The Brief

Seeing is believing — at least, that is how Jae’Shaun Phillips feels about attending Sacramento State, the California State University with the largest Black student body, with over 2,000 students. He is in the inaugural class of the Black Honors College, a new initiative created to support future Black scholars and leaders.

Now, Sacramento State is leading similar charges statewide. For one, the university is hosting the Cal State system’s new Office for the Advancement of Black Student Success, which oversees efforts to better serve Black students throughout the Cal State system. Secondly, on a wider scope, this office will soon manage a special designation for California colleges and universities that demonstrate a strong dedication to their Black students.

A new law taking effect Jan. 1, enacted as SB 1348, creates the first official Black-Serving Institution designation in the country. The designation will be given to qualifying colleges that vow to take a more aggressive approach to address California’s systemic obstacles that have kept Black students at the lowest college-going and graduation rates. Though it’s not stated in the law explicitly, the intent is that both public and private nonprofit institutions are allowed to apply, according to the office of Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford of Inglewood, who authored the law. This designation is not federally recognized nor will campuses receive federal funding.

Besides meeting other student support requirements, the designation is only available to institutions that have a Black student enrollment of at least 10%. For campuses that can’t meet the 10% threshold, they must have at least 1,500 students who are Black. Students like Phillips find comfort in these numbers.

“I feel like it pushes me further, just seeing a lot of motivated people, our colors, trying to [succeed] in college,” Phillips said.

This is not the reality for most Black college students who find themselves a minority in the majority of California classrooms. California colleges and universities educate over 217,000 Black college students in a pool of over 3.4 million.

Dr. James W. Reede Jr. lectures students on the environmental impacts of California policies in the seminar hall of the Black Honors College at Sacramento State University on Oct. 3, 2024.

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Photos by Louis Bryant III

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CalMatters

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California’s Black students trail behind their peers academically. Two-thirds of the state’s Black students start at community colleges yet only 35% transfer to a four-year university within six years, compared to 45% for white students, according to an independent study using California Community Colleges data. Cal States lag in graduating their Black students at 49% within six years compared to 62% overall, according to U.S. Department of Education data. At the UCs, where Black enrollment is the lowest, 78% of Black students graduate in six years but are still 8 percentage points behind the general population.

Bradford finds those statistics “concerning,” further noting that Black undergraduate enrollment nationwide has declined 25% between 2010 and 2020. Bradford hopes this new law will reverse the enrollment decline by recognizing colleges that are “accepting and open and there to support African American students.”

In California, no colleges or universities meet either of the two primary federal designations for serving Black students: Predominantly Black Institutions, which must have at least a 40% Black student population, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which apply to schools established before 1964 with a primary mission to educate Black students.

How campuses will qualify as Black-Serving Institutions

The Office of Black Excellence will oversee the applications from campuses seeking the Black-Serving Institution designation. Designees will be selected by a governing board consisting of the lieutenant governor, the chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, two members of the public, and college and university officials representing public and private, nonprofit higher education institutions.

To qualify for the designation, schools must have established programs dedicated to Black student success, a yet-to-be-determined track record with Black retention and graduation rates, and a five-year plan to boost those rates.

Bradford’s office says the governing board will clarify ambiguities in the law regarding application requirements and determine the logistics once it convenes in January. The law does not outline the requirements for two-year nonprofit private institutions applying to the designation nor does it stipulate a deadline for when the first Black-Serving Institution will be recognized. The law is also unclear about which student enrollment data, self-reported or federal, schools will use to show eligibility and whether they can include both undergraduate and graduate students.

Could your college qualify as a Black-Serving Institution?

Self-reported data introduces the potential for inconsistency in how the board vets the institutions — in some cases the numbers nearly double. For example, the UC system indicates that 4.5% of its undergraduate students are Black. However, according to federal Department of Education data, that number is just 2.3%.

