The Brief

In the days following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, as people mourned and Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza intensified, a group led by young Jewish progressives began holding vigils around Los Angeles.

They would recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer in honor of the dead — for both Israelis who died in the attack and Palestinians killed in the airstrikes.

Asher Kaplan was at one of these vigils in Sherman Oaks when some cars pulled up alongside them, “blasting music, yelling at us, telling us that we were Nazis, you know, all this stuff,” he said.

Kaplan said those critics — like him and many in the crowd — were also members of the local Jewish community.

Since the attacks took place, American Jews have drawn together in their grief. At the same time, longstanding divisions within the Jewish community over Israel have been deepening.

It’s felt here in L.A., where the Jewish community leans liberal and criticism of the hardline Israeli government, at least pre-war, was not uncommon.

But even among Jewish progressives, feelings about Israel’s response are complex. Some are calling for a ceasefire. Others are grappling with mixed feelings, trying to reconcile their progressive values with outrage, grief, and a sense of feeling abandoned by the larger left.

“They’re on the one hand trying to balance their commitment to the rights of Palestinians with their commitment to Israel's rights,” said Dov Waxman, a political scientist with UCLA’s Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, “and the rights of Jews to live in the land, in Israel, in peace.”

‘A diversity of opinions’

Kaplan volunteers for IfNotNow, a national Jewish progressive group founded in 2014 that opposes Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. Last week the group protested in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ house in Brentwood, calling for an end to the airstrikes.

“I'm connected through friends and family to people that have been impacted by this, that have lost their lives and been taken hostage,” Kaplan told LAist. “I don't think that dropping 6,000 bombs on Gaza in the span of a week is an effective strategy for returning the hostages safely.”

Asher Kaplan of IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group that has called for a ceasefire.

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Kaplan, who grew up in Pico-Robertson’s Jewish enclave and is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, has found himself defending this stance with bystanders, friends, and relatives lately. Conversations sometimes turn angry.

“There have always been a diversity of opinions within the Jewish community about the state of Israel,” he said, “and criticism of the way that the country conducts itself is not criticism of Jewish people or Judaism.”

But emotions over the conflict are extremely raw, informed by the ever-present trauma of the Holocaust, and ongoing concerns about antisemitism.

As many Americans on the left have taken to the streets in support of Palestine, some of L.A.’s most progressive Jewish leaders say they feel isolated from other Americans who otherwise share their views.

‘I’ve never felt so alone’

In her sermon on Yom Kippur, less than two weeks before the Hamas attack, Rabbi Sharon Brous made clear her feelings about Israel’s conservative government.

“The fact is there can be no democracy with occupation,” she stated, speaking to her progressive IKAR congregation in Pico-Robertson.

Brous still feels this way. But she also feels abandoned by non-Jewish progressives, who she says have been less vocal and supportive about the loss of Israeli lives. Brous made this analogy:

“To imagine if there, God forbid, had been a massacre like this on American soil under the Trump administration,” she said. “And then, if the world responded to that massive loss of life by saying, ‘Well, but they lived under this government, so it's really their fault.’”

It’s a frustration that’s been shared by other Jewish progressives, among them Rabbi Joel Simonds with the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

“I've never felt more connected to my Jewish community, and I've never felt so alone in the larger world,” said Simonds, who directs the Jewish Center for Justice, which works with other progressive groups on issues like voting rights, environmental justice, LGBTQ rights and other causes.

Simonds said that while he’ll remain dedicated to his work with progressive coalitions, “Will I sit at the table with coalition partners that I sat at the table with a month ago? Maybe not, because I feel a sense of hurt."

He said he can’t speak for all Jewish progressives, but Simonds knows where he stands on the conflict.

Rabbi Joel Simonds at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple University Synagogue campus in Brentwood.

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“I like to consider myself a progressive and a liberal,” he said. “I'm not going to abandon those terms just because I have been frustrated with individuals who claim to be progressive. All that being said, I'm not a pacifist. I do believe in just war.”

Multiple truths

As the war escalates, it’s become clear that there’s no lockstep, just as there are no easy answers. UCLA’s Waxman said that right now, it’s difficult for people to accept and speak to multiple truths.

