The Brief

According to California Community Colleges chancellor Sonya Christian, this is an urgent time for community colleges to respond to the climate crisis, coinciding with investments at the federal and state level.

Much of the strategy for that response revolves around one community college in particular: West Los Angeles College, in Culver City.

In 2022, the California legislature established the California Center for Climate Change Education at West, providing $5 million to promote climate change education and establish internships and other learning-on-the-job opportunities for its students, among other goals. The federal government kicked in another $1.3 million.

“This is the beginning of the involvement of community colleges,” Christian says about West’s new climate center and existing climate change studies program.

This June, under Christian’s leadership, West hosted the climate action summit for California Community Colleges to organize their climate response.

“President Biden has a very ambitious infrastructure agenda that the administration is investing in and so is the governor [of California],” Christian says. That agenda includes incentivizing private investments in clean energy production, such as wind and solar, and investing in infrastructure, such as electric vehicle charging.

“Community colleges to me are really the vehicles for these leaders to be able to realize their goals,” Christian says. “You’re going to be seeing immediately community colleges playing a much more active and cohesive role in the infrastructure rollout.”

The inaugural climate action summit for California community colleges covered the reduction of carbon emissions from campus facilities and operations, training and educating the workforce for climate careers, supporting local communities, and funding resources for climate work.

“There is a lot of momentum here. Now we’ll stop working in our separate silos and this is the start of collaboration,” says Vered Mirmovitch, an associate professor of the biological sciences at West.

Modeling climate change curriculum

West was already the first community college in California to offer an associate’s degree in climate change studies, beginning in 2018, with coursework on environmental science and statistics, but also philosophy, which challenges the assumptions behind how humans relate to the environment.

From left to right: JB Baum, graduate of WLAC's climate studies program, Marilyn Chavez, student, Vered Mirmovitch, associate professor of biological sciences, and Keon Hendrickson, graduate of WLAC's climate studies program.

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Jackie Orchard

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“It’s just given me an avenue to learn about something that I'm really interested in that I haven't had the opportunity to learn about on an educational level before,” says Keon Hendrickson, a recent graduate of the climate change studies program.

To Hendrickson, the most interesting course in the program was the philosophy class on environmental ethics. Rick Mayock, the instructor, asks why people assume “a certain amount of pollution is acceptable, a certain amount of species will die of extinction because of human ‘progress.’”

Through challenging these assumptions, Mayock says, “that's the way we began to change our thinking about our place in nature and our relationship with the planet and our relationship with ecosystems and other species and so forth."

Through its new climate center, West is developing more climate change curriculum for community colleges in California to adapt to their own campuses.

Eventually, the plan is for West to educate students of all disciplines on climate change, not just what people might expect of those studying environmental science.

For students studying math, they might learn statistics related to climate change; for students studying psychology, they might learn the concept of “climate change anxiety” — the feeling of powerlessness one might experience if overwhelmed by concerns about climate change.

Marilyn Chavez is a student at West learning about climate change while focusing on the health sciences. She took a biological sciences elective in the climate change studies program.

“What I've learned recently here is that despite what career path you take, environmental education is so important because it's something you can apply to every field,” Chavez says. “Sustainability is so important and we can all do our part no matter what field and what path we take in life.”

Originally from Guatemala, Chavez says her Indigenous background shapes how she relates to the environment. For her, she considers humans part of the environment, which is to be shared with other species, not a separate entity for humans to control.

Teaching in the climate change program at West, Mirmovitch sees the value of teaching climate change to students in all disciplines.

“(Climate change is the) major crisis of our time. It’s not something that we can ignore anymore and we need as many people to be on board and to be part of the solution,” Mirmovitch says.

Mirmovitch adds that for change to happen, it is most effective when there’s a critical mass of people involved.

Preparing the climate change workforce

A similar approach of incorporating climate change across disciplines is also taking place at the California State University system.