According to 2022 federal counts of undergraduates and graduate students, 60 California colleges and universities meet one or both of the student population requirements to be a Black-Serving Institution. Of those schools, 32 are private nonprofits, 24 are community colleges, three are Cal States, and only one is a UC — UCLA with 3.6%, or 1,681, Black students. However, according to UC’s self-reported data in 2022, two of the 10 UCs reported more than 1,500 Black students. That number jumped to four in 2023.

This is because the UC system counts a person of mixed race as a single race based on a hierarchy that places the highest priority on Black students. UC data rules state that a student who self-identifies as Black and any other group will be reported in UC’s system as Black. Meanwhile, federal data counts mixed-race students in a separate “two or more” category.

The Cal State and community college systems also publish internal demographic numbers that vary somewhat from federal data. Unlike the UC, these systems use a category of two or more racial groups. Private, nonprofit institutions operate independently, making it difficult to assess each college’s internal methodology.

How many Black students? Depends on the data source

The threshold to qualify as a Black-Serving Institution is 1,500 Black students or 10% of total students as Black. How many University of California schools could qualify depends on how demographic data is collected. Number of undergraduate and graduate students reported as Black in 2022 Note: Both data sources are from 2022 because it is the most recent federal data available. UCSF is the only school that would've made the 10% threshold.

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Chart: Jasmin Shirazian and Erica Yee, CalMatters

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Source: University of California and U.S. Department of Education

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Some California campuses are already dedicated to Black student success

A few campuses that have confronted inequities served as the blueprint for the new Black-Serving Institution designation. Keith Curry, president of Compton College, and Luke Wood, president of Sacramento State, worked closely with Bradford’s office to conceptualize the law.

Both presidents say they recognize the limitations imposed by Proposition 209, passed in 1996 to ban race-based admissions and education programs, and emphasize that their programs focus on minority students but are open to everyone.

In 2022, Curry proclaimed Compton College a Black-Serving Institution, encouraging educational leaders to serve Black students “unapologetically” in an Op-Ed for Diverse magazine. Located south of Los Angeles, Compton College has 1,204 Black students, a quarter of its population.

Curry said he harnesses the power of culture to boost student interest with events such as Black Welcome and Black Graduation. This past spring, rapper Kendrick Lamar spoke at graduation, creating some social buzz.

In 2021, Compton College created a new leadership role, director of Black and Males of Color Success. In the role, Antonio Banks connects students to tutoring services, basic needs resources, and specialized programming. He also oversees the Men’s Leadership Academy, which hosts weekly events dedicated to community building, such as the recent “Babyboy: Building Emotional Intelligence to Combat Toxic Masculinity.”

Banks said they focus on fostering community and “helping students become advocates, both in their own fight for education, [and] the fight for others.”

Curry believes his Black-centered approach is already working. During the 2023-24 academic year, returning Black full-time equivalent students increased 34.6% from the previous year, according to Compton’s data. Banks says it will take one to three years to fully reveal the impact of their programs on graduation rates.

In the Cal State system, Wood has been a leading advocate in supporting Black students. A 2023 report by the chancellor’s Black Student Success Workgroup acknowledged the university system’s failure to produce equal outcomes for its Black students. The report made recommendations to all Cal State universities, including recruiting faculty with a high record of success in serving their Black students, implementing inclusive curriculum, and establishing a Black Resource Center on every campus. Much of what the report entails, Sacramento State has already established.

Sacramento State hosts over a dozen groups and resources dedicated to supporting Black and marginalized students. “We’re trying to create an experience outside of the classroom that celebrates Black history, life and culture in a way that you would only see at an institution that is a HBCU,” Wood said.

Sacramento State President Luke Wood on Sept. 22, 2023.

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Photo by Andrea Price

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Sacramento State

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An example is the Black Honors College, which focuses entirely on Black academia and culture. Select students receive specialized staffing and resources for seminars, coursework, therapy, research opportunities, housing, and more. The university has also started establishing pipelines with some community colleges with large Black student populations, including Merritt College in Oakland and Compton College.

