The Brief

This story  was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on July 1, 2025.

In 2015, photographer and videographer Piero F. Giunti had a dream about Art Kane’s iconic “A Great Day in Harlem” photograph featuring 57 jazz musicians — including Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie — on the steps of a Harlem brownstone.

Originally shot in 1958 for Esquire magazine, the photo followed Giunti for weeks, popping up in conversations and on social media. When a musician friend mentioned the photograph at a Boyle Heights recording studio, he knew he had to honor Eastside musicians in the same spirit.

“When Black and Brown people weren’t allowed to play the Sunset Strip and the clubs downtown, East L.A. always had its doors open,” said Giunti, who was born and raised in L.A. to a Mexican mother and Italian father. “There was Lalo’s Nightclub, The Paramount ballroom, Catholic Youth Organization (C.Y.O.), which became Self Help Graphics. East L.A. has always been a safe haven for every genre.”

Giunti teamed up with musician and historian Mark Guerrero, whose father, Lalo Guerrero, is considered the “Father of Chicano Music.” Together with UC Riverside Chicanx history professor Jorge Leal and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes senior curator Karen Crews Hendon, they co-curated “A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound,” the largest exhibit of its kind, which opened Saturday at LA Plaza.

Co-curators of “A Great Day in East L.A.” exhibit at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. From left: Piero F. Giunti, Esperanza Sanchez, Karen Crews Hendon, Mark Guerrero and Jorge Leal.

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Courtesy of LA Plaza.

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Giunti shot 170 black and white portraits of 450 artists, including East L.A. DIY jarocho punk band ¡Aparato! and Indigenous Chicano rap-rock band Aztlan Underground standing proudly in full performance attire. The portraits form the visual centerpiece of the exhibition.

“I’ve been a part of the East L.A. music scene since 1963. I know everybody, played with everybody, worked with everybody,” said Guerrero, 76, who as a teenager sang in the popular band Mark & the Escorts, playing at dances with Thee Midniters and The Premiers. In 1972, he released the socially-conscious hit protest song “I’m Brown” on Capitol Records. “The interviews we conducted are basically conversations with my peers.”

In 1998, Guerrero started chronicling Chicano and East L.A. musicians who, like himself, are often ignored by mainstream media. His website is an encyclopedia of untold Eastside music stories that helped inform the exhibit, which spans 75 years–from the 1950s to the present–and features 500 artifacts, including rare photographs, clothing, instruments, concert tickets and posters of over 450 artists who are from, inspired by or are beloved on the Eastside.

A woman plays an instrument during the opening of “A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound,” on June 28, 2025.

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Courtesy of LA Plaza.

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Scribbled Los Lobos song lyrics, a sleeveless polyester pantsuit worn by tribal electronica duo Mezklah, soul singer Brenton Wood’s very own grey wool zoot suit and the dress that Martha Gonzalez of Quetzal wore to the Grammy Awards are on display for the first time. Band merch like bright cotton T-shirts, CDs and stickers, nostalgic flyers, records and out-of-print magazines fill El Rockero Store, one of six themed galleries that include The Venue, The Garage, Radio Rebelde, From East Los to the World and Los Lobos’ very own Come On, Let’s Go!

“The biggest fear of a project like this is people passing away,” said Giunti, citing Wood, who died January 3, and Rudy Salas of Tierra, who died in 2020. “It made it even more important to capture as many artists as possible. No artist was left behind.”

The project, which took 10 years to compile interviews, shoot photos and gather paraphernalia from community donors and the curators’ and artists’ own collections, drew hundreds of musicians and music aficionados to the opening.

“We would crash weddings to hear Thee Midniters,” Olivia Rodriguez, 82, who grew up in East L.A. and attended the opening with friends, said with a laugh. “One night we saw them open for The Temptations at Union Hall. They didn’t charge much. It was like $2. Shows were jam-packed with wall-to-wall people. Sometimes you couldn’t even dance, but they sounded fantastic. We cheered them on and they played for hours.”

