. District Judge Hwang agreed with Alvarez that he did not have a violent felony conviction on his record.

Alvarez admits he shot and killed 22-year-old Mauricio Miguel Masis on Aug. 17, 2000.

He told LAist he was 15 and in a gang when he and a 13-year-old friend, who was not gang-affiliated, were approached by what he described as three older gang members. Masis was one of the men, he said.

“ They're already in their mid-20s and tried to kill both of us,” Alvarez said. He told LAist he shot Masis, but claims it was to defend his friend and himself.

Convicted as an adult in 2002, he could have spent his entire life in prison after being found guilty.

“ I was 17 years old when I was walking Supermax,” he told LAist, “level four maximum security prison.”

In 2018, Senate Bill 1391 passed in the California legislature, to only allow minors 16 years and older to be considered for adult court.

The new law gave Alvarez a way out of prison, allowing his case to be resentenced in 2024.

By then he’d served about 24 years. Because of his age at the time of the killing, under the change in the law his case was sent back to juvenile court where his adult conviction was set aside and he was declared a ward of the court — or under its supervision and control.

Alvarez was released from prison and put on probation for two years.

The following year he was also sentenced to two years of probation for a separate felony offense in November 2023 that was considered non-violent — possessing a weapon while in custody.

Alvarez acknowledged having the weapon while he was in prison, and told LAist that most people had hidden weapons there, often as a deterrent from being attacked.

“Of course I had a weapon,” he said. “You would have one too if you were there. You're trying to do everything in your power to survive.”

In early 2025, Alvarez began working for Healing Urban Barrios as a peace ambassador.

“ They wanted individuals who had the respect, I suppose, of the streets [and] in prison,” he told LAist.

Alvarez said gang members are more willing to talk with someone from their own background than with police officers or city officials, and he said he was able to speak to them to avoid violence and other safety issues around MacArthur Park.

“There's hundreds — if not thousands — of gang members who flow through that area due to the fact that a lot of them are addicts now,“ Alvarez said.

He told LAist he believed the peace ambassadors in the area had made a difference in reducing the number of people using drugs, fighting and lighting fires in the park since he started working there in 2025.

“ There used to be a lot of fights,” he said. “ We're able to talk to the guys right there and be like, ‘Look, work something out with each other.’"

Alvarez showed LAist photos of people he said he had given CPR while on the job to prevent them from dying of drug overdoses and a woman he said he identified to authorities as a missing person and helped get to safety.

Federal agents arrested Alvarez in May, after LAPD officers found two body armor plates in his car during a traffic stop earlier that month.

Alvarez told law enforcement officers after his arrest that the plates were for an art project, court documents show, and his lawyer argued in court that Alvarez did not have a vest to wear the armor in.

Prosecutors argued in court documents that he could have used the armor plates without a vest, and that he may have had a vest for the plates elsewhere.

Alvarez told LAist he was planning to use his laser engravers to write poetry on the plates and his cousin was going to paint them with graffiti to get the attention of the youth he served.

“With youth, especially youth that are in gangs, you gotta show them some different type of art,” he said. “  It would've hit them hard, you know?”

The U.S. Attorney’s office charged Alvarez with possessing body armor. But they made additional allegations against him apart from the charges, which they have not proven in court.

For instance, prosecutors claimed in court documents that Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City,” and that they were investigating him for additional crimes that would carry “great sentencing exposure.”

Prosecutors alleged in court documents that members of the 18th Street gang described him as a leader of the gang in recorded jailhouse phone calls. Alvarez claimed the way the prosecutors described the conversations wasn’t accurate. He told LAist he was never a gang leader and, instead, was using the respect he had with the 18th Street gang to prevent further violence.

No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. responded to LAist’s questions about whether they intend to pursue other charges.

LAist asked Alvarez to clarify whether he was an active member during our interview last week.

“ When you're a gang member, for the most part, you're always a gang member, you know?” He said, “There's two types of ‘actives.’ There's active where you're actively involved in the violence and all that stuff, but there's also being active when you're actively involved in your community, and that's what I've been doing.”

Alvarez said he hopes to continue working in gang violence reduction programs now that the federal case against him has been dismissed.

“I know that what we did was good,” he said, recalling how parents of children he had worked with around MacArthur Park reached out to thank him while he was in federal custody as his recent case was ongoing.

“It'd be nice to have the support all the way around and not have, especially, people who are pushing politics,” Alvarez told LAist.