Business major Phillips attended predominantly white grade schools in Tracy, California. One of the reasons he chose Sacramento State was the community it has built for Black students.

He said initiatives like the Black Honors College have special impact on “kids who are very strong in academics, but may not have that home life that really supports them, or for kids who have a lot of capability, potential and talent, but [are not] being promoted or pushed through all the way to see that full potential.”

Wood says their efforts have already helped in recruiting and graduating Black students. Applications overall were up by around 4,000 this fall, with a 17% increase for enrolled Black freshmen and a 40% increase among Black community college transfers. Four-year graduation rates for Black students rose to 1 in 4 graduating in 2024, compared to 1 in 5 in 2019.

Students have mixed feelings about campus support

Universities that pursue the new Black-Serving Institution designation seek to attract students like Nora Thompson, who is studying administration of justice at Merritt College and has always wanted the HBCU experience. Merritt serves a 20.4% Black student population. Thompson has plans to transfer to North Carolina Central University, an HBCU, in the spring. She dreams of becoming a judge like her grandfather.

“I had to work 30 times harder to be seen as a student and as someone who cared about their education,” Thompson said. “For most people, their HBCU changes their life … I wanted to experience feeling like being part of a community in every possible way, not just education wise.”

She lamented having to leave the state — and pay out-of-state tuition — just to experience a flourishing Black academic setting. Thompson says that even with the Black-Serving designation, California’s Black student populations are not enough to keep her here.

Further north in a more remote area of the state, junior journalism major and Black Student Union president at Cal Poly Humboldt, Kaylon Coleman, is not satisfied with his experience at the university — from the subtle racism by his classmates to the few opportunities to learn from Black scholars.

Cal Poly Humboldt is a predominantly white institution. Federal data as of 2022 shows that of the 6,025 students enrolled, only 179 were Black — far below the minimum to qualify as a Black-Serving Institution.

As a freshman, Coleman was told by counselors that the Black Student Union had a history of disbanding due to low Black student enrollment. He turned to the Umoja Center for Pan African Student Excellence, the university’s cultural center for those who are Black identifying or of African descent. A friend of Coleman’s revived the union, and he joined.

Like many students attending universities with small Black populations, Coleman said it’s exhausting to speak up about the behavior of those around him.

“It’s hard to be that one person — Black person — in your class, or the one to explain why this was a microaggression, or why this was racist, or why you can’t touch my hair, stuff like that,” Coleman said.

Coleman feels that students attending schools without the Black-Serving Institution title will be left behind. He believes that Black students at every California college deserve to reap the benefits that would come with the label.

Kyira Todmia, a senior in neurobiology, physiology, and behavior at UC Davis, shared a slightly different experience. In 2022, federal data reported Davis had 783 Black students, representing 2% of over 39,000 students total. However, it self-reports 1,472 Black students, or 3.7% of the population. She says that while her school may not have a large Black student population, the student resources are strong.

Todmia built her social circle around the African American “learning community” in student housing as a freshman. She also hangs out at the Center for African Diaspora, where students have access to study spaces, tutors, peer advisors and events.

During Todmia’s four years at Davis, she’s only had one Black professor. Because few Black students are in STEM majors, at times she is the only Black student in classes of 300 to 500 people. At least in her learning community, she said, she was able to see rooms full of Black folks every day — even if they weren’t in most of her classes.

For Sen. Bradford, now 64, the new law is personal. Bradford reflected on his own experience as a biology student at Cal State Dominguez Hills in the 1980s.

For a campus that earns the Black-Serving Institution designation, Bradford said, “It’s going to be an environment that’s going to be welcoming, that’s going to be supportive. I only wish that had existed when I entered college over 40 years ago.”

Many Southern California cities and institutions are dropping big, grabby news today. Before you go "what the what" — remember, it's the first day of April.

Here's a roundup of some of the April Fools' news dump items.

