The Brief

The University of Southern California on Thursday announced that it was canceling the main stage graduation ceremony, citing new safety measures in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests a day earlier in which more than 90 people were arrested.

In a notice to the students, USC said there will still be traditional individual school commencement ceremonies, in which students cross the stage, have their names announced, are photographed, and receive their diplomas.

But for the main stage ceremony, which typically attracts upwards of 60,000 people, administrators said the time window was too short to accommodate new security measures put in place after Wednesday's demonstration, adding, "We understand that this is disappointing."

The USC ceremony was scheduled for May 10.

Asna Tabassum’s selection as valedictorian was met by criticism from some student groups, including Trojans for Israel, for what they described as her “anti-Zionist rhetoric” and external online sites she had linked to on her Instagram profile. External pro-Israeli groups like We are Tov also criticized her selection, saying she “promotes antisemitic views.”

Tabassum has defended her social media profile, saying she linked to the information "for people to inform themselves, come to their own conclusions, and then advocate for what they believe in."

Her defenders have since staged demonstrations and mounted a letter writing to pressure the administration into reversing the decision.

Meanwhile, in the wake of Wednesday's protest that saw dozens of LAPD officers in riot gear scuffling with some demonstrators, patrols will continue through at least this weekend on campus, which is only open to those with a USC ID or people with verifiable business there.

Students and protesters chant at a Pro-Palestinian occupation protest on campus at USC on April 24, 2024.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Zain Shukr, a sophomore studying political economy, told LAist he was “uncomfortable” with the university’s “violent response to a peaceful protest.”

“I think it's almost ironic the amount of security that they're using for this event when we have students like Asna, who is unable to speak at her own graduation because of lack of security,” he said.

As the demonstration unfolded Wednesday, USC’s Provost Andrew Guzman said protesters were repeatedly asked by security officers to remove prohibited items and relocate to a "compliant location."

"In each case, protesters refused," he added. "Their actions have escalated to the point of confrontation and have threatened the safety of our officers and campus community."

The organizers of the protest said at a news conference Thursday that they had peaceful activities like yoga, art and craft, teach-ins planned before their camp-in protest was interrupted.

But in a statement posted on their Instagram page, the USC Hillel group said some of the protester chants on Wednesday were antisemitic, namely “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” and “long live the intifada.”

Intifada is an Arabic word meaning to "shake off" used in the Palestinian context for uprising.

“No student should feel unwelcome in their own campus home, and our Jewish students are telling us that these actions and this hostile rhetoric induce feelings of fear, terror and instability,” the statement added.

In a statement Friday, USC President Carol Folt said that while no one wants to have people arrested on their campus, "when long-standing safety policies are flagrantly violated, buildings vandalized, DPS directives repeatedly ignored, threatening language shouted, people assaulted, and access to critical academic buildings blocked, we must act immediately to protect our community."

"USC has long-standing protocols that allow for peaceful protesting, and we have been working successfully with our community to ensure these rules have been followed at gatherings, protests, and vigils taking place all year," she added.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Homeless outreach workers are now roaming daily across the Eastside, including Boyle Heights, to provide hygiene kits and tents and connect unhoused residents to temporary housing.

The effort is part of a new year-long program launched last Thursday by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, which works in partnership with Urban Alchemy, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides services to unhoused people.

The program — Leading Outreach with Valued Engagement, or LOVE — will be in effect through March 2027. The program costs $300,000 and is funded through Jurado’s discretionary funds. The team is made up of three people, which includes two on-the-ground outreach practitioners and a third person directing their operations.

Boyle Heights has seen a recent rise in homeless encampment reports. In the first quarter of 2025, 635 encampments were reported in Boyle Heights, compared with 379 during the same period in 2024, according to an analysis by The Eastsider.

Homeless encampments were also a source of discussion at January’s Community Police Advisory Board hosted by the Hollenbeck Community Police Station. 

Attendees expressed frustration about unhoused people living in an alley behind the Benjamin Franklin Library and a growing encampment near Hollenbeck Drive and South Boyle Avenue, according to a summary of the meeting. 

Encampments move from one place to another, said Susana Betancourt, a member of the Community Police Advisory Board. Betancourt talked about pressuring property owners to clean up. “They not only have tents, the encampments there, but they put their vehicles,” she said.

Jurado, in a statement to Boyle Heights Beat, said her office works with service providers “to respond to encampments thoughtfully.”

“We coordinate every two weeks to prioritize areas of greatest need, making sure neighbors get consistent support and that unhoused residents are connected to housing, health care, and other services,” she said. 

Jurado touts the new program as giving unhoused residents better access to “life-saving health care, stable housing, [and] pathways to recovery.” The LOVE program, Jurado said, will help “reach neighbors before situations become emergencies.”

“Addressing homelessness isn’t one-size-fits-all. I invested in the LOVE Team because every person’s needs are different,” Jurado said. “The team is out in the community every day, visiting every neighborhood in the district each week, building trust, and connecting neighbors to housing, health care, and support services that help them regain stability.”

Outreach workers are tasked with providing crisis intervention and de-escalation, assessing individual needs and connecting people to interim housing referrals. They will also distribute food and Narcan, as well as offer “post-placement follow-up to help people remain housed.”

Jurado said workers will exclusively offer daily outreach to CD 14 neighborhoods, which include El Sereno, Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, Eagle Rock, Highland Park and downtown Los Angeles. 

