The Brief

Even with all the industries where Californians went on strike during last year’s “hot labor summer,” some of the most active sites of organizing in the state may well be a pair of private immigration detention centers in the Central Valley.

The Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex facilities, operated by The GEO Group, a Florida-based federal detention contractor, have been a hotbed of activism since the pandemic. But it’s not The GEO Group’s staff agitating for better pay and working conditions.

It’s their detainees — immigrants awaiting the outcomes of deportation cases or asylum claims, many of whom also work where they’re jailed, scrubbing bathrooms and cutting hair for $1 a day.

Detainees in the two Kern County facilities said this month they started the second labor and hunger strike in two years to protest poor working and living conditions. Two years ago, they sued over the program’s wages.

And during the 2022 strike, they prompted California workplace safety regulators to inspect the Golden State Annex facility and issue a citation to The GEO Group — showing how far the state is pushing the traditional boundaries of labor rights.

The case, alleging a “willful and serious” violation of state labor laws meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19, has turned heads. Labor and immigration policy experts believe it is the first time the state has treated detained immigrants as employees who benefit from workplace safety protections. The case is before a three-member appeals board of Cal/OSHA — the state’s occupational safety and health agency — as California grapples with whether to expand labor rights to state prisoners, including a proposition on the November ballot.

Even more novel: The state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health in May sent the U.S. Department of Homeland Security a request not to deport seven complainants for at least two years, under a Biden administration program to temporarily protect immigrant workers who are assisting with labor investigations.

“Cal/OSHA cannot properly pursue enforcement action without the cooperation of worker detainees in these situations,” agency chief Debra Lee wrote.

It’s “highly unusual, if not unique” for the state to ask federal immigration authorities to temporarily waive deportation for state witnesses against the immigration authorities’ contractor, said Anastasia Christman, senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project.

Cal/OSHA spokesperson Erika Monterroza declined to comment on the case as it is being appealed by the company. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson also declined to comment.

The GEO Group’s corporate counsel Spencer Winepol did not respond to multiple requests for comment about detainees’ complaints, the Cal/OSHA citation or the current labor and hunger strikes.

The company, in its appeal of the citation and in prior public statements, has denied that detainees should be considered employees who were exposed to workplace hazards. It also argues the alleged violation was only technical, and has been corrected.

In the complaint, detainees said they weren’t informed of close contacts with others who had COVID-19; the state’s citation alleges the company did not maintain a required written plan for preventing the spread of the virus.

The company “vehemently disputes the notion that any of these individuals are employees,” attorneys for The GEO Group wrote to a Cal/OSHA appeals board administrative law judge in April 2023. “Rather, the named detainees were voluntary participants in a federally established Voluntary Work Program, designed to offer rehabilitation and job skill training.”

If the citation is upheld, it would be a victory for immigrants’ advocates who have pushed unsuccessfully for years to curb private detention facilities in California.

“It is uncharted territory both in terms of worker issues but also uncharted territory overall about what California can and can’t do versus these private entities,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, advocacy director of Immigrant Defense Advocates, which has backed a ban on private detention in California. “We’ve continuously pushed the envelope on that.”

California fights private detention centers

In one of many moves against the Trump administration, state lawmakers in 2019 tried to ban private immigration detention centers from operating in California.

The for-profit facilities “contribute to over-incarceration” and “do not reflect our values,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement when signing the bill.

Instead, the Trump administration expanded immigration detention beds in California, including with The GEO Group, a global private prison giant that reported $2.4 billion in revenues last year. Under its new contract, the company opened the Golden State Annex facility in McFarland and immigration authorities began sending detainees there in 2020.

ICE pays the company to hold as many as 880 immigrants in its Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde facilities, though the numbers have been far lower, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a regularly updated database of immigration records at Syracuse University.

The company and federal government sued over California’s ban. It was ultimately overturned last year by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled the state was unconstitutionally overstepping on federal immigration enforcement.

But during the COVID pandemic, as outbreaks hit Mesa Verde and other ICE detention centers in California, there appeared to be confusion over whether local health departments had jurisdiction. Advocates called for stricter regulations.

In 2021, Newsom signed a law clarifying the facilities had to abide by local and state health orders. Another provision made them subject to state workplace safety rules.