Irvine, the 'pickleball-only' city

Irvine announced that it'll be converting all tennis courts into pickleball courts by 2027. That's one notch for Team Pickleball in the ongoing turf war between tennis lovers and pickleball players over the fight for court space to engage in their beloved sport.

"Starting today, April 1, all tennis courts are being converted to pickleball courts as part of a citywide effort to make Irvine a pickleball-only City by 2027," the post stated. "We don’t just think this is a good idea … we dink it’s a great one."

Catch that? They "dink" it's a great idea.

All hail Queen Latifah in Long Beach

Over in Long Beach, Mayor Rex Richardson announced the city's reigning royalty, the Queen Mary, will be renamed after another queen.

"After careful consideration, I am proud to announce that the Queen Mary will officially be renamed the RMS Queen Latifah," he said. "Long Beach is stepping into a new era as a major music destination — with a new amphitheater, a deep cultural legacy, and a future built on sound. It’s only right that our most iconic Queen reflects that energy."

In real-real news, LBC native and everyone's favorite Olympics commenter Snoop Dogg is headlining the grand opening show of the Long Beach Amphitheater in June. That's the new waterfront venue near the RMS Queen Latifah.

Prolific author gets his own library branch

Suspense writer James Patterson has more than 200 novels to his name, selling more than 450 million copies. If anyone deserves his own namesake branch, it would be Patterson, no?

The Los Angeles Public Library certainly dinks so, announcing today the James Patterson Canoga Park branch, "with wall to wall Patterson books and programming centered around this prolific author."

Eau de corpse flower

The opening of the corpse flower has become an annual event at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. The event brings legions hoping to get a whiff of the famed flower's "pungent aroma."

The San Marino institution announced that it's bottling the scent, as part of its new "The Huntington's Stank Collection."

"A musky gym sock note opens this unique fragrance, with a sweet, rotten-egg base to ground it. Smells like you – but smellier," the post explained.

Adopt something you can just leave at home, always

Pasadena Humane got in on the fun with a special event — today only — where you can adopt a rock.

"Adoption ROCKS! And today only, you can adopt a friend you won't take for granite," the message said.

Los Angeles may not be the fashion capital of the world, but it could contend for best thrift, at least in our humble opinion!

The key is knowing where to look.

Here are some of the best thrift and resale stores in different parts of Southern California according to our listeners and (very stylish) LAist colleagues.

Pasadena

Pasadena City College Flea Market

The pinnacle of Pasadena and open every third Sunday of the month, the flea market houses 400 vendors with goods ranging from antique furniture to unique second-hand clothing.

1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

Ritz Resale

For high-end designer clothing, Dee in Pasadena, who likes handbags, recommends the consignment boutique, Ritz Resale.

“I found a Coach bag that I paid about $19 for that I use all the time,” she said.

2028 E. Villa St., Pasadena

Hotbox Vintage

If you’re looking for more affordable clothing and household items, Delaine Ureño, LAist senior institutional giving officer, frequents Hotbox Vintage in South Pasadena.

1125 Mission St., South Pasadena

Los Angeles

The Ticktocker Thrift Shop

This thrift shop in San Pedro is owned and operated by the Peninsula Chapter of National Charity League and comes recommended by Mel in the South Bay, who says proceeds support local charities and scholarship funds.

353 W. 6th St., San Pedro

Public Estrellas

If you’re ever in Lincoln Heights, Sarah Steinman, LAist's membership manager, encourages people to check out her neighborhood thrift store.

2701 N. Broadway, Los Angeles

Society of St. Vincent de Paul

This thrift store rec near Elysian Park comes from Lulu in Glendale, who says shoppers can grab a cute pair of pants along with unique furniture to put them in.

210 N. Avenue 21, Los Angeles

Berda Paradise

“Full of treasures and benefits the Hollywood Health Clinic, which is a few doors down,” said Malka Fenyvesi, LAist's major gifts officer.