Councilmember Hernandez’ office and Healing Urban Barrios have not responded to questions about whether they would consider allowing Alvarez to return to his position as a peace ambassador.

After the Palisades and Eaton firestorms in January 2025, one story captured how Los Angeles County’s emergency management system seemed to have failed. Anthony Mitchell Sr., an 80-year-old man who used both a prosthetic and a wheelchair, and his 35-year-old son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy, died in their Altadena home waiting for evacuation assistance.

Anthony Mitchell had called 911 twice, identifying himself and his son as disabled, and was assured help was coming.

Of the 31 people killed in the fires, 27 were over 65, and at least six had mobility issues, according to news reports.

The tragedy led California and L.A. County to consider adopting “disaster registries,” an emergency management strategy used around the country for assisting people who might require additional help in emergencies due to their age, disability or other health conditions.

The California Commission on Aging issued a report in November that noted evacuation centers lacked data on older and disabled residents who would need assistance. That led to a shortage of equipment and expertise to address the specialized needs of those residents. The commission recommended that the state consider implementing a statewide registry.

Even before the commission’s recommendation, Los Angeles County supervisors had directed its Aging and Disabilities Department to study the feasibility of a registry.

But neither initiative has moved forward.

“We have not seen much movement on exploring a disaster registry,” said Patrick Smith, the state Commission on Aging’s legislative director.

The Los Angeles feasibility study was “paused” last year while the county reviewed its emergency operations with the McChrystal Group, said Liz Odendahl, a spokesperson for Supervisor Janice Hahn, who co-sponsored the resolution authorizing the study.

The arguments against registries

Some advocacy groups in California and the state Office of Emergency Services have argued against registries, Smith said. In fact, OES’ official guidance on registries is that “jurisdictions should not use them.”

Registries typically are voluntary, and registrants are responsible for keeping their information up to date. Because of that, they are unreliable sources of information, which is one reason some emergency managers and many advocates for older and disabled people oppose them.

They also point out that registries could give a false sense of security to people, who may assume assistance is guaranteed when it is not.

“This false assumption is dangerous and can lead to an overall decrease in personal disaster preparedness,” the California Office of Emergency Services says on its website.

Registries are hard to keep current, the office notes, and the personal information people provide may be challenging to safeguard.

Why some places have registries anyway

With data showing older people far more likely to die in natural disasters — and climate change making disasters more frequent and severe — several states have taken the opposite approach, establishing registries to better assist older adults and people with disabilities in emergencies.

Florida’s statewide Special Needs Registry is often cited as a model because it connects the state’s Health Department with emergency management in all 67 counties. Florida also requires its counties to establish shelters for people with special medical needs.

Delaware, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Texas and Utah also have statewide registries, as do many municipal emergency offices across the country.

In California, three of 58 counties have registries — Mono, Siskiyou and Butte.

Butte County’s registry was in place in 2018, when the Camp Fire killed 85 people, 67 of whom were seniors. Emergency managers can’t say how many or if any of the older adults who died in that fire were on the registry.

But they say the registry remains a useful tool.

“If we didn’t have the list, we wouldn’t have had any idea at all who needed extra assistance evacuating,” said Butte County Emergency Manager Angie Mannel, who was a 911 dispatcher during the Camp Fire.

Older adults, like many Americans, are not prepared for disasters. A 2023 AARP survey found that under one-third of older adults have a comprehensive plan for natural disasters, and only 10% have opted into apps or text notifications that alert people to emergencies.

“You can’t just throw a bunch of information out there and expect everyone to be able to act on it,” said Lindsay Peterson, a gerontology researcher at the University of South Florida. “Some people just can’t.”

Her research has shown that technology can be a barrier for older adults, especially those living independently but with limited technological skills and income.

While acknowledging that “registries are controversial,” Peterson said state and local governments must find ways to ensure the most vulnerable older adults will be protected.

Florida’s Special Needs Registry

That’s what Florida set out to do with its Special Needs Registry. But it does not guarantee emergency assistance, which the Health Department notes when people register. Still, the Florida Division of Emergency Management advises older adults needing this assistance to register, because registries can be useful planning tools and may save lives, even if they are incomplete.