The Golden State Annex, a U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement detention facility, in McFarland on July 8, 2024.

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One of the complainants in the Cal/OSHA case said he was sent to Golden State in late 2021, after being released from a state prison. But the living conditions, such as the food, were worse in the detention centers, he said.

The man, who was released last year after nearly two years in detention, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of jeopardizing ongoing legal cases. He said that he contracted COVID-19 in a dorm room with dozens of other detainees — allegations echoed in the Cal/OSHA complaint.

“I’m not going to say prison is a good thing, but a state prison is far more well-conditioned to be housed in,” he said.

Detainee jobs worse than prisoners?

The jobs were worse, too, the former detainee said, even as most California prison jobs pay less than 74 cents an hour.

ICE requires its detention contractors to provide voluntary work programs that improve “essential operations and services” and reduce the “negative impact of confinement” through “decreased idleness, improved morale and fewer disciplinary incidents.” While the work can take as many as eight hours a day, ICE requires the jobs to pay “at least” $1 a day; its contracts with The GEO Group show that’s how much the company budgets for the program.

Many participants take the jobs to afford food and hygiene products from the commissary, or phone calls to family. (A limited number of calls were free during the pandemic, but that’s recently been revoked, advocates said.) Common assignments include cleaning the dorms and bathrooms, and cutting fellow detainees’ hair.

Some even help care for other detainees. Ever Oropeza-Paz, who has been detained at the Golden State Annex for nearly two years, said he spent several months working as an aide for a dormmate who had a mental health condition. Oropeza-Paz said he was paid $1 a day to assist with basic tasks such as buying items in the commissary, using a tablet to communicate and teaching him how to shower.

“People are forced to work,” said Oropeza-Paz, who does not currently have a job in the facility. “They do it just to have the funds to make a quick call to their relatives.”

Critics of immigration detention have challenged the work program’s legality around the country.

Washington state’s attorney general and a group of detainees sued The GEO Group in 2017, arguing participants should have been paid the state minimum wage, which was $11 an hour at the time. A federal jury decided in 2021 the company owed $17 million in back wages to hundreds of immigrants who had cooked and cleaned.

In a lawsuit challenging the program at The GEO Group’s detention center in Adelanto, California, a federal judge decided in 2022 the detainees should be considered employees because the contractor paid them and dictated their hours and working conditions. The case is on hold as the Washington case is appealed.

And in July 2022, nine detainees at Mesa Verde and Golden State, represented by attorneys at the the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, sued The GEO Group over the work program’s wages.

At Golden State, the advocacy organization also helped file a workplace safety complaint. Detainees there complained of cleaning black mold without protective equipment, black dust in the heating and air conditioning system, and a lack of COVID-19 notification and testing protocols.

“There’s fungus on the bathroom floor, on the shower walls,” said the former detainee who made the comparison to state prisons and who echoed allegations in the Cal/OSHA complaint. “We weren’t given the proper equipment, we weren’t given the proper chemicals … We didn’t even get a small talk of what everything’s for.”

The detainees staged a work stoppage that summer. It ended up lasting nearly a year, into 2023, and escalated into a hunger strike. In a civil rights complaint to the Department of Homeland Security and a 2023 lawsuit, detainees claimed they experienced retaliation, including having family visits suspended and being placed in solitary confinement. They withdrew the suit when they ended the strikes.

The company told KQED in 2022 it didn’t consider detainees “choosing not to participate in a voluntary work program” to be on strike, and told other local media outlets last year that allegations of abuse were “baseless.”

A recent inspection of Golden State by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog office found GEO Group staff were slow to respond to some medical complaints from detainees, and hadn’t fixed leaks that regularly caused pools of water on the floor, “forcing detainees to live in a potentially dangerous setting.”

But the department’s inspector general said the work program didn’t violate any ICE policies.

Detention company resists

Cal/OSHA accuses The GEO Group of resisting state inspections, according to case records obtained by CalMatters through a public records request.

After the agency opened an investigation in June 2022, The GEO Group “refused to produce any documents pertaining to worker detainees, taking the position that worker detainees are not employees” and told inspectors to request documents from ICE, Cal/OSHA senior safety engineer Greg Clark later declared in a court filing. But an August 2022 memo shows GEO employee and facility administrator Minga Wofford told Clark’s colleague that ICE wanted requests routed “through the facility.”