3506 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles

The Left Bank

LAist's Lucie Russo recommends The Left Bank in Frogtown if you’re looking for something more curated.

2479 Fletcher Dr., Los Angeles

Far Outfit

Anything on Long Beach’s aptly named Retro Row is worth hitting, according to AirTalk producer Manny Valladares. His favorite spot is Far Outfit. They have unique finds mostly from the early 2000s with a self-described “weird” factor.

2020 E. 4th St., Long Beach

Orange County

Laura’s House

With several locations throughout Orange County, including Costa Mesa and Aliso Viejo, LAist reporter Yusra Farzan recommends Laura’s House, noting they have a great curated collection and proceeds help domestic violence victims.

23635 El Toro Road, Suite F, Lake Forest

Timeless Vintage

Old Towne Orange is home to many great thrift stores and antique malls. If you’re looking for some good streetwear and sports jerseys, Timeless Vintage is a good choice. They have a great selection of 90s Looney Tunes and Disney graphic tees as well.

110 1/2 S. Glassell St., Orange

Retropolis

Another O.C. favorite is a fairly new addition to downtown Fullerton. Retropolis has a wide selection of apparel, but I like to go there for their chunky 80s sweaters and colorful jackets.

206 N. Harbor Blvd., Fullerton

And Beyond

Eco Thrift

“[Eco Thrift] has really good discount days on top of already affordable clothing,” said Dañiel Martinez, LAist’s Weekend Edition producer. “Tons of good vintage and designer finds hidden in the racks.”

1190 S. Garey Ave., Pomona

Revivals

“I went to Palm Springs where they have some of the best thrifting,” said AirTalk listener Monica in Artesia. She bought a pair of Ferragamo shoes for just $8.

Kevin Tidmarsh, LAist’s All Things Considered producer, specifically recommends Revivals, a thrift chain with locations throughout the Coachella Valley.

611 South Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs

Some of Los Angeles’s most iconic eateries — Papa Cristo’s in Pico-Union, Guerrilla Tacos in Downtown and French eatery TAIX in Echo Park — have closed their doors, prompting hand-wringing about the decline of the city’s rich and diverse food scene.

But those closures obscured a more notable achievement; 758 new restaurants opened last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2024, when 729 restaurants opened.

The split-screen view of dining in Los Angeles is part of a broader transformation that is reshaping the industry nationwide.

The explosion of digital-order services has rewritten the business model for restaurants, which are now operating with less space, reduced staff and tighter margins. Many of the new eateries do much of their business from behind a screen—either through self-service tablets or off delivery apps such as DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats.

So-called “limited-service” restaurants now account for nearly a third of all newly opened establishments. The number of traditional, or full-service, restaurants has also been growing, hitting 539 openings in 2025, and a record-high 587 the year before. If you count the number of coffee, smoothie and snack joints, the numbers rise even further.

Pizza to go

Many of Los Angeles’s restaurateurs are adapting to this burgeoning business model. Last year, Liz Gutierrez turned her pop-up restaurant, Fiorelli Pizza, into a small brick-and-mortar location in Beverly Grove with just a couple of stools at a counter for seating. As she saw restaurants closing their doors, the advantages of the new business model quickly dawned on her.

“This was something that could be operated with minimum labor, it could be way more manageable in terms of fixed costs and expenses, and we could still deliver restaurant-quality [food],” Gutierrez said.

The bevy of new food establishments opening their doors is a lone bright spot in an otherwise bleak economic picture: The total number of new businesses opening in the city is nearly half what it was a decade ago. That is driven in part by some of the same forces, such as Amazon.com, Inc. and other online retailers that put pressure on businesses operating out of traditional storefronts.

But the flourishing restaurant industry has been able to buck that trend so far. While Amazon can deliver clothes and even groceries, it still can’t deliver a fresh pizza or poké bowl.

The QR code will take your order

Linchi Kwok, a hospitality management researcher at Collins College of Hospitality Management at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, said a lack of interest in working in the hospitality industry, paired with rising labor costs, has pushed restaurant owners to find cost-effective workarounds to run their operations with fewer people.