And other community colleges in California have not sat idle on climate-related education. For example, Long Beach City College has an underwater robotics program which can support monitoring ocean health. Colleges in the Central Valley are developing an Agricultural Technology program for farmers to adapt to climate change and water availability.

At West, president Jim Limbaugh wants to prepare students for high-paying careers in clean energy and climate technology, and not only related to solar energy.

WLAC President Jim Limbaugh outside the West Los Angeles Climate Center.

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Solar energy has already reached a level of maturity in the state, according to an analysis from the University of California Riverside projecting the future of green jobs in California. That report finds that there is room for other green sectors to grow, including the zero emission vehicles industry, which already has a strong presence in Southern California.

“There's all this interest in electric vehicle charging stations,” Limbaugh says. “There's not enough training out there, not enough people out there to actually install them and work on them.”

Through the center at West, Limbaugh says in October community colleges will meet with industry representatives to determine their training needs. In the Los Angeles region, employers and community colleges have already been identifying emerging climate-related sector needs, such as marine aquaculture for domestic fisheries production.

The center is also to partner with local and regional entities to support training to modernize the electric grid, Limbaugh says. He foresees that students can work in a range of climate-related fields, from conducting research or working as a sustainably-oriented park ranger in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Ethics and ambition

JB Baum just graduated from West’s climate studies program this spring and attended the climate action summit. Baum says the speakers at the summit could have been more ambitious, instead of focusing so much on preparing students to meet industry demands or partnering with certain industries.

“Not all private industry should be treated the same, nor all jobs universally good,” Baum says.

Baum suggests that community colleges be intentional about which companies to link students to, particularly not oil or utility companies that have contributed to the climate problem.

For example, Kern Community College is partnering with industries that employ direct air capture technology to manage carbon emissions, a technology that has been considered controversial in its effectiveness.

When asked about the scalability of air capture technology, Christian said that the approach by community colleges will be dependent on regional attributes and community colleges need to have a seat at the table at the start of technological revolutions before they become commercial.

Can community colleges move quickly enough? 

As recent wildfires in Canada severely reduce the air quality in the Midwest and Northeast; as extreme temperatures have blanketed California; and a heat dome covers regions in the South, it’s uncertain whether community colleges' efforts are moving quickly enough.

“I think some of these solutions (from the summit) aren't really tackling the immediate effects of climate change on students and talking about adjusting the academic schedule to account for the possibility of a heat dome every single September,” Baum says.

“What are we going to do when power doesn't exist on the campus anymore because of rolling blackouts?” he adds.

Santa Rosa Junior College, north of San Francisco, officially installed a microgrid system in 2022 to power priority buildings with solar energy and battery storage, and even support the existing utility grid. A microgrid, however, is a rarity among community colleges.

According to David Liebman, the manager of this project, other community colleges may not be as quick to adopt their own microgrid due to caution about the maturity of the technology, upfront costs, and available campus space.

On the community college level, actions being taken are deliberate, but results won’t be immediate. At West, the new climate center’s director, Jo Tavares, says they’re learning about their campus needs and what other community colleges are doing around climate change.

President Limbaugh expects that the first batch of courses with a climate change curriculum will be approved in the next year. He says 17 West faculty members are working on developing climate-change centered curriculum.

Chancellor Christian envisions “convening educators to come together is going to be something that we can count on on a recurring basis.”

Meanwhile, students from or in the climate program at West are making moves. Baum and Hendrickson are continuing their studies in Geography and Environmental Studies at UCLA. Students at West like Chavez are getting ready to take climate change classes in the fall.

Chavez plans to sign up for the environmental ethics class next. Speaking about her future plans, Chavez says she “would love to take more classes about environmental science” and “you know, just contribute as much as I can to the cause.”

As a parent, Chavez says she is teaching her children to help the environment, such as reducing the number of toys they purchase. “They'll see a toy, they'll want a toy, and we're like, you know, we have so many toys at home, we don't need to buy new toys,” Chavez says.

She hopes her children will learn to be self-reliant and sustainable, and that they pass these practices on.