Wofford declined to comment.

When Clark and a colleague visited in August 2022 for a second inspection, Clark said the company “denied us access to worker detainees to conduct interviews with them.”

Cal/OSHA eventually got a warrant from a Kern County judge for the company to turn over documents about the work program and allow inspectors to speak with detainees. An inspector returned to the facility three times in December 2022, and issued citations that month, barely missing the six-month cutoff after which an investigation must be closed.

Among the citations are that the company blocked access to a chemical eyewash station, didn’t properly label chemicals in the barbershop and train workers on their uses, and failed to have a written plan to prevent the spread of airborne diseases such as COVID-19. Because there had been COVID cases, the agency issued that citation as a “serious” violation, bumping the total fines up to over $100,000.

Over the past year and a half, the appeals have centered on whether the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and other advocacy groups, representing the detainees, can also participate in the legal case.

The GEO Group has pushed back, arguing that several of the detainees involved no longer are housed in the facility and that none were exposed to actual hazards in the work program.

“The citation in question is for a written policy deficiency,” company attorneys wrote to the Cal/OSHA appeals board last October. The detainees’ attorneys and Cal/OSHA disagreed; agency attorney Lidia Marquez wrote that “worker-detainees tasked with cleaning and maintenance assignments found themselves directly exposed to the hazard” of being at a higher risk of contracting the virus.

As those proceedings dragged out, Cal/OSHA asked the federal government to help keep the complainants in the country.

Cal/OSHA first tried in April 2023, and then again in May, this time writing to the Department of Homeland Security that the case will fall apart without witnesses and naming specific immigrants the state hopes can testify. One of the witnesses Cal/OSHA had interviewed, agency director Lee wrote, had already been deported.

“There have already been an alarming number of reports by worker detainees stating they are facing retaliation for cooperating with Cal/OSHA’s investigation,” she wrote. “The loss of one witness is a setback to Cal/OSHA’s enforcement action, which is why immediate protection for the remaining witnesses is critical.”

Homeland Security declined to comment on Cal/OSHA’s request in The GEO Group case, and a spokesperson did not answer questions about the deportation protection program, known as deferred action. Earlier this year, the department said it’s granted more than 1,000 workers involved in labor investigations nationwide such protections.

It’s not clear how the department will handle California’s request. Lisa Knox, co-director of the collaborative representing detainees, said the workers are still in the process of using Cal/OSHA’s letter to apply for deportation protections individually.

Meanwhile, ICE has steadily sent more immigrants to the Golden State center. Records show the detainee population in June was more than 300 people — double the number a year ago.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Rabbi Amy Bernstein says the wind-whipped fire in January 2025 that scorched much of the Pacific Palisades, destroying her home and damaging her synagogue, “blew everything open” for the community’s faith leaders.

“If our hearts must break, let them break open,” said the rabbi, who leads Kehillat Israel where 300 families out of 900 lost their homes. “This tragedy has really pushed us closer to one another. We’re working to change the things we need changed.”

Faith leaders both in the Pacific Palisades and in Altadena and Pasadena — devastated by the pair of fires that tore across Southern California — have relied on interfaith and community partnerships to rally congregants who are picking up the pieces 16 months later.

They’ve had to learn on the fly about insurance coverage and local land use regulations while still trying to keep their scattered flock together and raising money for basic needs. Pastors in Altadena have had to fight to protect the rights of Black people who decades ago found pathways to home ownership in that community despite redlining — but now risk losing their land to outside developers who sense an investment opportunity.

And throughout this span, faith leaders have had to cater to the emotional and spiritual needs of their communities and think about how they want to rebuild their sanctuaries that were lost or damaged in the fire. More than a dozen houses of worship burned to the ground or were damaged.

Interfaith relationships have become stronger after the fires

This would have been difficult for faith leaders to handle but for the interfaith relationships that became closer and stronger after the fires, said the Rev. Grace Park, associate pastor at Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church, which burned down.

Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Jews and yogis have not just found common ground in human suffering and loss, but have learned how to lean on one another in a time of dire need, she said.