“It’s important that we can do both of these things, that we can denounce Hamas unequivocally for its terrorist attack, and also criticize the conduct and the way in which Israel is conducting its war against Hamas,” Waxman said. “But in this moment where passions are running so high on all sides and tempers are so inflamed, it seems, it is difficult for people to do that.”

As Rabbi Brous observes, the struggle for Jewish progressives is to reconcile the gray areas.

“The challenge of our time,” Brous said, “is to hold more than one truth at once, and to continue to hold above all else our humanity and one another's.”

California voters considering Proposition 45 will decide the fate of a sweeping infrastructure measure that opponents warn could render the state’s brand-new data center laws virtually toothless.

That would make it far easier for developers to force unwanted facilities into local communities, potentially undermining a growing wave of bans, moratoriums, and anti-data-center resolutions at the city and county level.

Data center backers insist the ballot measure will do nothing for them — even as some data center beneficiaries are spending big backing Prop. 45.

Supporters have framed Prop. 45 as a tool to accelerate critical infrastructure projects, like housing and schools, and the measure does not directly name data centers among the sorts of projects it considers critical. But some legal scholars and environmental advocates say that the proposition’s technical language creates a loophole. By expediting environmental reviews under the California Environmental Quality Act for broad categories of projects — including broadband internet facilities and any additional infrastructure required to get them up and running — the measure could quietly allow data centers to bypass recent state safeguards and local scrutiny.

Julia Stein, a legal scholar and deputy director at UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, warns that the measure acts as a “blunt force instrument when it comes to streamlining” because of how wide its secondary umbrella extends.

“What Prop. 45 does is designate an entire class of projects that would be subject to streamlining, and then it also says that projects ancillary to those projects — so something that you might need to do in the course of the development of the project that’s exempted itself — would fall within that same streamlining bubble,” Stein said.

Telecommunications projects are explicitly streamlined under the proposition, “and there’s an argument that the development of data centers might be necessary for projects like that,” Stein added.

Other projects, like high-speed rail, are explicitly excluded from streamlining under the proposition — but data centers are not on that list, either. Stein and three other environmental law scholars told CalMatters that this opens the door for legal challenges.

“The fact that they excluded some projects but have not expressly excluded data centers, a court would probably actually interpret that not as an unintentional oversight, but rather as intent to include data centers in the initiative,” said Matt McKerley, an attorney with Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger.

Further, opponents argue that the proposition’s language, which includes a clause that it would supersede other related laws, would override measures like the recently-passed Senate Bill 887, which made it harder to fast-track environmental review for data centers.

Industry representatives say these objections to Prop. 45 are misplaced. The Data Center Coalition, an industry group supporting Prop. 45, insists their facilities fall outside the initiative’s scope, which focuses largely on housing development.

The Los Angeles City Council approved the transfer of $5 million Wednesday to support residents and businesses affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, part of a $10.5 million recovery package proposed by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.

Households and businesses will soon be able to apply to receive assistance through a program established by the city’s Community Investment Department (CID). A timeline on when the applications will open or when grants will be provided was not immediately available.

A significant portion of the initial funding will go toward improving sanitation services near Lineage, including paying for workers’ overtime salaries to enhance pressure washing, bulky item pickup and to respond to illegal dumping.

Jurado addressed the council at Wednesday’s meeting, describing how the June fire had impacted residents’ health, livelihoods and peace of mind.

“The emergency is still ongoing, and it won’t end until the city can fulfill the long-term commitment we made with them to set a new bar for the level of care that the Eastside deserves. The funding that we can advance today is a milestone in turning that commitment, the promise that Boyle Heights can once again believe in its own future, into action,” Jurado said.

Months after the fire, residents reported dealing with exorbitant utility bills caused by running air purifiers and air conditioners over the summer. Some residents told Boyle Heights Beat that they lost work due to the fire and that support from Lineage, the city and county in the immediate aftermath was not enough. 

Here’s how the initial $5 million breaks down: 

• $2.5 million in direct financial assistance will go to more than 100 qualifying Boyle Heights businesses and Lineage workers in ZIP codes 90033, 90032, and 90063.
  