Each of Florida’s county emergency management offices decides how it will use the registries to provide assistance. Seminole County, in eastern Florida, offers transportation assistance to registrants who request it. Three days before a tropical storm or hurricane is expected, the county Office of Emergency Management calls registrants about the approaching storm and advises them to evacuate. They must agree to leave at that time in order to receive transportation, said Steven Lerner, division manager.

“We’re like Enterprise; we’ll pick you up,” he said. The county uses a fleet that includes school buses and ADA-compliant vans.

Lerner’s main concern about Seminole’s registry of 1,700 people is who is not on it. He focuses his outreach efforts on new residents who may never have experienced a hurricane season, and those aging at home who may overestimate their ability to evacuate themselves.

In Lee County on Florida’s western coast, the Office of Emergency Management used public transportation to help evacuate people when Hurricane Ian hit in 2022. More than half of Lee County’s 800,000 residents were ordered to evacuate a day before the hurricane made landfall. Many were forced to weather the storm at home or in shelters, as 10 inches of rain inundated areas, winds gusted up to 140 mph and storm surge reached 15 feet. The storm killed 149 Floridians, including 72 Lee County residents. Most of the fatalities were people over 65.

County spokesperson Betsy Clayton wouldn’t say how many registrants emergency crews helped to evacuate during Hurricane Ian. But she said the county has assisted about 1,000 registrants in each major storm Florida has experienced in the past two decades, providing paratransit and ambulance services.

A California example

In California’s Butte County, emergency managers believe the registry will save lives if a disaster on par with the Camp Fire strikes again.

After igniting on Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire grew rapidly, overwhelming the county’s emergency management plans and destroying its communication systems. It incinerated Paradise, a town of 27,000 people, in four hours.

The California auditor’s 2019 after-action review of the county’s emergency plans recommended Butte use registry data in evacuation planning, so emergency responders know who will need help before a disaster.

Tiffany Rowe manages Butte’s Special Needs Awareness Program, which notifies registered people of emergencies and evacuation orders and assists in evacuating them if needed.

The voluntary registry pinpoints who will require assistance in particular evacuation zones and what they’ll need. Most warnings are automated, but if the emergency is expected to affect 10 or fewer registrants, Rowe calls them herself.

After the pandemic and the busy fire seasons of 2022 and 2024, the number of Butte County registrants increased by over 50%. Today, around 2,200 older adults and people with disabilities are registered.

“Being a disaster-prone county,” said Mannel, Butte’s emergency manager, “our perspective is always focused on the safety of our citizens.”

Timothy Lane is a writer with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Journalism School and covered this story through a grant from The SCAN Foundation.

Insurance companies are starting to write new policies in California again after years of holding back as wildfire risk climbed higher.

The state Insurance Department says that means outgoing Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s new regulations, intended to boost insurance availability, are working. Each time a company declares its plans to sell policies again, the department touts it as a win. But the state has not released the number of new policies the companies have written so far.

Enter Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that often butts heads with the department. It released an estimate of new policy commitments: 12,189 since January 2025, when Lara’s so-called sustainable insurance strategy went into effect. The strategy allows insurers to use catastrophe modeling, which they say more adequately takes risk into account because it includes forward-looking models, and to factor in reinsurance costs when setting their rates.

Consumer Watchdog, whose numbers come from combing through insurance companies’ rate filings, says that number is low, considering insurers have requested or secured $571 million in rate increases under the new regulations.

The insurance department disagrees with the group’s analysis, saying it intends to release its own data and analysis, and discounting the group’s numbers as “incomplete and premature.”

Ben Armstrong, Consumer Watchdog’s actuary, is tracking voluminous but publicly available rate filings. He looked at insurers’ statements about the number of new policies they promise to write, and compared the new filings with each company’s previous rate filings. Armstrong told CalMatters it’s “not an exact science” because the filings mention commitments, not actual sales, and in some cases don’t include an exact timeline.

The new rules allow insurers to factor in catastrophe models and their reinsurance costs as long as they commit to increasing sales in high-risk areas. Of the 10 companies that requested rate increases under the new rules, only five have committed to selling more policies, the group’s analysis shows.

The regulations call for insurance companies to choose one of these options: Write 85% of their market share in high-risk areas; grow their policies 5% in such areas; or increase their number of policies 5% by taking customers out of the FAIR Plan. Some of the companies that have requested or secured rate increases claim they already meet the 85% threshold.

“What we’re looking at is the reality right now for Californians who have been saddled with rate hikes for the promise of more policies in the future,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog.

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