“It’s a sense of mutual affection and respect, learning from each other and leaning on one another,” Park said. “We’re sharing the joys and the deep valleys of what it means to lead through a time of tragedy.”

Brother Satyananda, a senior monk at the Self Realization Fellowship, lost his living quarters and belongings in the fire. Much of the campus, started by Paramahamsa Yogananda who brought ancient spiritual practices from India to the West, fortunately survived the fire.

Satyananda recalls one day when Bernstein picked up on his sadness and offered him “motherly compassion.”

“We share the same profession where we’re tuned to people in need,” he said. “Now, our relationship has changed because we’re tuning into each other. There’s a greater level of trust.”

Pastor BJ King, who leads LoveLand LifeCenter, worked with the late Rev. Cecil B. Murray to heal communities and build interfaith coalitions after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

“Back then, there was a choice whether or not to get involved,” he said. “But with these fires, there is no choice. It has affected everybody.”

Pastors have had to acquire new skills

King’s congregation has switched to online services after their leased church building in Altadena suffered smoke damage. Twelve families lost their homes. In addition to helping meet people’s basic needs, King has created a program organizing gatherings to connect therapists with those in need of mental health.

“Many people didn’t even know they needed that,” he said.

One of the most powerful roles faith leaders have played after the fire is to “continue to talk with power, people in charge,” said Pastor Jonathan DeCuir, who leads Victory Bible Church in Pasadena. He and others in the region have continued to meet with local officials and even conferred with Gov. Gavin Newsom to keep things moving for their communities.

DeCuir chairs the board of a nonprofit called Legacy Land Project, which provides financial aid, legal support and guidance on building contractors, as well as medical care to those affected by the fires.

The disaster has brought a level of camaraderie that DeCuir says he has never seen among the region’s clergy.

“Denominational lines have been crossed,” he said. “Even if we have different theological stances or approaches to ministry, we are all now looking at how to care for our people and community. If we don’t come together, Altadena will never ever be the same. The people won’t be there anymore. That, to me, is terrifying.”

While a church is more than a building, physical churches do appear as “beacons of hope” in traumatized communities, said Pastor Mayra Macedo-Nolan, executive director of Clergy Community Coalition in Pasadena. Her group has lobbied for houses of worship to be prioritized on the same footing as businesses in the rebuilding plan.

“When people start seeing churches rebuilding in Altadena, they’re going to feel like it’s going to be OK because the churches are coming back,” she said.

Reimagining a purposeful future

Pastor Jonathan Lewis, fourth from right, holds a groundbreaking service at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church to mark the beginning of its rebuilding in Altadena, Calif., April 26, 2026.

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Members of the congregation join in prayer during the groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church, marking the beginning of its rebuilding, April 26, 2026, in Altadena, Calif.

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Pastor Jonathan Lewis poses for a photo with his congregation during a groundbreaking service at the site of the burned Fountain of Life Nazarene Church, marking the beginning of its rebuilding, April 26, 2026, in Altadena, Calif.

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On April 26, the Altadena Fountain of Life Church broke ground to build a new sanctuary after their house of worship, which had stood for over three decades, was destroyed in the fire. Pastor Jonathan Lewis, who ministers to about 75, hopes the church will be ready in time for Easter next year.

“It’ll be a Resurrection Sunday for our church, too,” he said.

Alexis Duncan, who grew up in Altadena attending that church, came to the groundbreaking with her 6-year-old daughter. She lost both her home and her church building.

“It means everything to me that they’re rebuilding because I want the church to be there for my daughter as she grows up,” she said. “This new beginning gives me and my family hope and the encouragement to come back.”

Some churches like Altadena Community Church, a United Church of Christ congregation, are pausing to rethink their future purpose. The Rev. Michael Lewis, who took over in February after the previous pastor retired, said the congregation is looking into several possibilities for the one-acre lot, including affordable housing.

“We know that a church is not intended to be a landlord and the pastor is no property manager,” he said. “But, we’re also thinking about who is able to return to Altadena? How will this rich, economically diverse community that was scattered by the fire come back?”

The church has been around since the 1940s. A haven for actors, poets and musicians, the former sanctuary also served as a vibrant performance space. Lewis said they hope to incorporate a performance stage into the new facility.

