The Brief

Originally published by The 19th

Sriya Srinivasan stopped menstruating for nearly three years and had no idea why. She went online for answers, and the search results frightened her so much that she stayed silent about the problem instead of asking relatives or teachers for help.

“I was searching on the internet for, ‘Where's my period?' What is going on?’” said the 16-year-old from Solano County, California. “It told me that I was dying in different ways, whether that was ovarian cancer or I had a tumor. I didn't want anyone else to be as scared as I was during that time, so that's why I hid it.”

Finally, a doctor’s visit for an unrelated issue revealed the culprit, a medical condition that she’d like to keep private. But Srinivasan has been public about how little she knew about the menstrual cycle before hers came to a halt. Now through the state’s citizen-led legislative process, she’s championing legislation that would mandate that California’s public middle and high schools expand the definition of comprehensive sexual health education to include menstrual health.

About the proposed bill

With such a shift, Assembly Bill 2229 would close what its bipartisan backers call a “curriculum gap.” Current sex ed instruction focuses on pregnancy, contraception and sexually-transmitted infections but not explicitly on menstrual health. The legislation also acknowledges the importance of teaching students about a wide range of topics related to the menstrual cycle such as premenstrual syndrome, menstrual disorders, menstrual stigma and menopause. Advocates would like the bill, which to date has passed the California State Assembly and is moving through the Senate, to have a ripple effect across the country. Virginia and Washington, D.C., have already passed similar legislation.

“I think it's really important to reduce shame and help people understand their bodies,” said Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, a Democrat and the bill’s primary sponsor. “Everybody should be learning about this, so I hope that nationwide, this is a thing. I hope that this is something that our federal partners get on board with.”

The California teen pushing for change

Last fall, Srinivasan started a Change.org petition about including menstrual health education in California public schools. She also submitted the idea to the “There Oughta Be A Law” contest by which California legislators accept policy proposals from their constituents.

Training with the nonprofit Advocates for Youth — which fights for sexual health, rights and justice — helped her view herself as a youth advocate capable of creating change, she said. Srinivasan has appreciated her experiences leading the Solano Reproductive Health Club at Solano Community College, where she participates in a dual enrollment program as a high school student. The club was involved in the launch of the Know Your Period Campaign, along with students across California, to advocate for AB 2229.

When Wilson received Srinivasan’s “There Oughta Be A Law” proposal, she was struck by the teenager’s ordeal. Her submission beat out ideas from over 300 other constituents.

“She actually didn't realize that she was severely ill and that she needed medical care,” Wilson said. “She eventually got medical care, but then when she was talking with her friends about it, all of them were talking about how they didn't know about menstruation and they hadn't learned about it in school. So when she presented the bill to us, it was just really impactful.”

The nationwide state of menstruation education

Research indicates that teenagers throughout the United States would welcome changes to menstruation education. “State of the Period 2023” — a study commissioned by the period underwear company Thinx Inc. and the advocacy organization PERIOD: the Menstrual Movement — found that 78% of teens agree that menstrual health education should be a part of a school’s core curriculum. Yet 78% of teens also say they learn more about the inner workings of frogs than of women’s bodies. Seventy-six percent of teens say they would appreciate frank communication about their menstrual cycles but feel that periods are a verboten topic at school. The study found that Hispanic and lower-income students were most likely to say that they have experienced stress related to managing menstruation at school and that society teaches people to be ashamed of having a period. Public relations firm SKDK surveyed 1,020 teenagers between the ages of 13 and19 and 1,050 adults between the ages of 20 and 50 online September 5-10, 2023.

“Menstrual health education is something that has been lacking for years — for centuries,” said Damaris Pereda, national programs director for PERIOD. “Often, people only learn what their family or people in their community may share with them. Often, menstrual health education is not taught in schools or not taught extensively in schools; it's kind of mentioned. And all of this has really contributed to the continued stigma we see.”

Many people know how to manage periods with pads and tampons but are uneducated about menstrual disorders, menstrual irregularities or menopause, Pereda added. In 2021, California was widely applauded for passing the Menstrual Equity for All Act, requiring public schools to provide free pads and tampons to students. At the time, there were no immediate plans to give students in the state a comprehensive menstrual health education.

What's next in California

Pereda applauds the current effort to make such education a requirement in California schools. If AB 2229 passes, she anticipates that it will influence other states to adopt similar policies. The Golden State, the nation’s most populous, enjoys what experts have described since the 1970s as “The California Effect,” meaning that its policies set the benchmark nationwide.