“I feel like if I can teach them, they'll teach their children, if they plan to have children, or friends or just anybody that they come across.”

Federal immigration agents detained at least two people late Friday outside Adventist White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights, where protesters had gathered after reports of immigration enforcement activity, according to rapid response groups. Protesters remained at the hospital into the early hours of Saturday, where immigration agents maintained a large presence.

It appears the incident began after people witnessed someone being detained and taken into the hospital, according to Raquel Roman, executive director of Proyecto Pastoral and member of the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network.   That spurred a crowd of protesters to rally against ICE agents, who then detained two protesters who are U.S. citizens, Roman said.

ICE activity was also reported near Mariachi Plaza at 5:50 a.m. Saturday, according to witnesses, and outside the East LA Sheriff’s Station, where agents have been seen detaining people in the L.A. County-designated ICE-Free zone. 

Arrests captured on social video

Video posted on social media appears to show one person being detained outside the hospital. In the video, at least three officers in tactical vests are seen detaining someone at the intersection of Boyle and Pennsylvania Avenues around 11:30 p.m.

A group of about six more officers in tactical vests and masks can be seen walking around the area as another, whose vest says “Police ICE,” yells at the person recording to “back up” and “do not impede with the arrest.”

“You’re arresting U.S. citizens,” the person recording says. “18 USC 111, they’re interfering,” the officer replies, referring to Title 18, Section 111 of the U.S. Code: Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees. 

In the video, a bystander who says the person being arrested is his brother can be seen speaking to the officer. 

“Your brother assaulted a federal agent. He’s being arrested for assaulting a federal agent; he’s coming with us,” the officer tells them. 

Boyle Heights Beat reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for more information about the incident but has not yet received a response.

LAPD response

The Los Angeles Police Department was first called to the scene at 11:59 p.m. to respond to a “large group causing a disturbance,” according to LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman. LAPD responded again at 2:24 a.m. as crowds continued to gather outside of the hospital. 

“Officers responded to maintain public safety and keep the peace. At no point did LAPD officers assist federal immigration authorities with enforcement activities or detain any individuals in connection with immigration enforcement,” Eisenman said. 

Video posted on social media by Izzy Ramirez shows a line of agents blocking the emergency loading dock around 2:30 a.m. as a crowd continues to shout at the agents and make noise.

“It was horrible for the local community. The ICE presence was a lot more than I’ve seen it visibly before,” said Roman. 

What the hospital said

Japhet De Oliveira, corporate communications executive at Adventist Health, shared the following statement:

“Federal agents brought a person in their custody to our emergency department, and we cared for that patient with dignity and privacy, as we do for every patient. When agents formed a line across our ambulance entrance, which we did not request nor authorize, we diverted ambulances to nearby hospitals for about two hours to ensure every patient received timely care. White Memorial does not participate in immigration enforcement. We know last night frightened our neighbors. No matter what happens outside our doors, everyone who comes inside is our patient, and our focus will only be on that patient, and it will not change.”

Doctors at Adventist White Memorial last year reported that ICE agents were violating the privacy rights of detained patients and prohibiting contact with patients’ family members. While the hospital released guidelines to protect patients and support staff,  doctors and advocates have said they fall short.

What's next

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights, said she was “deeply troubled” by the reports overnight and demanded answers from hospital leadership. She said:

The Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network said it plans to lead a protest against ICE outside White Memorial at 2 p.m. Saturday.

This is a developing story and will be updated. 

The post ICE detains two U.S. citizens protesting outside White Memorial Hospital, rapid response groups say appeared first on LA Local.

People may have been getting high off cannabis earlier than previously thought — at least 2,800 years ago, a new study suggests.

Archaeologists who led a dig at a monumental tomb in Siberia said they turned up evidence of the earliest known use of cannabis for psychoactive purposes.

The findings point to cannabis consumption at least 300 years earlier than previously known use in neighboring China.

Ancient drug use has long intrigued scholars. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about inhabitants of Central Asia smoking cannabis around 440 B.C., and recent archaeologists have found the seeds in tombs across its highlands.