“It’ll look different from what we had before,” he said. “Once we figure out how to build community, we can decide what physical structures will help us support that community.”

As for Kehillat Israel, on May 15, members will carry their Torah scrolls back to their sanctuary, marking one of the first returns by a house of worship to the Palisades since the disaster.

Judaism has had “a long history of starting over,” Bernstein said.

“It’s encoded in our cultural approach to the world, that there are things that can always be taken away from you,” she said. “But what you become can never get taken away.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he has requested a yearlong extension of FEMA funding for L.A. fire survivors. Without the extension, the money will run out July 9.

Now the decision on FEMA support lies with the federal government.

The funds have allowed many survivors to afford temporary housing and other daily needs. Most have yet to return home — 2 in 3 survivors who were living in Altadena or Pacific Palisades at the time of the fires are still displaced, according to the latest survey of more than 2,100 survivors by the nonprofit Department of Angels. Nearly 40% of respondents reported they will either soon run out of temporary housing insurance coverage or have already.

The situation is particularly dire for low-income households: Nearly 80% of respondents making $50,000 or less said they didn’t think they could afford housing for three months once coverage ended.

“The data is clear: This recovery is not over,” said Angela Giacchetti of the Department of Angels at a news conference organized by the Eaton Fire Collaborative in Altadena on Thursday. “If you are a survivor, you know this in your bones. For many families, it has barely begun. People have just begun to stabilize. We need federal support that reflects the scale of this disaster and systems that survivors can actually navigate and access over time.”

FEMA assistance isn’t reaching most survivors

The FEMA Individuals and Households Program can provide funding for survivors of disasters to pay for temporary housing, repair their homes, and respond to other challenges that insurance may not cover. It can also help cover costs if a survivor has no insurance.

Gil Barel has been relying on FEMA funds to pay rent on a small back house for herself and her son for the last year. She said they still haven’t been able to return to their rent-controlled Pasadena apartment because of smoke damage, though she still has to pay the rent for it.

Gil Barel is paying rent on a smoke-damaged apartment in Pasadena while FEMA funds have helped her cut the cost of temporary housing.

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Barel doesn’t know what they’ll do if the FEMA funding runs out.

“ I'm really stressed out,” she said. “I think I'm just kind of trying to put that thought aside and hope for the best.”

But in the 15 months since the fires, most survivors have not accessed FEMA funding. About 60% have received no FEMA assistance beyond the initial $770 payments dispersed in the immediate aftermath of the fires, according to the Department of Angels survey.

Many have faced denials, according to disaster case manager workers with Catholic Charities of L.A. and lawyers with Legal Aid Foundation of L.A.

That’s the situation for Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, who lost their Altadena home of 15 years in the Eaton Fire. They’ve relied on their insurance to pay for a rental in Montrose, but that’s rapidly running out. And because they have that insurance, FEMA has denied further support.

Gayle Nicholls-Ali and her husband, Rasheed, lost their home in the Eaton Fire. They plan to rebuild, but the cost is a major hurdle.

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“A lot of our ALE [Additional Living Expenses insurance] is going to run out before we even are able to get into a house,” Nicholls-Ali said.

Without FEMA or insurance support, they’ll have to find a way to pay rent on top of a mortgage. They also face a big gap in the cost of their rebuild versus how much their insurance covers. Nicholls-Ali said without the help of FEMA and other sources of funding, recovering feels further out of reach.

Funds for long-term recovery still in limbo

FEMA funding extensions have been routine in past disasters, including the 2023 wildfires in Hawaii and after devastating flooding in North Carolina in 2024.

But the agency has faced significant cuts during the second Trump administration, and there are indications that disaster aid is becoming increasingly political. For example, President Donald Trump has approved aid for just 23% of requests from states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, compared to 89% for states that with Republican governors and senators, according to an analysis by Politico.

The state has also not received more than $33 billion for long-term recovery, which can help pay for infrastructure upgrades and repairs, as well as help rebuild schools, parks and homes. That money was requested by state and local leaders shortly after the January 2025 fires and hasn’t been appropriated by Congress.

An international team of disease detectives is now racing to connect with the more than two dozen passengers who disembarked the MV Honius cruise ship on the Atlantic island of St. Helena before the hantavirus outbreak was identified.