The exhibition opened amid ICE raids and uprisings — a resonance not lost on those involved. The Eastside sound has long intersected with social justice movements: bands like Tierra and Los Illegals provided the soundtrack to a generation asserting cultural pride in a post-Moratorium era. Later generations, including Quetzal and Las Cafeteras, developed their sound alongside immigrant rights advocacy.

At LA Plaza, local artist collectives Ni Santas and Art Space HP hosted anti-ICE-fueled art-making workshops as KCRW Summer Nights headliner The Altons conducted sound checks for an eager audience. Across the way on Olvera Street, labor and immigrant rights groups continued their 30-day “Summer of Resistance” activation, with lucha libre-masked cumbia group El Conjunto Nueva Ola performing “El Jom Dipo (Pa’ la People)” to a crowd protesting ICE raids.

“A Great Day in East L.A. is born out of resistance,” said Giunti, who’s working on a Los Lobos documentary. “Resistance to systematic oppression, cultural erasure, elitist gatekeeping of our stories by institutions, academics, authors and museums that continue to revise, distort or ignore our truths. This project stands in solidarity with the immigrant community.”

KCRW Summer Night with The Altons during “A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound” Opening Day Celebration on June 28, 2025.

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Photo courtesy of LA Plaza

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East L.A. was a high-energy tour stop for bands like Slayer, Metallica, Bad Religion and the Dead Kennedys and artists like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder. In 1981, Paul Ruben released “The Pee‑Wee Herman Show,” an original cast recording from a live performance at the Roxy Theatre on Fatima Recordz, the first independent punk music label in East L.A., co-founded by Yolanda Comparan Ferrer, Tito Larriva of The Plugz and printmaker Richard Duardo, who also signed East L.A. punk band The Brat.

“I was a part of this Eastside music world,” said Leal, 48, who was born in Guadalajara and raised in Glassell Park. “I never played an instrument, but I went to shows in East L.A.

It was three bucks and a kegger. You paid and stayed until the cops showed up.”

As The Altons took the stage at Saturday’s opening, Chicana singer-songwriter Irene Diaz watched from the back with bandmate and partner Carolyn Cardoza.

“I never imagined something like this,” said Diaz, whose silk slip dress and portraits are a prominent part of the exhibit. “I started my career in 2010 and to be able to see myself in an exhibit where I’m still alive is pretty amazing.”

“A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound” exhibition runs at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes from June 28, 2025, through August 23, 2026.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Louis Armstrong was in the “A Great Day in Harlem” photograph. It also misspelled Piero F. Giunti’s last name. The story has been updated.

Just last week California’s secretary of state officially certified that nearly two-thirds of Californians voted to pass Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to temporarily gerrymander the state’s congressional maps in favor of Democrats.

Nevertheless, Republicans and the Trump administration are hopeful a federal district court panel meeting in Los Angeles this week will intervene to bar the state from using the new maps next year.

California Republicans, who sued Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber the day after the election, are staking their challenge on the argument that California’s primary mapmaker illegally used race as a factor in drawing district lines, giving Latino and Hispanic voters outsize influence at the expense of other racial and ethnic groups, including white voters.

This, the Republicans argue, means the maps amount to an illegal racial gerrymander and a violation of the 14th and 15th amendments. Although Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act allows for race-conscious redistricting, they add, case law and judicial precedent have set a strict standard that requires a minority group to prove they have been systematically outvoted by a majority that consistently votes together to deny the minority their chosen candidate.

But the Prop. 50 opponents’ odds look slim, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority recently blessed Texas’ new maps, overturning a lower court’s finding that Republicans there had engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

“It is indisputable that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” wrote conservative Justice Samuel Alito in a concurring opinion supported by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas.

And then there’s the looming possibility that the Supreme Court, in a separate case, could outlaw entirely the use of race in the redistricting process, which could render California’s new maps — as well as the previous ones drawn by the independent citizens commission — unconstitutional. That would also give Republicans a major advantage in Southern states, where several districts drawn to increase Black Americans’ voting power currently are represented by Democrats.

Despite the long odds, the ailing California GOP has run out of other options for resistance. The passage of Prop. 50 is likely to mark the beginning of the end for several of California’s Republican House members, who have been forced to decide whether to run in their current, now less favorable Republican districts, switch to new seats or drop out entirely.