“Limited-service restaurants don’t have to hire many people to do the work. It saves labor costs, saves space, and saves the service turn-around time. They don’t have to worry about it,” Kwok said.

Restaurants must share a portion of their already slim profit margins—usually between 2-4% in L.A.—with an app service and the driver. To offset that, restaurants have cut down on staff, letting go of waiters, hostesses and dishwashers, many of whom are no longer needed when orders are increasingly being delivered in disposable containers.

Despite the record number of openings, running a restaurant in the city has not gotten any easier. Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Association, noted that in 2024 taxable restaurant revenue hit $11 billion, which, when adjusted for inflation, is on par with 2012 levels.

“The piece of the pie that each restaurant gets is slimmer.”

Condie also said that the hollowing out of entertainment work, increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and stricter regulations “are conspiring against the L.A. restaurant scene.”

Condie said that regulations from city hall, such as stricter labor oversight and a proposal for a $30 minimum wage for some workers, are making it even tougher.

“The business environment is bad generally in L.A., but the city council and the mayor seem to be throwing salt in the wound.”

As the number of new restaurant openings has spiked, so have the number of closings reported to the city. However, business closure figures are not as reliable as business opening data, as some establishments close without reporting it to the city. Since 2021, 593 full- and limited-service restaurants have reported closing, compared with 3,148 openings.

Jimmy Chu spent several years working in fine dining, which inspired him to start his own restaurant. He knew it would be expensive. Rather than opening another fine-dining establishment, he opted for a limited-service restaurant where customers could order at the counter, no waiters involved.

Chu quit his job by the end of 2024, and in May 2025, he opened Bomb Hot Dog in Downtown Los Angeles. He estimates that his eatery gets roughly a third of its customers through mobile delivery orders.

Ghost kitchens

Ghost kitchens, or private kitchens used exclusively for delivery and takeout, have become a business model of their own. At Beverly Bites, 56 restaurants operate out of one facility serving the densely populated Beverly Hills and Beverlywood neighborhoods, though not all of them are open simultaneously. At Echo Park Eats, 40 restaurants are now within a five minute walk of Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Dodgers schedule was hung on the wall inside the facility, so owners can anticipate heavy foot traffic and delivery orders during home games.  

Last December, Ali Elreda rented out a space for his Mediterranean-Mexican fusion restaurant, Fatima’s Grill, at Echo Park Eats. 

Elreda operates four brick-and-mortar Fatima’s Grill locations, and this is his first time renting a ghost kitchen. He said the decision to start a delivery and takeout location was both a matter of savings and efficiency.  

“A lot of people are going the ghost-kitchen route because it’s quicker, it’s faster,” Elreda said. “You avoid a lot of overhead and foot traffic and having to find staff these days with the expensive economy out there is kind of tough.” 

With ghost kitchen facilities, business owners also no longer have to compete with each other to find prime real estate in Los Angeles.  

“You don’t have to do that research where you’ve got to find the right location. It’s just right there waiting for you,” Elreda said. 

How we did it: We examined more than 15 years of business license data reported to the Los Angeles Office of Finance.  Have questions about our data or want to ask us something? Write to use at askus@xtown.la 
Hyperlocal News

VAN, Turkey — It has been more than one month since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran. The U.S. says it has hit more than 10,000 targets. But U.S.- and Norway-based human rights groups estimate that at least hundreds of Iranian civilians have also been killed.

The war has also widened bitter ideological divides among Iranians in and outside the country over whether the conflict has been justified.

"There is difficulty [with the bombing], but we are not that weak," says one Iranian woman from Tehran, traveling to Turkey for a short break, given that her work has stopped due to the U.S. and Israeli bombing of the capital city. "In the past few years, the Islamic Republic [of Iran] has proved to us that we cannot trust them. But we were in war with Israel in the summer [during the 12-day war], and we saw how precise their targeting was, so we trust them."