“Once California does any changes, big shifts in education, and in any aspects, it does have a ripple effect around the country,” Pereda said. “We have full trust that this is going to impact the rest of the country, and I'm really excited about increasing menstrual health education. Imagine where our students will be in 10 years in terms of accessibility and education.”

In 2021, California was widely applauded for passing the Menstrual Equity for All Act, requiring public schools to provide free pads and tampons to students. (Carol Yepes/Getty Images)There are already signs that menstrual health education is becoming a priority nationwide. In April, Virginia passed legislation giving school boards the authority to allow it to be taught in the health education curriculum for students in grades 4 to 8. Taking effect on July 1, the law is not as broad as California’s pending legislation, since school boards may prohibit or limit such instruction.

What's next nationally

In the nation’s capital, the Council of the District of Columbia passed the Expanding Student Access to Period Products Act of 2022. The law not only requires schools to equip students with menstrual products, but it also outlines standards to improve menstrual health education for students starting in the fourth grade, regardless of their gender. The legislation’s passage made Washington, D.C., the nation’s first jurisdiction to enact menstrual education guidelines. One of the topics covered in the curriculum is when students should seek medical care for a menstrual concern, subject matter that likely would have benefited Srinivasan.

Wilson is hopeful that California will soon follow in the footsteps of Washington, D.C. Given how many stories she’s heard about people’s ignorance concerning menstruation, the assemblywoman contends that education is overdue.

“There was one young girl who testified about PMS, and she said, ‘I didn't even know what that was. I thought it was when guys call you angry,’” Wilson said. “PMS — that’s a real thing. Learning is power. There shouldn't be a stigma around menstrual health. Male, female, it doesn't matter who you are, you should be well versed in it.”

Why it matters

Srinivasan said that her classes have not prepared her well. In fifth grade, she received minimal education about menstruation that focused more on the anatomy than it did on practical information such as how to use tampons or pads. It did not address why menstruation is perceived to be an off-limits subject. Boys and girls were separated for the lesson, which she suspects stigmatized the topic even more. Eighty-five percent of teens say that everyone, whether or not they have periods, should learn about the menstrual cycle, according to the “State of the Period 2023.” In seventh and ninth grade, Srinivasan took sex education classes, but they did not address menstruation, she said.

In retrospect, Srinivasan does not doubt that she would have sought help when her period first stopped had her school exposed her to menstrual health education.

“If that had occurred, I would have been comfortable enough to say, ‘I'm having issues with my period. Somebody help me,’” she said. Going to school in an environment where students who discuss menstruation are ridiculed or criticized made it difficult to speak up. “It makes it harder for individuals to actually talk about their periods because it seems somehow taboo,” she said. “So, of course, if this education was there, and I knew about it, I would have been able to ask for further clarification and support.”

Whether or not AB 2229 is enacted, Srinivasan views the impetus behind it as greater than any one piece of legislation.

“AB 2229 isn't just a bill,” she said. “It's a movement, and it's a campaign to address the education that students haven't been able to access for so many years. Even past the bill, we will continue to fight.”

In Los Angeles, the soundtrack is familiar. Car horns, the whine of leaf blowers.

But in the middle of Chinatown, another sound cuts through the din: the rhythmic hum of washers and dryers from a trailer parked outside the Alpine Recreation Center.

Chinatown hasn’t had a laundromat for as long as anyone around can remember. This mobile setup – run by the nonprofit The Laundry Truck LA – has become the neighborhood’s de facto laundromat, offering the service for free to locals, twice a week.

For 70-year-old Sam Ma, it’s been a relief.

Ma, a retired construction worker, picked up freshly-laundered items — two pairs of pants, a hat, and some socks, bundled in a white garbage bag for the bus ride home.

He usually washes his clothes by hand. But about two weeks ago, he was hit by a car. Bruises and cuts cover his hands, making it difficult to scrub heavier items.

“The things I can wash, I wash,” he said in Mandarin. “But these are too thick. It’s too hard.”

Rebel Fox of The Laundry Truck L.A. hands a garbage bag filled with newly-laundered sheets to a local.

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Nearby, Laundry Truck employee Rebel Fox checked him out with a clipboard after handing him his load.

“We help a lot of seniors out here,” Fox said. “And we offer folding services, too. It really helps people who don’t have the dexterity in their hands.”

The Laundry Truck started out in 2019 providing laundry services to people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles and has expanded to high-need communities, like Eaton Fire survivors.

In February, the nonprofit started operating in Chinatown under a year-long contract with Council District 1, showing up every Wednesday and Thursday at 9 a.m.