  • Qualified businesses with fewer than 6 employees will be eligible to receive $2,500 per month for six months.
  • Qualified businesses with 6 or more employees will be eligible to receive $5,000 per month for six months.
  • LA City residents employed by Lineage and experiencing economic hardship because of the fire will be eligible to receive $2,000 per month for six months. 
• $1.8 million in direct financial awards will go toward qualifying Boyle Heights households that were affected by the fire.
• $664,460 will go toward funding supplies and overtime salaries for pressure washing, bulky item pickup, and illegal dumping responses in Boyle Heights through the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, 2027.

The initial $5 million from the city’s unappropriated balance will go to L.A. Sanitation and CID. The additional proposed $5.5 million will come from Measure A funding to further support residents, according to Jurado’s office.  

What we still don’t know: 

It is still unclear when the application will open, how soon grants will be provided and how many residents and businesses will be chosen to receive financial relief. It is also unclear how soon L.A. Sanitation will begin additional cleanup near Lineage. Boyle Heights Beat has reached out to the CID with those questions and will update this story when we find out more. 

The post LA approves initial $5 million to help Boyle Heights residents, businesses recover from the Lineage fire appeared first on LA Local.

Aurora Morales was walking through an alley near MacArthur Park on Nov. 3, 2025, when she spotted something hidden behind a small group of people.

“There’s a guy,” Morales called out to her teammate, Angel Borjas. “He’s behind his wheelchair. He’s really hard to see.”

The man was squatted down and bent over at the waist, his forehead nearly touching the ground. For the Homeless Health Care L.A. overdose response team out that day, it was a familiar pose and a common sign of opioid use — known as "riding" or the "fentanyl fold."

The man bent over in front of them was behind buildings off Alvarado Street. It’s known as "Fentanyl Alley" and is half a block from MacArthur Park, where the team patrols every day. Fentanyl has devastated the area.

At the scene, team members gave the man an oxygen mask to breathe into. They explained to me how oxygen counteracts an often-deadly effect of fentanyl called respiratory depression — when the person's brain stops telling their body to breathe.

When the man regained his composure, he introduced himself as Sal. He told me he was feeling much better. He had recently returned to the park after his friends were concerned about his health and called LAFD paramedics, who took him to a hospital.

He seemed unfazed by his latest close call. “I’m just getting started, man!” Sal told me.

Aid workers handed Sal a package of naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug also known by the brand name Narcan. One of the aid workers, Joseph Cathey, told him the team would be back around to check on him.

Had the service workers not been there, Morales said, he would have overdosed.

 "Now he's up, he's breathing, he's talking." Morales said. "We got to prolong his life just one more day."

They saved a man’s life that morning — and they said it was a slow day.

MacArthur Park, once a destination for the most affluent Angelenos, has become a symbol of the opioid overdose epidemic that has torn across the U.S. in recent years.

The area is also recovering from a 2023 spike in violent crime — though still second only to Skid Row as the most violent place in L.A., according to an LAist analysis of LAPD crime data. Daily dangers at the park have left many afraid to go.

In an attempt to save lives, local officials have contracted a wide range of services to serve MacArthur Park, including free medical programs and gang violence reduction teams. Community organizations have also rallied to the area to regularly bring food, clothing and other necessities for people in need.

The high level of assistance creates tension between people who view the help as compassionate and others who see it as enabling drug use and criminal activity. Those in favor of more enforcement argue that local government leaders should focus on cracking down on crime, not making it easier for people to use drugs around the park.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli points toward MacArthur Park while speaking at a press conference after a drug enforcement operation there on May 6, 2026. “In my opinion, [needle exchange programs] make it worse,” Essayli told reporters. “You got these black Jeeps that drive around doing harm reduction, which means they're handing out clean needles, making it easier to sell drugs.”

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Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, was also at the press conference, and criticized local government leaders for “farming homelessness” by making it easy to do drugs near the park. “This is a fundamental disagreement that I think we have in America,” Oz said. “Giving people who are addicted what they need [to use drugs] doesn't free them.”