"We are going to build a nuclear bomb now, because there's no fatwa against it anymore," interjects an Iranian man, overhearing her remarks, referring to a rumored religious ban on nuclear weapons issued by Iran's former supreme leader, whom Israel assassinated with U.S. help at the beginning of the war in late February.

Like all the Iranians in this story, the two people asked to remain anonymous. They have received texts from the Iranian government and have seen signs coming out of Iran warning them not to speak to foreign media on pain of arrest.

A microcosm of divergent opinions

Just across the border with Iran, in eastern Turkey, the Turkish city of Van is just as full as during prewar times, with thousands of Iranian workers, consulate employees, students and tourists, who are traveling despite the war in their home country. Van has also become a microcosm of the full range of divergent opinions that Iranians have about the war.

"There is no such thing as hardship in Iran," says one Iranian man, who crossed into Turkey for his job last week. "Everyone lives freely, woman or man."

Next to him, a second Iranian man looks at him, wide-eyed and shaking.

"In two days, the government killed 40,000 people," the man says, referring to a government crackdown in January on protesters. A U.S.-based human rights group has confirmed over 7,000 deaths, but many Iranians believe the death toll is far higher.

NPR has not been able to travel and report inside Iran, so it has been interviewing Iranians traveling through border areas, including in eastern Turkey.

The dozens of Iranians NPR has interviewed transiting through Van may not be representative of all Iranians in the country. Many Iranians in Van are those wealthy enough to travel. But there are also poorer Iranians working, often under the table, in Turkey. A few Iranians I met and interviewed say they are heading off to study abroad.

The commonality among most Iranians NPR spoke with is that they feel they have lost opportunities — to make a living, to voice their opinions, simply to live — under the current government, which they say must go.

"Our pain is something you have to feel for yourself [to understand]," says one Iranian man who has been working in Turkey for the last year. He spent the previous seven years in prison, he says, after being accused of being an anti-Islamic heretic. "Iran's security forces … took everything from us. They only give pain. They are pain incarnate," he says, so much so, he is willing to lose all he has, even his family in Iran, for his government to be wiped out.

"The war should never have started," says one Iranian university student. "But now that it has, the U.S. and Israel should finish it," she says, meaning toppling Iran's regime.

"Met with bullets"

Some Iranians who support the war against their own country say their perspectives are indelibly shaped by that government crackdown in early January. This year's killings of demonstrators finally made them realize, they say, that decades of popular resistance would never change their government.

"Three of my own friends were killed" in the crackdown, says one Iranian man. He crossed into Turkey last week to earn money, more than he could make in Iran. "My friends were all young. I knew them all my life. Yet the government killed them so easily."

"Every two years, there is a big protest," he says. Research from Stanford University published this year found thousands of instances of dissent over the last decade and a half, averaging to one protest every three days inside Iran.

But this time, his hometown, in Iran's western Kermanshah province, was brutally punished by government paramilitary groups for people in his town participating in January's protests.

"It is as if my town has been burned down. Nothing is left of it," he says. "I see no future for my children in Iran." His only hope now, he says, is a foreign intervention. "Our only hope is Trump. Our only hope is that Trump and Bibi [Israel's prime minister] make the right moves."

"We are scared of the bombing," an Iranian woman says. "But we are happy thinking that there might be a light at the end of this darkness. When our young people went out and protested this January, they were met with bullets. With slaughter. With executions."

Nearly all the Iranians traveling in Turkey who spoke to NPR said they are hopeful about Iran. They have immediate plans to return to their country and stressed that they are not leaving it. Migration data from the United Nations shows fewer Iranians are leaving Iran for Turkey than before the war.

"We are not fleeing," says one young Tehran resident. Even though she almost lost an eye in the anti-government demonstrations this winter, she says she is going back to Tehran in a few days. "We are determined to rebuild our country, and if the government changes, I will work, for free if needed."
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