A sink or bathtub

Chinatown advocates say the lack of a laundromat is especially hard on low-income tenants living in older, neglected buildings.

“These landlords aren’t doing much to keep it updated,” said Sissy Trinh, executive director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance.

Maintaining laundry rooms may require major plumbing upgrades and hookups that many landlords avoid.

Newly-constructed residential buildings are typically being constructed with in-unit laundry.

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Advocates say in buildings that do have shared coin-operated machines, they may be broken or in constant use. Many residents decide to launder clothes by hand — in sinks or bathtubs.

“In one building, the sinks were so small, people had to cut their sheets in half just to wash them,” Trinh said. “They’d wash one half, then the other.”

A reversal of access

Those who could benefit from a laundromat include seniors on fixed incomes, and workers living paycheck to paycheck, including garment workers and home health aides.

“You’re talking about low-income, financially-stressed households,” Paul Ong said.

Ong, who studies urban inequality at UCLA, says Chinatown reflects a broader pattern: as neighborhoods change, basic services can disappear.

Each pile of dirty clothes is labeled with customers' names.

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The neighborhood’s last full-service grocery store closed in 2019 after the property was sold to a developer. Meanwhile, new market-rate housing has gone up, catering to higher-income residents with amenities like parking and in-unit laundry.

“The irony is that historically, laundry was bread and butter for the Chinese community,” Ong said.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese immigrants built livelihoods around laundry work — one of the few industries open to them at the time.

Nowadays, laundry options have become hard to come by.

Seeking a lasting fix

Residents without access to machines have to leave the neighborhood entirely to find a laundromat in Lincoln Heights or Echo Park, which has seen its own laundromats disappear.

Laundry can be spotted drying on balconies across Chinatown.

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“The long-term, permanent solution is that a laundry service opens up,” in the neighborhood, said Council member Eunisses Hernandez, who represents Chinatown.

Hernandez says constituents have asked for a laundromat from the time she was knocking on doors as a City Council candidate.

Hernandez, who is up for re-election this year, says the neighborhood could benefit from a community-run laundromat offering affordable services.

“If private industry is not making that investment in Chinatown then perhaps it’s up to the city – and the people of that neighborhood – to build something for them,” she said.

In the meantime, Hernandez has directed about $250,000 from her district — using TFAR payments from developers building larger projects — to cover a year of mobile laundry services.

The contract with the Laundry Truck runs through next February.

After that?

“We’ll keep filling the gap until we get to a permanent solution,” Hernandez said.

Could that solution be combined with housing?

Some community advisors to a new affordable housing project being developed on the northwestern edge of Chinatown have been pushing for a self-service laundry that would be open to other neighborhood residents, says Eugene Moy who sits on the advisory board of New High Village.

But any fix will take time. That project, Moy said, could be two years out from even breaking ground.

Taking a load off 

Back at the truck, the machines continue to spin. By mid-afternoon, nearly 18 loads of laundry are done.

The trailer for the LA Laundry Truck is set up outside the Alpine Recreation Center, across from Castelar Elementary School.

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Two months in, there are kinks to work out. How to get more residents to take advantage of the unit's capacity? Its machines can churn out 40 loads per shift.

There is also the question of whether some seniors are physically able to transport their laundry even a few blocks.

But the service is starting to get regulars. One woman on her second visit stood by the trailer, cradling just-washed clothes in her arms while clutching her daughter's teddy bear, now a sparkling white.

"If it keeps going, I'll keep coming," said the woman who gave her last name as Mo. "It's very convenient."

Her apartment building doesn’t have a laundry room. Sometimes she asks a friend next door if she can use theirs. With three children, the cost adds up quickly.

Thinking aloud, she calculated how much she saved that day.

About $8, she estimated — money she said could now spend on her kids.

At Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona, a mural depicts the now-disgraced farm worker leader from the waist-up, in a serene, almost Buddha-like pose. To his left, a lady justice figure holds the scales of justice and on the right, there are images of farm workers toiling in a field. Chavez looks like a saint.

One of five murals at Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona, painted by Paul Botello.

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“And that's what people thought he was,” said Pomona Mayor Tim Sandoval as he stood in front of the mural.

But after several women stepped forward accusing the late labor icon of sexual assault, that view has radically changed. Now there are calls to remove his image from public spaces, widely impacting Southern California, which has a large concentration of murals, plaques, street names, and statues dedicated to him.

But do the entire murals have to be removed, or can there be a more nuanced approach to the re-evaluation of Chavez’s legacy — a re-evaluation that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?