One of them, Rep. Darrell Issa, who represents parts of San Diego County, even considered relocating to Texas and running for a Dallas-area seat that would be more friendly to Republicans, but the president reportedly refused to endorse him for the already contested Texas seat, so he decided to stay.

The legal challenge claims the Prop. 50 maps cause “stigmatic and representational injury” by placing certain candidates, such as Republican Assemblymember David Tangipa of Fresno, who is Polynesian, into districts drawn with a specific racial or ethnic minority group in mind.

Case is in Los Angeles court this week

The challengers, who include Tangipa, the California Republican Party, several Republican voters and the Trump White House, are asking a three-judge panel for the Central District of California to grant a preliminary injunction on the maps before Dec. 19, the date when candidates can start collecting signatures to get their names on the 2026 primary ballot. A preliminary injunction would temporarily prevent the maps from being used in an election.

On Monday in court, the Republican challengers presented their case, arguing that since supporters of Prop. 50 publicly touted that the maps increased representation for Latino voters, state lawmakers and consultant Paul Mitchell, who was hired to draw the maps, took race into account. Therefore, they must justify how their new districts meet the standard for permissible racial gerrymanders, attorneys argued.

“It is legal to race-based redistrict under the Voter Rights Act. Section 2 protects it. But it also gives you guidelines,” Tangipa told CalMatters in an interview after testifying in court on Monday in Los Angeles. “In Sacramento, they did not follow those guidelines.”

Tangipa asserted that even though Democratic lawmakers intended primarily to increase their party’s ranks based on political ideology, “They used race to justify that end goal.”

The plaintiffs sought to have Mitchell testify, but the court denied a request to force him to take the stand to explain whether he intentionally tried to increase the voting power of specific racial and ethnic groups. Since Mitchell lives more than 100 miles away from the court, he was out of the reach of a subpoena. Still, the judges questioned his blanket use of “legislative privilege” to resist producing documents the plaintiffs requested.

At one point, as a redistricting expert testified, the plaintiffs focused on a line from Democratic former Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire’s public statement after the Legislature passed the package of bills paving the way for the Nov. 4 special election.

“The new map makes no changes to historic Black districts in Oakland and the Los Angeles area, and retains and expands Voting Rights Act districts that empower Latino voters to elect their candidates of choice,” McGuire’s statement said.

McGuire announced last month that he will challenge Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa in one of the newly configured Prop. 50 seats.

But proponents of the new maps argue they intended purely to create a partisan advantage for Democrats, and any increase in voting power for certain ethnic or racial groups was incidental.

Ultimately, 'it was endorsed by the voters'

Also complicating the GOP’s challenge is that California voters overwhelmingly approved the maps.

“Even if we assume that the Legislature improperly considered race, ultimately it went into effect because it was endorsed by the voters,” Emily Rong Zhang, an assistant professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, previously told CalMatters. “They would have to show that the voters had the intent to create districts that disproportionately favor the voting power of a racial group over another.”

One unknown is how the Supreme Court will rule on a case that questions whether it’s constitutional to even consider race as a factor when redistricting.

The justices are weighing in another ongoing case, Louisiana v. Callais, whether to strike down a part of the federal Voting Rights Act that requires the creation of districts in which racial and ethnic minorities have a chance to elect their preferred candidate. If the ruling is retroactive, a decision to strike it down could invalidate both California’s old and new maps.

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, other states have jumped into the redistricting effort or are contemplating entering the fray. In addition to Texas and California, four other states have already implemented new congressional maps, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Virginia, Maryland and Florida have also taken some steps toward redistricting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

FIFA said on Tuesday it plans to sell $60 tickets for each of the 104 games of the 2026 World Cup — an announcement that comes after an outcry over prices for the tournament that will be held next summer across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

"Fans of the national teams that have qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026 will benefit from a dedicated ticket pricing tier, which has been designed to make following their teams on football's greatest stage more affordable," FIFA said in a statement.

But these tickets — called "supporter entry tier tickets" by FIFA — will be available only to supporters of qualified teams and are limited in quantity.