Mason Santa Maria, a spokesperson for Jurado, said outreach workers have already identified unhoused residents who are not yet logged into the Homeless Management Information System, an online database tracking services accessed by people who are unhoused or at risk of homelessness. 

“It’s hard to keep track of people when they don’t have a stable address,” Santa Maria said. “This is a way to keep track of them.”

The post Outreach team hits Eastside streets with health kits and housing referrals for unhoused residents appeared first on LA Local.

Los Angeles County broke ground Friday on a project that will bring dozens of new mental health beds and supportive housing to the sprawling, 110-year-old Metropolitan State Hospital campus in Norwalk.

Led by Supervisor Janice Hahn, the project includes a renovation of some of the decaying buildings on the site into 32 treatment beds within locked facilities. The $65 million in funding comes from Proposition 1, the state’s mental health funding bond passed in 2024.

“One of the biggest challenges we face in Los Angeles County right now is that we simply do not have enough places where people can get the compassionate, professional mental health care that they need,” Hahn said before the groundbreaking.

In all, county leaders plan to have 162 beds at the so-called Mental Health Care Campus, ranging from locked psychiatric beds to permanent supportive housing.

California State Senator Bob Archuleta (L) and LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn stand in front of a rendering of a remodeled bedroom at the Metropolitan State Hospital Campus in Norwalk.

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Robert Garrova

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LAist

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Hahn said part of the idea is to get help for people who have been cycling out of emergency rooms and incarceration.

“This Care Village really is a big step forward showing people that there’s a different way that we can get help to the people who need it most,” she told LAist.

At a meeting last year, county supervisors voted to sign off on a lease with the state for a 13-acre portion of the campus. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill from Sen. Bob Archuleta in 2024 that cleared the way for the lease.

One of the buildings that will be renovated into supportive housing at the Metropolitan State Hospital campus in Norwalk.

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Robert Garrova

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LAist

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The historic site 

Run by the state, the psychiatric hospital opened in 1916 and at its peak housed thousands of patients. These days, with its 162 acres, overgrown grass and boarded up buildings, the place feels mostly abandoned.

Some of the buildings feature large windows that architectural mock ups provided by the county show will remain intact, allowing light to flow into large indoor communal spaces. Officials have also said the plan is to preserve the architectural features of the buildings, which have historical landmark status.

The interior in one of the future 16-bed facilities at the Metropolitan State Hospital.

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Robert Garrova

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Laist

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What’s next

The plan is to bring several levels of care together on one campus. In all, the project calls for renovating six of the buildings on the site.

That includes:

• 32 locked psychiatric care beds, which will serve young adults between 18-25 who have acute mental health needs.
• 70 interim housing beds and short-term housing with on-site mental health services.
• 60 permanent supportive Housing apartments. These will be reserved for adults with serious mental illness who were previously unhoused.

The county’s plan also includes a shared community building with a kitchen and communal dining space.

The county estimates the interim housing will be completed late next year, with the locked beds coming in early 2028. The county did not yet have a timeline for the permanent supportive housing beds.

Long Beach residents can now receive harm reduction supplies like fentanyl test strips and overdose reversal medication for free — in the mail.

This represents an expansion of the city’s harm reduction program, launched in December 2023, which already offers in-person pick-up of supplies at several locations. More than two years later, the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services has distributed over 6,500 doses of Narcan — an opioid overdose reversal medication — and over 21,000 test kits to check for fentanyl and xylazine — a veterinary tranquilizer that has made its way into the illicit drug supply.

Mailing supplies will allow the Health Department to reach more and different people, said Ish Salamanca, with the Health Department. The hours and locations of the department’s distribution sites don’t work for everyone, Salamanca said. And discreetly delivering the kits by mail allows the city “to reach folks who might feel a little stigmatized” picking up supplies in person.

In a November 2024 city council meeting, council members recommended expanding access to harm reduction resources in order to address what Councilwoman Suely Saro called “the crisis of our time.”

“We don’t want to take our eye off the ball on fentanyl and opioids,” Mayor Rex Richardson said in the meeting.

Months later, council members allocated $70,000 from the California Opioid Settlements, a pool of money from pharmaceutical companies and others found responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic, to fund a pilot program to mail fentanyl detection kits to 5,000 residents.

Now that pilot program is live. Within hours of the launch, Salamanca said he had received 30 requests to mail kits, compared to the five to ten requests that come in daily for in-person pick up.

Preliminary data show that fentanyl-related overdose deaths are declining in Long Beach, which the Health Department partially attributes to expanded prevention efforts, and free testing and overdose reversal supplies.

Yet non-fatal overdoses are “not dropping as much as I would want them to,” Salamanca said. And while the city’s efforts have been focused on people experiencing homelessness and using substances, he is also “seeing folks overdosing at their homes or residences,” he said, according to data from first responders.

Despite all the inroads Salamanca and his team have made, “there’s a huge hurdle that we’re about to have to overcome, which is stigma,” he said, describing future plans to hold workshops and presentations in settings ranging from high schools to senior living facilities. While the focus on fentanyl has increased awareness of its dangers, Salamanca called for broader, more transparent conversations on substance use and access to resources.

Long Beach residents can order (and customize) harm reduction kits from the Health Department and access resources here.