The team from Germany, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland said analysis of hair in the royal tomb where cannabis seeds turned up sheds new light on the plant’s role in ancient societies.

“It’s extremely rare that we have both preserved plant parts and human soft tissue with the active compounds in it in the same context,” said co-author Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern.

It’s not clear whether the cannabis was consumed through inhalation or ingestion, he said.

The dig took place starting in 2017 at a large burial mound at the Tunnug 1 site in the Uyuk Valley of southern Siberia, home to one of the earliest monumental tombs showing material culture of the Scythians — ancient nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine.

The team, deployed “essentially out in the middle of nowhere,” lived in tents for months and faced a spring-to-autumn season that variously featured swamps, snowstorms, frosts and swarms of mosquitoes. Herds of horses ran freely across the grassy steppe.

Larger artifacts on the site include weapons in the burials, horse gear and animal-style motifs. But the team “struck gold” as it also found tiny black spots that turned out to be cannabis seeds along with preserved human hair, Caspari said.

“It’s only so often as an archaeologist that you do get to drug test a person that’s been dead for almost 3,000 years,” he said.

Radiocarbon dating on some of the more than 1,000 seeds helped establish the time of origin, and “they are not there by accident” but deposited within the tomb, suggesting that the plant material had significance in the community, he said.

Results were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Not all independent experts were convinced.

The hair analysis “is scientifically weak” and there’s not enough evidence to tell whether cannabis was used, wrote Volker Auwaerter, head of the forensic toxicology section at the University Medical Center in Freiburg, Germany, in an email.

“For a central part of the study, the article falls far short of what would have been possible,” Auwaerter said. “This matters because the hair data carry the abstract’s main claims (cannabis consumption and use for its psychoactive properties).”

Today, scholars don’t consider ancient accounts trustworthy without corroborating evidence. Because the cannabis plant has other uses — seeds are pressed for oil and fibers used for cloth — their presence alone doesn’t confirm drug use.

Auwaerter, who was not part of the study, said the data didn’t distinguish consumption from external exposure — in other words, the hair could have picked up traces of weed simply by being buried together with it. He said a lab test involving forensic toxicology expertise would have been advisable and easy to arrange.

But Elisa Guerra Doce of the University of Valladolid in Spain, who has written about use of consciousness-altering substances in European prehistory, said toxicological hair analysis was not new in archaeology and has been used to identify consumption of psychoactive substances. She was not involved in the study.

In an email, she credited the authors for showing, through their methodology, that “cannabis was not merely deposited as a funerary offering but was actually consumed by individuals associated with the burial rite.”

A California appeals court has found that “ER” and “The Pitt” have enough similarity that a lawsuit brought by the widow and estate of “ER” creator Michael Crichton alleging “The Pitt” is an unauthorized reboot can move forward.

A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled unanimously on Wednesday that the trial court judge was correct to reject a motion to throw out the case from “The Pitt” production company Warner Bros. Television, which also produced “ER.” But the judges dismissed Noah Wyle — the star of both shows and a producer on “The Pitt” — as a defendant along with two other producers who worked on both series.

The lawsuit is a clash between the makers of multiple Emmy-winning TV series that were each among the most important and acclaimed shows of their eras.

Crichton, the author of “Jurassic Park” and many other novels that became hit movies and TV shows, wrote the pilot script for “ER,” the NBC show about a Chicago emergency room that redefined the medical drama genre and drew tens of millions of weekly viewers in its run from 1994 to 2009.

The lawsuit brought by Sherri Crichton was filed two years ago, before a single episode of “The Pitt” had aired. The HBO Max series that shows a real-time day in the life of a Pittsburgh emergency department has since become perhaps the most lauded series in television, winning two Emmys for best drama for its first two seasons and two best actor Emmys for Wyle.

Along with more technical legal issues, the judges had to decide whether the shows had at least the minimal similarity that would give the lawsuit enough merit to move forward. Their decision applies only to this early legal challenge and they did not rule on whether the plaintiffs had proved the “The Pitt” is derivative of “ER.”