This week, the artist Paul Botello, Pomona Mayor Sandoval, and Pitzer College Emeritus Professor José Calderón, a former activist who was involved in getting the murals painted, met up at the park, in the shadow of the busy 57 freeway, to discuss how to go forward.

The story behind the murals

In the early 2000s violence between Black and Latino gang members gripped Pomona.

“When a young Latino was killed, we actually did a march all the way from City Hall to what is now this park,” said Calderón.

Calderon helped organize that march. He said activists were inspired by something Chavez liked to say, that when you get angry, don’t take it out on others — organize.

So they lobbied for the park, which was filled with trash and syringes, to be cleaned up and made family friendly. And because they used his quote, it was named Cesar Chavez Park.

Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona was dedicated after activists lobbied the City of Pomona to help curb gang violence.

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Muralist Paul Botello was chosen to create five murals at the park that depicted Chavez from youth, through his service in the U.S. Navy during World War Two, to key moments during his farm worker activism.

Today, while he feels betrayed by Chavez, he’s also keen to preserve parts of the murals which tell the bigger story of the exploitation of farm workers and the fight to improve their conditions.

While California state law says an artist must be consulted if there are any proposed changes to a mural, the ultimate decision will be made by Pomona City Council.

Sandoval said he has not received calls or emails at City Hall. But people in his various social and civic circles have told him, he says, that Chavez’s images should be removed.

Paul Botello holds mock-ups of changes he'd like to make to his murals of Cesar Chavez at a park in Pomona.

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Botello had brought mock-ups of the alterations he’d like to make to each mural. For the mural which depicts Chavez in a Buddha-like pose, for example, he wants to replace his face with the face of a farmworker wearing a hat.

He also wants to keep much of another mural, which depicts Chavez as a teenager in a suit surrounded by boys and girls sitting on rows of tilled soil. His one change is to turn the image of Chavez into a Zoot Suiter, a rebellious Mexican American youth from the mid 20th century.

A mural by Paul Botello depicts Cesar Chavez and children on a farm.

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“ 95 percent is going to be there because it just represents all the youth who also toil in the field to help their parents,” he said.

Calderon agrees with these more targeted changes. He fears painting over the murals entirely would erase the neighborhood activism that led to the creation of this park.

He’s also concerned their removal would give fuel to people who oppose Latino activism and the growing movement in public education to require the teaching of Latino history.

“The right and the white supremacists are already using it to say, ‘see this is what we told you about Cesar being anti-immigrant’”, he said. “But now they're going a little bit further and they want to wipe out ethnic studies”.

A mural at Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona.

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While Botello wants to keep the mural of Chavez serving in the U.S. Navy, because he believes it's important to show that Latinos have contributed to this country's military, he’s keen to make a change in the fifth mural.

It depicts a young man and woman above the phrase “Sí se puede,” the famous farmworker slogan, “yes, we can.”

The young man is clearly Chavez. Botello says he wants to replace it with the face of Dolores Huerta, the woman who led the United Farm Workers with Chavez and has accused Chavez of rape.

Mayor Sandoval says he plans to bring up Botello’s proposals at the next city council meeting.

There’s a fair amount of recreational activities Angelenos can do in and around the Los Angeles River like biking, walking, even kayaking, but did you know you can also dance in the dry river bed of a Los Angeles icon?

Adam Weiss, founder of the Gratitude Group leans over and DJs a set at his Los Angeles River dance party.

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Dancing in the sun

Adam Weiss is the founder of the Gratitude Group, a club that hosts various events across Los Angeles like dance parties at the River, a screen-free reading club at the Central Library and meditative sound baths at Elysian Park. That’s just this weekend alone.

Weiss has been hosting the free dance parties for about two years now. The locations vary. Previously he’s held them at the Elysian Park helipad.

“Everybody wants to dance, they're just waiting to be invited to dance, and then if you're a good DJ, you just keep the floor packed,” said Weiss, who also deejays these events. Lately it's been a lot of disco, funk and soul. Weiss also likes to keep the gatherings dry, meaning no drugs or alcohol. He thinks it makes people engage with each other more.

“So the focus really is on connection and dancing,” Weiss said.

Attendees of the Los Angeles River dance party move to the music.

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Ariana Valencia lives in Burbank and attended last month's dance party, also at the L.A. River. She says dancing in the middle of the concrete riverbed made the city feel like a playground that she could explore.

“I’d never been to the L.A. River prior to that. You think it’s just a little swampy little pond, but it was actually really full,” said Valencia. “I would have never thought that was in the middle of the city.”