These individuals have flown across the world, including to the United States.

The risk of further spread of this virus is low since it requires close and prolonged contact with an infected individual — and those infected seem to transmit the virus for only a brief period of time. But public health officials want to make sure the outbreak is contained.

Here's how authorities are using the practice of contact tracing to contain the outbreak and keep the hantavirus from spreading.

Contact tracing 101

The concept of modern contact tracing dates to the 1930s and was part of an effort to stop the spread of syphilis. It involves locating the close contacts of anyone who may have been infected. "By identifying people who are at risk of infection," says Preeti Malani, an infectious disease physician at the University of Michigan, "you try to get ahead when people don't have symptoms yet with the goal of preventing the infection from continuing to propagate."

This is a well-tested approach for containing an infectious disease. "It's the oldest tool in the epidemiologic toolbox," explains Malani. "We thought about this a lot early in the pandemic with COVID. But we also do contact tracing for sexually transmitted infections, for things like meningitis and even measles."

Malani likens contact tracing to monitoring ripples in a pond, "trying to prevent those outer rings from propagating by isolating individuals and by identifying individuals who might be at risk of infection."

The idea that "there's a time period where people don't have symptoms but could be harboring the virus, that's what contact tracing helps identify," says Malani.

It starts by pinpointing someone with an infection or suspected infection of the disease in question — in this case, hantavirus. Epidemiologists then look to see with whom they've recently had close contact since these individuals are more likely to have been infected.

This hunt for those with the greatest probability of infection is important. "Otherwise, it becomes an impossible web to contain because everyone is connected to everyone," says Boghuma Titanji, an infectious diseases doctor at Emory University. "So you have to stratify by high, intermediate and low-risk contacts."

The next step involves public health agencies ordering precautions for those who are infected or who may be infected but aren't showing symptoms yet. Such measures may include quarantine, so that an individual doesn't come into contact with even more people — who may then become infected.

One challenge that hantavirus presents is that its incubation period can last up to several weeks. In other words, "people take a long time to become symptomatic after they've been exposed," says Titanji. "Some of these primary contacts would have to be monitoring themselves for symptoms for up to 45 days to be at the tail end of that very long incubation period."

Aboard and ashore

The work isn't high-tech but it is painstaking, requiring officials to reconstruct the many interactions someone may have had over days or weeks.

Onboard the cruise ship, "you might have an individual who is a source of an infection," says Titanji, laying out a hypothetical example. "And then they were sitting at a dinner table with one individual who then goes back to their cabin and shares a bed with their partner who has a conversation with someone else on the deck."

Once someone disembarks the ship, the number of potential interactions can grow quite quickly. This is why officials were concerned when a KLM flight attendant fell ill after being aboard a flight with one of the infected cruise ship passengers. Fortunately, the flight attendant ultimately tested negative for hantavirus.

Titanji is heartened by what she's seen playing out so far. "It seems like the international collaborative effort has been really robust and the mechanisms for containment are in place and underway," she says.

Public health officials argue that contact tracing is a powerful approach that will reduce further spread. "We can break this chain of transmission," said Abdi Mahmoud, the director of the World Health Organization's health emergency alert and response efforts, at a press conference on Thursday.

He has good reason to be confident. Contact tracing was vital during the fight against COVID-19 and helped end the Ebola crisis in Liberia, containing the epidemic there more than a decade ago. Some of the contact tracing even involved hours-long hikes through the jungle to a remote village.

Authorities are hoping for similar success with this hantavirus outbreak.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The sky above Los Angeles State Historic Park in Chinatown will be dotted with color Saturday with the annual Kite Festival.

The festival had its beginnings as a joyful protest in 2021, back when a proposal for a Dodger Stadium gondola included cutting through the airspace above the park. Organizers say last year’s Kite Festival drew a crowd of about 7,000.

“The Kite Festival, [for] some people, it’s their favorite day in Los Angeles,” said Sue Bell Yank, executive director of Clockshop, the nonprofit arts org that runs the festival. “It’s the time when they really feel connected to their city. More so than any other time.”

This year’s programming includes a kite-making station where you can build your own flying art for a donation of $5, along with art workshops and the unveiling of a large floating, inflatable sculpture by Guatemalan kite artist Francisco Ramos.