Only 10% of the total number of tickets provided to each qualified team would be available at $60 per game, including the final. Given that each team gets 8% of the available tickets per game, the effective number of tickets available at that price would be only 0.8% of the stadium capacity for that game, or 1.6% for both teams combined.

But the actual number of $60 tickets could vary. Each country would determine which of its fans qualify for the cheaper tickets. In the statement, FIFA requested that countries "ensure that these tickets are specifically allocated to loyal fans who are closely connected to their national teams."

Some fans had called prices 'a betrayal'

FIFA's announcement comes after many fans reacted with outrage at the prices for the World Cup next year, which range from $140 for a handful of initial-round games to as much as $2,735 for the U.S. opening match against Paraguay that will be held in Los Angeles next year.

Prices for knockout rounds surge even more, with FIFA charging charging $4,185 for the cheapest ticket for the final that will be held in July next year in New Jersey — and $8,680 for the most expensive seats.

That's much higher than previous World Cups. For example, the most expensive ticket for the 2022 final at the last tournament held in Qatar was about $1,600.

Unlike previous World Cups, FIFA has yet to publish a list of prices, instead adjusting them across different sales windows without an announcement. Fans found out about the price changes after FIFA opened its latest lottery window last week, which allows fans to apply for tickets until Jan. 13.

And many fans were upset. The Football Supporters Europe, a group that represent fans across the region, called ticket prices "a betrayal to the most dedicated fans." On Tuesday, the group said on X it welcomes FIFA's latest announcement, but added it was not enough.

"Based on the allocations publicly available, this would mean that at best a few hundred fans per match and team would be lucky enough to take advantage of the 60 USD prices, while the vast majority would still have to pay extortionate prices, way higher than at any tournament before," Football Supporters Europe said.

Demand appears high, however

FIFA has defended its pricing policy, saying it's adapting to prices in the North American market. It has also consistently responded by saying it's a non-profit organization that steers the majority of its revenues from the World Cup "to fuel the growth of men's, women's and youth football throughout the 211 FIFA Member Associations."

Despite the outrage over its prices, FIFA is seeing strong demand for next year's World Cup. On Tuesday, FIFA added it had already received 20 million ticket requests during this current sales window, with weeks still to go before the lottery window closes.

But for supporters, following a team throughout the tournament could be prohibitively expensive in 2026 — and not only because of high ticket prices.

The cost of travel across the three countries has also surged, including hotel prices, making it likely that next year's tournament will be among the most expensive World Cups ever staged for fans.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Huntington Beach appears to be running out of options in its effort to stave off state housing mandates after a recent California Supreme Court decision.

California requires cities to plan and zone for housing to meet the needs of the population at all income levels. In the most recent planning cycle, Huntington Beach was told it had to plan for 13,368 new homes.

The city balked, and the state sued Huntington Beach in 2023 for failing to comply.

The city’s argument, in a nutshell

The city has argued it doesn’t have to comply because it’s a charter city, which gives it more autonomy in some areas of governance than non-charter cities.

Huntington Beach also has said that planning for such a large number of units would force it to violate state environmental laws. A state appeals court in a September ruling didn’t buy either argument.

What’s next?

A San Diego court now must determine penalties against Huntington Beach, even as the city has vowed to keep fighting the housing mandate. An appeals court has ordered the lower court to give the city 120 days to approve a housing plan.

Other remedies the court will consider include:

• Suspending the city’s ability to approve building permits — essentially bringing all development in the city to a halt; or, on the opposite end of the spectrum,

• Forcing Huntington Beach to approve any and all applications to build homes — in other words, completely removing the city’s discretion to plan for development. 

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 16.

More animals are being run over on Los Angeles streets than ever before, and the lingering effects of the pandemic may be partly to blame.  

Through November of this year, the city’s MyLA311 service has fielded 31,093 requests for “dead animal removal,” an increase of more than a thousand from the same time last year. It marks a 37% increase from five years prior, and is the fifth straight year of increases.  