The court agreed with the plaintiff that “both shows provide commentaries on the healthcare system; they focus specifically on the emergency room and the difficult conditions under which the medical staff operates. Both shows take place, with little exception, in the emergency room, as opposed to other medical shows which track patients as they move out of the emergency room, or indeed never enter it.”

The opinion also said that both feature “very fast pacing, and reactions to multiple overlapping crises. The fast-paced dialogue is (to a layperson) frequently incomprehensible shorthand and jargon, lending an air of immediacy and accuracy.”

Warner Bros. Television said in a statement that “WBTV continues to maintain that ‘The Pitt’ is an entirely original series and that the claims against it are without merit. Nothing in the Court of Appeal’s decision establishes otherwise, and WBTV looks forward to defending its position as the case proceeds.”

The defendants argued in legal filings that the shows have “generic similarities” that would exist in “any dramatic story” that features “overworked doctors and staff.”

The panel also unanimously dismissed as defendants Wyle, John Wells, who created “The Pitt” and worked on “ER,” and R. Scott Gemmill, a “Pitt” executive producer who also worked on both shows. The judges found there was no evidence the three men knew the provisions of the Crichton contract that the lawsuit alleges they interfered with.

Sherri Crichton’s lawsuit alleges “The Pitt” is a rebranded version of an unauthorized “ER” reboot that she had rejected.

Her husband had secured a coveted “frozen rights” provision in his contract for the series, prohibiting Warner Bros. from proceeding with any sequels, remakes, spinoffs or other productions derived from “ER” without Crichton’s consent, or his estate’s consent after his death from cancer in 2008.

After the production company could not reach an agreement with Sherri Crichton over a proposed “ER” reboot, the TV studio proceeded to develop and produce a series based on the same premise without permission, the lawsuit alleges.

Micki Boden wanted a wedding cake that checked off a couple of big boxes — personalized and tasty. Instead of a traditional tiered cake, the San Fernando Valley native went with a favorite from her school days.

“My favorite cake of all time is the coffee cake that I ate through my entire K-12 education going to LAUSD public school,” Boden said.

Boden attended elementary school in Studio City and middle school in Sherman Oaks before graduating from a Reseda high school.

Boden and her husband, Matt Stollman, met in 2016 while working on the reality television show Big Brother and eventually started dating. The two got engaged in 2025.

With the groom’s family traveling from the East Coast for their wedding in October, the couple wanted to provide a uniquely L.A. experience.

Micki Boden and Matt Stollman cut into their LAUSD coffee cake wedding cake.

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“We wanted something that was gonna be fun, that was gonna be memorable for people,” Boden said.

They held their wedding at the Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, surrounded by San Fernando Valley memorabilia, and got a California favorite — an In-N-Out truck — to serve guests.

The search for a cake that fit 

But when it came to the wedding cake, the couple struggled to find something suitable. Neither Boden nor Stollman liked frosting, and traditional wedding cakes didn’t excite them.

“We explored the more traditional tiered cake setup, and it just wasn’t meshing well,” Boden said.

Boden kept returning to the coffee cake she ate throughout her years in public school. Los Angeles Unified School District had published its official recipe online, but she wasn’t confident she could bake it herself. So she reached out to the district to ask for help.

The Stollman's wedding cake, decorated by the chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa, sits in a pastry box.

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How LAUSD made it happen 

Thomas Cohen, a public relations representative at the district, and Manish Singh, the director of food services, arranged for a chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa to prepare the wedding cake. The chef also shaped part of the cake into a heart just for the couple.

Singh said the district doesn’t take cake orders from the public — but made this exception.

“We were doing it just to make one of our Angelenos, an ex-LAUSD student, make her special day even more special,” Singh said.

For the bride, it was the icing on her big day.

“I think it’s all just part of being an L.A. student,” she said. “The fact that we have these amazing memories from childhood, I think it’s just so meaningful for a lot of people.”