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As Mayor Karen Bass debated challengers Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt the same night as the May 6 raid, she said she would end the city’s needle exchange program, which has provided clean needles across the city since it was implemented to prevent the spread of AIDS/HIV in 1996. Bass reaffirmed that she did not support the program during a separate mayoral forum on Oct. 15. Nithya Raman, who advanced to the general election against Bass, has said she would not end the program.

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Raul Claros, founder of the non-profit CD1 Coalition, ran against Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez in the June primary election and stayed in an RV near MacArthur Park to bring attention to health and safety concerns there. I interviewed Claros in his RV on May 29, when he told me people need to have access to harm reduction programs, but not in public spaces like the park. “ I'm all about saving anybody and second, third chances, right?” Claros said. “ But not at the risk and harm of everybody else.”

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“There's a trend for people wanting punishment,” said Immanuel Camacho, a member of Homeless Health Care L.A.’s overdose response team. “But for us it's the opposite of that, it's kindness, it's being part of the community and showing care and affection.”

More services are available to unhoused people at the park than anywhere else in the city except Skid Row — and still, people told me it’s not enough. Service providers from multiple organizations said they have limited resources and face bureaucratic hurdles that can make it a challenge to connect people with the things they need most, like long-term medical care or housing.

As drug enforcement operations near the park transitioned in June from targeting dealers and distributors to people who were there to use drugs, several service providers told me people with substance use disorders were driven deeper into the shadows, where they are less likely to get the help they need and risk overdosing without anyone there to save them.

Overdose response and street medicine

The Homeless Health Care L.A. team prepares to head into MacArthur Park on Nov. 3, 2025.

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The Homeless Health Care L.A. team is in MacArthur Park every day, carrying naloxone and small oxygen tanks to prevent overdoses, first aid supplies and a biohazard box for used needles they pick up from the ground.

The team says they have prevented hundreds of people from dying of overdoses, either by their own intervention or through community members they trained how to recognize and respond to an overdose. They also report picking up more than 43,000 units of hazardous waste like used needles and other drug paraphernalia within just 15 months.

Walking into the park, the team is recognized almost immediately.

“There’s our people, Wawa,” one man said to his dog. He called the team over to check out his new skateboard. Several people approached to chat or thank them for their work.

Morales told me it took a while to build that kind of trust. Some people still refuse services, she said, but many who stay in the park appreciate having someone there to look after them.

Camacho said he believes their work benefits the community beyond the people they help directly. By reversing overdoses, they are also reducing the strain on local first responders and the healthcare system.

Still, they can’t stop every overdose in the park, and some people need more help than their team can provide — that’s when paramedics or physicians need to get involved.

Paramedics from the Los Angeles Fire Department's nearby Station 11 respond to more emergency calls than they did during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, about one-fifth of EMS calls near the park have been for suspected drug overdoses.

LAFD paramedics respond to a medical emergency near MacArthur Park on Aug. 9, 2026.

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LAFD paramedics respond to a medical emergency in MacArthur Park on May 29, 2026.

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LAFD paramedics check on a man outside the metro station across the street from MacArthur Park on Sept. 2, 2026.

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Capt. Erik Scott, a spokesperson for LAFD, told me that the department added a new unit in the area to bring field-based medical care to MacArthur Park.

In September 2025, Advanced Provider Response Unit 13 started treating patients around the park where they are, often without a trip to the hospital, and connecting frequent EMS users with preventive or primary care.

Members of the LAFD's Advanced Provider Response Unit 13 drive near MacArthur Park on Aug. 23, 2026.

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Scott said the specialized team also aims to reduce the number of emergency calls for fire companies and rescue ambulances, which could improve response times in the area — only Fire Station 9 in Skid Row had more emergency calls last year than Station 11.

Scott provided statistics from the department that showed a 10% decrease in 911 calls for medical emergencies near the park in 2025 compared to the previous year. Calls about overdoses proved to be more persistent, decreasing about 2%.