Uniquely Los Angeles

Weiss says part of the appeal is not just getting people outside but to get them to experience Los Angeles differently.

At the last event, people walking or biking along the river path joined on a whim — some even brought their kids. Weiss says that’s exactly the kind of reaction he hopes for.

“ I want it to be family friendly. I want it to feel welcoming. I want it to be inclusive,” Weiss said. “My main thing is I just want people to actually dance. I think it feels good to dance.”

A woman and two children join in on the dance party.

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For Valencia that inclusiveness is part of the draw. She says she’ll be joining again this Sunday.

“Even though it wasn’t advertised as a dry event I think the fact that it was a family friendly kind of thing was appealing to me,” said Valencia.

Join the party

After the last dance party went viral, Weiss says more than 1,500 people have RSVP-ed for tomorrow's event. This compelled him to close reservations.

Weiss plans to hold the event every other week this Spring and Summer — taking place either at the River or the Elysian Field Helipad with its amazing view of the city.

Weiss wants to start branching out too, and is eyeing the Culver City Stairs as a possible location.

“ I just wanna bring people to cool interesting places to dance,” Weiss said.

The immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles has placed dozens of people in solitary confinement each month since June, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up in June 2025, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled. By July, it was 73; by August, 105.

The most recent data available shows that number went down slightly in January, to 74 people.

Ranked by percentage of the detainee population in “segregation,” as it is called at immigrant detention centers, Adelanto is among the U.S.’s top 10 facilities as of January, according to an LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data.

The data shows that of 229 ICE facilities that reported holding people since October 2024, between 50 and 60 usually reported putting at least one person in segregation in a given month. Out of the facilities that did place people in solitary confinement, Adelanto tended to do so less often than others until June 2025. (The facility held just a few people from October 2024 into January 2025.) When ICE’s presence increased in L.A. in June, the number of people sent to isolation in the facility also shot up — three to five times as many people have been isolated in Adelanto compared to the average facility that used any solitary confinement.

Since June, only two facilities have sent people to solitary confinement more times than Adelanto: one southwest of San Antonio, the other in central Pennsylvania.

Both of those facilities held twice the number of detainees as Adelanto on average from October 2024 through September 2025; but the number of people held in Adelanto since then has tripled, growing larger than either of the other facilities to hold an average of 1,800 people a day since October.

More on solitary confinement  

According to ICE, detainees may be placed in segregation for “disciplinary reasons,” or because of:

• “Serious mental or medical illness.”
• Conducting a hunger strike.
• Suicide watch.

The agency also says it might place detainees “who may be susceptible to harm [if left among the] general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression.”

Not only is ICE holding more people in solitary confinement, but the agency's data also shows that detainees across the country are being isolated for longer periods of time. Detainees ICE considers part of the "vulnerable & special population" spent an average of about two weeks in solitary confinement each time they were isolated in 2022, when ICE first made the data available. By the end of 2025, the average stay in isolation had risen to more than seven weeks straight.

The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment.

How isolation can affect immigrant detainees  

UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last 15 days or more to be torture, though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution.

The UN also maintains that solitary confinement should be prohibited for people “with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”

In January, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of current detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. In addition to an unsanitary environment and a lack of healthy food and clean drinking water, detainees say solitary confinement is frequently used to punish those who speak out about conditions at the facility.

People held in immigrant detention centers are technically in “civil detention,” meaning that they are being detained to ensure their presence at hearings and compliance with immigration orders — not to serve criminal sentences.

According to the immigrant rights groups’ complaint, one detainee was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the showers being broken. Another detainee said that, after asking a guard to “use more respectful language toward him, he was ridiculed, written up and given the middle finger by a guard who shouted, ‘Who the f--- do you think you are?’” Then, the detainee was placed in solitary confinement for 25 days.

Alvaro Huerta, the director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing detainees at Adelanto, told LAist that when people are placed in isolation at the facility, they’re typically in the same cell for 23 hours per day, unable to receive visits from their families.

For clients who are experiencing mental health challenges — especially those with suicidal thoughts — being placed in solitary confinement “can really exacerbate their condition,” he added.

In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” The agency has also said that detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” and that all detainees “receive medical, dental, and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.”

Huerta called that “laughable.”

“We have countless examples of people who have said that this is not true, that they're not getting the medication that they're requesting, that they're not being seen for chronic conditions and emergency conditions,” he added. “And we know it's not true because 14 people have died in ICE custody this year alone.”