The Brief

Because I live in California and because we live in a post-pandemic world, I often work at home, outside in our backyard.

It’s a small, modest space — just room for a table and an umbrella pretty much — but being California, it also manages to contain an apple tree, a fig tree and a banana tree.

Our backyard, full of California goodness

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Suzanne Levy

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LAist

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Because I’d grown up in London, my only previous interaction with figs had been eating Fig Newtons (a fair to middling experience) and eating ripe figs picked fresh from a tree as an exchange student in the south of France (a pretty amazing experience).

I’d walk along on a baking-hot, lavender-scented day, as my brain exploded at the sweetness, the slightly warm fig dissolving in my mouth.

So decades later, when I saw there was a fig tree in our backyard, I was astonished. And slightly doubtful. Could a California fig match up to the exquisite French one in my memory? I picked one and ate it. And yes, incredibly, there it was again … sweet, exotic, a gift from nature that’s inexplicably over-generous.

Figs, the inexplicably over-generous gift of nature

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Suzanne Levy

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LAist

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Introducing Mindy

The first year, I watched the young green figs ripen reddish in the sun before baking into their black exterior. It was time. But when I went to pick the plumpest one … another creature had beaten to me to it.

That creature was a squirrel, determined and voracious, who would jump onto the tree like a wrestler jumping from the top turnbuckle into the ring, scrabble through the leaves to find the best fruit, take a tiny bite, realize, no, that was not up to their standards, and throw it dismissively on the floor, before moving on to the next one.

Mindy's aftermath

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Suzanne Levy

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LAist

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Which meant the squirrel — whom we named Mindy, and, yes, there was also a Mork — had way more figs than I did that first year.

Mindy the squirrel's version of sharing

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Suzanne Levy

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LAist

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The second year, I was smarter. I read up on what to do. Cover each fig in a gauze bag! I bought lovely white bags with a satin tie from a wedding site and spent a Sunday placing each fig tenderly in its own covering. It looked a bit ridiculous, like Victorians covering the ankles of their pianos, but I didn’t care. I wanted those figs!

I watched triumphantly as Mindy seemed to lose interest. Or so I thought. A few bags had dropped on to the ground, so I went and looked. And it seemed, Mindy had been having her way with the fruit. There were tiny holes in the gauze. And tiny holes in the figs. Gaah!

A multiplicity of figs

This year, however, we had a bumper crop. I have no idea why — we did nothing but our normal benign neglect (read: my husband waters whatever new plants we’ve put in underneath the tree).

It turns out that while Mindy has a voracious appetite, she has only one tiny stomach — and can only eat so much. And if you have a bumper, bumper crop, something tremendous happens … you have a multiplicity of figs left on your tree! High, low, near, far, black ripe figs every day.

A woman on a mission

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Steve Holtzman

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Courtesy Suzanne Levy

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So one Sunday, I got up early, put on a floppy summer hat, climbed a ladder and picked as many figs as I could find. My Californian harvest: sun-filled, lush and orchard-fresh. (Meantime, I’ve been watching closely and so far the banana tree hasn’t managed even one tiny banana. I am disappointed.)

Preserving nature's bounty

I was ecstatic and took my bounty into the kitchen. Then, after a few days of the family eating them with yogurt, with goat cheese, on salads, on cakes, and still barely making a dent in my pile, I began to realize — oh, this is why all those pioneer women canned constantly during the summer. You use them or you lose them. No Ralphs to pop into back in 1842!

So I looked up canning. Way too much equipment needed. But I could make preserves with lemon juice, sugar and vanilla. My kind of recipe. Way to go! I chopped, I cooked, I stirred, and through a magic of alchemy, after an hour, a rich, slightly goopy jam was dropping off my wooden spoon.

It's Mindy's world. We just live in it.

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Melissa Holtzman

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Courtesy Suzanne Levy

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I bought some cute mason jars, filled each one, labeling them “Mindy’s fig preserves” (as a colleague said, it's Mindy's world — we just live in it), and when I was next in the office, handed them out to my co-workers. All lit up with smiles at this unexpected gift.