Mayor Karen Bass spoke with LAFD firefighters in MacArthur Park on Feb. 28, 2026. Bass told the firefighters she used to be a nurse and suggested she ride along one day on emergency calls. “Make sure you dress comfortably,” one of the firefighters replied, “because we’re going to be busy.”

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Along with paramedics, there are also doctors, nurses and social workers in the park every week.

“We go to the people on the streets — under the bridges, places like MacArthur Park — to provide the same level of care on the street that you'd expect in a brick-and-mortar clinic,” Brett Feldman told me.

Feldman is the director of USC’s street medicine program, which he founded in 2018. The program has received funding from the City of L.A. since 2022.

“Of all the places I've done street medicine, MacArthur Park was the most challenging to cover,” Feldman said.

He pointed to a USC study released in 2025 that found most of the people who receive treatment in MacArthur Park don’t live nearby.

“Only about 20% of people live in and around the park,” he told me, “so the rest are coming from different places around the city.”

It’s hard for healthcare workers to stay in touch with patients who have no fixed address, Feldman said. He said his team has tried to maintain contact by keeping a consistent schedule so people know how to find them. They’ve also hired a new full-time team this year to be able to serve the park Monday through Friday.

Contrary to a popular belief, Feldman said people who are unhoused or struggling with substance use do usually want treatment.

The USC study found that many people there desire treatment for mental health and substance use disorders, he said, but had never been offered those treatments.

“Even though our perception was there were so many services coming [to the park], we still weren't coming anywhere close to meeting the need,” Feldman said.

Some healthcare providers and local government officials are hopeful that new facilities and services could also help fill some of that need with supportive housing, recuperative care and addiction treatment.

Notably, the long-shuttered St. Vincent Hospital has reopened as a Behavioral Health Campus with beds to house more than 200 people struggling with mental illness and substance use disorders — there are another 600 beds planned for the site. That effort has raised millions of dollars from healthcare organizations and the state government.

L.A. Care Health Plan, a provider for public healthcare coverage like Medi-Cal and Medicare Plus, is also partnering with the city and county to roll out the MacArthur Park Care Collaborative. Along with expanding street medicine services in the area, the collaborative is expected to build a drop-in center near the park for people who are unhoused or suffering from substance use.

The collaborative will provide “low-barrier medical care, mental health services, overdose prevention, and pathways to longer-term care,” L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis told me in a statement.

Solis represents both Skid Row and MacArthur Park on the Board of Supervisors and serves on the L.A. Care board of governors.

“The focus is on meeting people where they are and reducing the barriers that keep individuals experiencing homelessness and substance use disorders from accessing care,” she said.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents the area on L.A.’s City Council, told me she has also been working to open a healthcare hub in the area since she took office, collaborating with the county and service providers. She got $3 million of the city’s opioid settlement funds approved to go toward a brick-and-mortar facility in 2024.

“We are not trying to saturate this neighborhood with services in the way that people oftentimes compare it to Skid Row,” Hernandez said, “but we are offering the spaces for people to be, because right now there's nowhere else for them to be except in our park and on our sidewalks.”

Medicine second to housing

Without housing, healthcare can be a “losing battle,” said Dr. Absalon Galat, medical director of L.A. County’s mobile clinic and street medicine program, which has been serving the park with comprehensive healthcare for two years.

“Housing is really the core, in terms of stabilizing somebody,” Galat said.

As a division of the county Department of Health Services, Galat said his program serves as a “one-stop shop.” They can help people who need substance use treatment or general healthcare, while connecting people to housing resources.

Dr. Lorenzo Gonzalez also works in the department as a physician and has led the mobile clinic that serves MacArthur Park every Thursday. He agrees that healthcare takes a back seat to housing needs for the people he treats in MacArthur Park.

The L.A. County Department of Health Services’ mobile clinic brings comprehensive medical care to the park every Thursday.

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Gonzalez said he hears from patients who lost their homes in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think medicine comes second to housing needs and more immediate needs of shelter, safety,” Gonzalez said.  “ We provide comprehensive medical care, and we also have folks here like a social worker and a community health worker that can help you with your social needs.”

Gonzalez said he also acts as a liaison between housed residents near MacArthur Park and his patients by attending local government and community meetings.