Fraser Shilling of the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, studies the impact of transportation on animal populations. While one of the drivers of the increase is the continual loss of habitat from urban development, Shilling says the after effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are also playing a role. The protracted lockdown sparked a boom in pet adoptions, which he says has now transformed into an increase in animals being let go by their owners.  

“Basically, pandemic pets are being abandoned,” Shilling said. “Before they get picked up by animal control, they’re out on the street getting hit.” 

Cats made up nearly a third of animals picked up last year, according to the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation. Dogs accounted for 17%. Raccoons and opossums were the third- and fourth-most common. The vast majority of pickup requests are for animals that have been struck by vehicles. Others include requests to collect pets that have died at their owner’s home.

Want to know the number of requests in your neighborhood? Sign up for the Crosstown Neighborhood Newsletter and get stats about crime, traffic, housing and more for where you live.

Overstuffed animal shelters

Los Angeles has a massive feral cat population, estimated to be close to one million.

In 2020, the Los Angeles City Council approved the Citywide Cat Program aimed at trapping and spaying or neutering stray cats to prevent unwanted litters. But the program’s progress is facing constraints due to local funding challenges, as well as a nationwide veterinarian shortage. 

In August, the City Council unanimously approved a motion increasing the dollar amount pet owners are reimbursed by the city for spaying and neutering their pets, for an estimated cost of $9 million. A proposal from the city administrative officer recommended giving the higher reimbursement rates to shelter-based programs like the Citywide Cat Program, which would have cost an estimated $21 million over three years. That plan was not adopted.  

At the same time, the city’s shelters are overflowing with intakes. Through October of this year, Los Angeles Animal Service shelters took in 36,330 cats and dogs, per the department’s Woof Stat reports, a 6% increase from the same time last year and a 46% increase from the entire year of 2020. Its dog shelter program currently is operating at 123% capacity.  

San Pedro, Los Angeles’ southernmost neighborhood, had the highest number of dead animal removal requests in the city this year, with 922 as of Nov. 30, a 15% increase over the same period in 2024. 

As of Dec. 9, the animal shelter in San Pedro also had the highest dog occupancy rate of any of the six shelters in the city at 159% capacity. 

“Like many shelters across the country, LA Animal Services continues to experience overcrowding and operates at overcapacity, despite the department’s ongoing efforts to promote spaying and neutering, encourage pet adoptions and fostering, and working with rescues to help place animals,” Animal Services said in a statement. 

Where the city meets the wild 

The highest rates of wild animal collisions occur in dense urban areas surrounded by natural vegetation. Van Nuys and Northridge — ringed by the Santa Susana, Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains — were the neighborhoods with the second- and third-most dead animal reports. While cats were still the most common animals being picked up in Northridge zip codes, according to data from the Department of Sanitation, the region had numbers of opossums, squirrels, coyotes and deer that were higher than the citywide average 

Requests for removals in 2024, the most recent year for which the animal breakdown is available, included 366 coyotes, 191 chickens, 27 turtles and four turkeys. 

The number of dead deer last year was 63, around half of what it was in 2020. While that sounds like an improvement, it actually indicates a dire trend.  

“The population of deer in California is going down by 10% a year, and the population killed by traffic is about 8% or 9% per year, suggesting that the decline in deer in California is directly tied to roadkill,” said Shilling of the Road Ecology Center.  

Habitat loss from urban development is typically accompanied by an increase in traffic, according to the Road Ecology Center’s annual roadkill report. The city has been fast-tracking new development under Mayor Karen Bass’s directive focused on affordable housing, and over 5,600 units have been approved in the San Fernando Valley since 2023, according to the city planning website.  

The best solution to curb wildlife roadkill, Shilling said, is for people to drive more slowly. The second best is fencing along major roads and highways that have become hotspots. He said wildlife crossings — like the slated Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills — are ineffective at stopping roadkill unless accompanied by deliberate fencing.  

How we did it: We examined more than eight years of reports from the city’s MyLA311 service data. In addition, we broke down the requests by neighborhood. We also analyzed data from the Department of Sanitation and the city’s Animal Services Department. Have questions about our data or want to ask a question? Write to us as askus@xtown.la.