The managing editor bought crackers and cheese, and we sat munching happily with oohs and ahs all around. It felt so good to be sharing the beneficence of a Southern California summer with others.

When I got back home, I sat in the yard, silently giving thanks to the fig tree for its abundance. And then, as if on a shared psychic hotline, Mindy suddenly appeared, jumping onto a branch.

Mindy's ready for her closeup.

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Suzanne Levy

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LAist

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I picked up my phone to capture the moment, and, I swear, she looked straight at me, as if offering herself for a closeup. I took the picture, and then, she turned her attention to a nearby fig.

That’s fine Mindy. There’s enough for all of us to share.

After California lawmakers passed a state housing law that allows taller apartment buildings near train lines, Los Angeles leaders are facing a tradeoff: If they want to delay full implementation of the law, they’ll have to choose some parts of the city to upzone.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 79 into law last year. Starting July 1, the law is set to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall to be built next to subway stations and smaller buildings within a half-mile of light rail and rapid bus stops.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and a slim majority of the L.A. City Council had expressed opposition to SB 79, in keeping with the long-standing preference of many city leaders to leave untouched the three-quarters of L.A.’s residential land zoned for single-family homes.

Now, some L.A. leaders are scrambling to pull a delay lever that was built into SB 79. The provision allows cities to put off the law’s broadest effects until 2030, as long as they agree to allow more housing development in certain neighborhoods in the interim.

“If we don't do this, what happens is SB 79 goes into effect full-on,” said Bob Blumenfield, chair of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, during a meeting on Tuesday. “I really want to avoid that happening.”

Options for delay

The state law lets cities delay implementation in neighborhoods deemed to be “low resource,” in areas at high risk of fires or sea level rise or are designated as historically significant. Even with those carve-outs, some higher-income neighborhoods near train stops will still be subject to upzoning.

The city’s Planning Department produced a report last week laying out three different approaches for the City Council to delay SB 79. All of them involve local incentive programs that would allow developers to build apartment buildings in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes.

The first option would allow buildings up to four stories tall, while the second and third options would permit buildings up to eight stories.

During the committee meeting Tuesday, homeowners spoke against the changes the new law would bring and the city’s upzoning plans.

“Single-family neighborhoods are where families put down roots — they are the beating heart of Los Angeles and SB 79 runs a stake right through that heart,” said Shelley Wagers with the Beverly Grove Neighborhood Association. “We must use every tool to prevent irreversible harm and buy time.”

Advocates for increased housing development said they favored the report’s third option, which would allow mid-sized apartment buildings within a half-mile of existing train stops, as well as planned stations and rapid bus stops.

Scott Epstein, policy director for Abundant Housing L.A., said that approach “offers the best opportunity to meet our housing targets and ensure that neighborhoods rich in transit services and high-quality schools are doing their part.”

What happens next

The Planning and Land Use Committee could not get a three-person majority to agree on the best path forward, so the decision will now go to the full City Council for further debate.

Blumenfield said his recommendation as committee chair was to allow mid-rise apartment buildings in many neighborhoods, but only near existing train stops, not planned stations or rapid bus stops. He also recommended more exemptions for certain historic preservation zones.

Nithya Raman, a committee member who is also running for L.A. Mayor, said she found the report’s recommendations difficult to follow. Passing a delayed implementation plan could stave off changes in some neighborhoods, but only for a while, she said.

“Eventually we will have to do something,” Raman said. “So the question is just what do we do now and what do we do later.”

But council members have little time to figure out which approach they prefer. City planners told the committee that in order to have a delay ordinance in place by July 1, the council would need to decide what direction to take by early March.

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Feb. 25, 2026.

As federal immigration enforcement raids continue across Los Angeles, a broader demographic of people is stepping up to volunteer their time to monitor and document immigration raids in their neighborhoods, according to Ron Gochez, organizer with the rapid‑response network Unión del Barrio.

“We have senior citizen retirees showing up saying, ‘I’m an old white woman — how can I help?’ We have students from community colleges and universities. We have people who look like longtime activists and people who look like they’ve never done this before,” he said. “It’s solidarity being shown by Angelenos of all shapes, sizes, colors and ages.”