“We walk a line, right? We want to be there to support the MacArthur Park folks that live, rent and are taking their children to the park,” he said. “And we want to make sure that our [unhoused] patients have a voice and are seen in these spaces where they're normally not at.”

Jennifer Haid has worked in the park since 2021, connecting people to housing and other services through her nonprofit HumanKind LA.

Haid, who has an office across the street, said she sees the park as a place for community that everyone can share in.

Jennifer Haid of HumanKind LA meets with a client at her office near MacArthur Park on Aug. 5, 2026.

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“The park can serve many things,” she said. “It can serve as a place for wound care and food. It can serve as a place for healing and peace for people just as much as it can serve as a place for sports and whatever else.”

Haid told me that service providers in the area like herself have spent a long time building trust and gathering the required paperwork to get people housed. She said recent drug enforcement raids have made her job “infinitely more difficult,” making the park an unwelcoming, unsafe place for her clients and leading most of them to stay out of the area.

Haid said many of her clients have already been met with a lifetime of broken promises and believe the system isn’t on their side. It’s tragic, she said, when people who have put in the work to receive housing are now missing the opportunities they applied for.

“Finally, something has come to fruition,” Haid said, “and they can't be here to get it.”

A man pushes a cart past an alleyway half a block from MacArthur Park on Feb. 11, 2026. People often go to the alleys near the park to use drugs out of sight, but service providers say this can increase the risk they overdose with no one around to help.

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Preventing gang violence

Many of the people bringing services to MacArthur Park grew up in the area or know what it's like from their own experiences to deal with drug use, organized crime or homelessness.

Several service workers from different organizations told me their personal experience gives them a sense of compassion and understanding toward the people they are trying to help.

Tina Padilla-Zamora said her father was a gang member. She told me she didn’t see any other way of living life when she was growing up in Northeast L.A. For a while, she followed in his footsteps.

“Being in a gang was what you're supposed to do,” she said. After experiencing life in prison, she said, she decided to take another path.

Padilla-Zamora became a case manager for local violence intervention organizations before she started Community Warriors 4 Peace, a non-profit organization now contracted by the city as part of the Gang Reduction and Youth Development program.

Tina Padilla-Zamora and her son, center, stand with members of Community Warriors 4 Peace in MacArthur Park, on Oct. 31, 2025. Padilla-Zamora started the organization to help reduce gang violence in L.A.

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She told me personal experience like hers gives gang violence intervention workers the tools they need to lower tensions between neighboring gangs.

They know where the “invisible boundaries” are that divide the territories of different gangs around the park, she said, and they know how to pick up on signs other people might miss — subtle warnings that violence might erupt. They provide safe passage for children to local schools and help gang members to find their own paths away from organized crime.

Two other organizations, Homies Unidos and Healing Urban Barrios, are also contracted by the city to work in the park as peace ambassadors and reduce community violence.

Padilla-Zamora said that while she understands that law enforcement has their own job to do, the city can’t arrest its way out of the problems in MacArthur Park.

Eventually, she said, those people who are arrested will come home, where they will need other resources and opportunities to avoid returning to gangs. Those resources — like quality jobs and housing — have been in short supply around MacArthur Park for decades.

Supporting community

Although homelessness and substance use issues are among the most apparent problems facing MacArthur Park, some people — housed and unhoused alike — lack even simple things like food or community. To fill those needs, local non-profit and faith-based organizations are in the park nearly every day, providing mobile food banks, free meals and religious services.

Chris Turner works for L.A. Dream Center, which is one of the organizations that brings food to the park through a mobile food bank.

Turner spoke to me as dozens of people lined up behind a white box truck for their turn to receive groceries. He said his organization works with the L.A. Regional Food Bank to serve low-income communities across L.A., and they come to MacArthur Park once a week.

“I've been on the other side of the line of the people that I feed every day,” Turner told me. He said he grew up going to food banks, and sees this work as a chance to make a difference when 1 in 4 L.A. County households face food insecurity.

Others work to carve out space in the park for family-friendly activities that celebrate the neighborhood’s rich culture.

Allegra Padilla is the executive director of Music, Arts & Community · Los Angeles, which hosts a wide range of concerts every year — everything from cumbia and big band to punk rock.

Padilla told me that these events provide a space to reconnect with tradition, experience something new and connect with people through music and food.

“Not only might someone see themselves reflected on stage,” she said, “but they might also be able to connect to a valuable resource while they're on the lawn or get to make some art with their grandmother.”

Padilla said she sees different groups working to uplift MacArthur Park in the midst of the fentanyl crisis, and hopes that there will be longer-term commitments and opportunities for people in the area.

“This was not something that was happening before, you know, five years ago,” Padilla told me. “So how can we all rise to the occasion and figure it out?”

On a tour of Orange County’s voting headquarters on Wednesday, Registrar Bob Page demonstrated the careful, multi-step process through which voters’ ballots are validated and counted.

As the federal government raises the specter of unsubstantiated voter fraud, Page’s message was clear: “ I want voters to know that we're doing everything we can to make sure they can vote safely and securely."

More than 380,000 Orange County ballots have been returned as of Oct. 27, Page said. That’s about 80,000 more ballots than was received around the same time in 2022, the last mid-term elections.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page addresses the media and other members of the public in attendance as part of a tour of the voting operations on Wednesday, less than one week before Election Day.

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The journey of a ballot in Orange County

Collecting, and counting, all those ballots takes time. Page explained that two-person teams are dispatched to collect dropped-off ballots every day during election season.

The ballot drop-off boxes in Orange County are made of steel, weigh more than 1,000 pounds and are bolted to the concrete, Page said.

The ballot retrieval duos are required to follow a strict process to ensure the chain of custody remains secure, including taking photos showing they’ve picked up the ballots, properly locked the retrieval door and that the internal fire suppression canister is intact.

The locations of the two-person teams are GPS-tracked by separate teams, which also review the photo evidence before giving the ballot retrieval duos the green light to go to their next stops.

An overhead camera shows the process that occurs after the signatures on a ballot have been verified and the ballot is then ready to be counted.

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Signature verification

Once a ballot reaches the Registrar of Voters’ office, the next step is ensuring the signature on the envelope matches the voter's signatures in their registration file.

“If we do challenge [a signature], we’re required under state law to send a first-class letter notice to that voter,” Page said, adding that state statute affords voters until the day before Thanksgiving this year to correct errant signatures.

Page said three election workers must agree that enough of a discrepancy exists before the decision to challenge a signature is made.

Around 1.9% of the nearly 718,000 vote-by-mail ballots returned in the June primary election in Orange County were rejected, largely due to signature mismatch or because they weren’t received in time, according to the California Secretary of State.

Verified ballots are then separated from their envelopes and sorted before they’re prepared to be scanned and, finally, counted. The equipment used to tally votes isn’t connected to the internet, and access to the room the equipment is housed in is limited, according to Page.

Threats from the federal government

On Wednesday evening, a federal judge denied an emergency request from the Department of Justice to segregate 20,000 ballots across California that the federal government said were sent to “likely” noncitizens.

More than 1,750 of those people identified were in Orange County, according to a letter Bill Essayli, top federal prosecutor for the Central District of California, delivered to the county registrar’s office Monday.

The Department of Justice said it will appeal the ruling from U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, who, in his decision, said the federal government’s attempted move could “wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway.”

California Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta called the ruling an “important victory,” but warned “the fight is not over.”

On Wednesday, before the ruling came down, Bonta released resources about election integrity in the state, including guidance for local election officials if law enforcement attempts to “access election sites where ballots are cast, processed, or counted.”

Page said he’s fielded more questions from the public this year about the potential for law enforcement to interfere in the election. He said he will have open lines of communication with partners with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and  Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center should the threat arise.

What’s on your ballot?

Our LAist Voter Game Plan is here to help guide you through the Nov. 3 election with guides to races across Los Angeles and Orange counties — and that long list of state propositions — to help you cast a ballot that’s in line with your own personal beliefs and values.

But the one thing we don’t do? We don’t tell you how to vote. That part is left up to you.

You can find it all at LAist.com/Vote.