While longtime Latino organizers have led the patrols, their numbers are growing thanks to the new volunteers who aren’t necessarily Latino.

Unión del Barrio has outgrown their usual meeting space at the United Teachers union building in Koreatown, which used to draw a few dozen people.

Along with their patrols, the group supports families impacted by immigration raids and issues real-time alerts over social media.

In late January, the day after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, about 400 people showed up for a training session, Unión del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said.

“The very next day, we had 1,000 people on a Zoom training for educators — and we couldn’t have more because the Zoom limit was 1,000,” Gochez said.

Organizers in Pasadena expected a few dozen volunteers at All Saints Episcopal Church and were surprised when nearly 800 showed up for the training session, according to Pasadena Now.

For the first time, the majority of volunteers at a recent training session were white, Gochez said.

“I think the administration and ICE thought that by killing Alex (Pretti), that people would be scared and intimidated and would stop participating,” he said.

Instead, it has had the opposite effect.

Other immigrant advocacy groups say they’re seeing a similar surge in support. Representatives at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center report a spike in volunteers, donations, and attendance at “Know Your Rights” workshops.

The legal advocacy group says they’re going to continue sustaining deportation defense, managed information hotlines, and expect that engagement to remain strong as federal immigration enforcement intensifies.

Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, speaks to volunteers in South Los Angeles in February 2025.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Residents living near Koreatown and Pico Union have seen a sharp increase in immigration raids in recent months. Unión del Barrio volunteer, Oscar, who provided only his first name out of concerns over retaliation from the federal government, has seen firsthand the effects of the raids.

“This part of Los Angeles — Pico Union, K-town, MacArthur Park, Westlake — has been hit incredibly hard throughout the last year,” Oscar said, pointing to raids along the El Salvador Community Corridor in Pico Union. “They’ve gone up and down Pico multiple times.”

Westlake, a dense immigrant neighborhood predominantly made up of renters and noncitizen workers, has also been identified as one of the most vulnerable areas in L.A. to ICE raids, according to a county-sponsored study.

Oscar leads patrol training sessions, but before joining Union del Barrio, he patrolled his neighborhood with a friend to report on immigration enforcement. “It just didn’t feel like enough,” he said. “I wanted to be part of a space of dedicated organizers.”

Overall, he’s seen more people working together across racial and gender lines, with a common goal of protecting their communities, helping deliver groceries to impacted famlies, monitor their neighborhoods and feel like they have something to do in the face of the ongoing immigration raids.

Immigration agents detain a man selling flowers in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.

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Courtesy of Verita Topete

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Centro CSO

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“People are coming in angry, determined,” he said. “but ultimately I think people feel empowered during the training.”

Unión del Barrio has expanded beyond its usual territory in South Los Angeles and the group now patrols in Boyle Heights, Long Beach, the San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills and Brentwood, Gochez said.

“We have eyes and ears everywhere,” Gochez said. “I’m very comfortable saying there are thousands of people patrolling in the greater L.A. area.”

Although the group rarely solicits donations, Gochez said they have seen an uptick in funding, which helps cover costs from patrolling and printing “Know Your Rights” flyers and other materials.

Despite the heightened attention, Unión del Barrio has not altered its training curriculum, making sure that volunteers are following the law, but also aware that their safety is not guaranteed when they head out to monitor the immigration raids.

Organizers strongly discourage undocumented individuals or those on probation or parole from participating in community patrols, instead encouraging them to contribute in other ways.

“We’re not trying to become martyrs,” Gochez said. “We don’t want to be arrested, beaten or killed. But there is risk involved.”

The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.

Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police.

“We can’t keep deploying armed officers to handle mental health crisis calls because the outcome is Angelenos paying with loss of life and millions of their tax dollars for legal settlements,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who co-authored the motion to enshrine the program, said at Tuesday’s meeting.

According to Hernandez, in 2023, more than a third of LAPD shootings involved someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the data from city reports was "incontrovertible and unassailable," showing the program’s success at diverting police and fire first responders away from mental health crisis situations.

Council members said the move to make the unarmed model permanent was also a matter of fiscal responsibility. According to a news release from the offices of Hernandez and Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, on average it costs the city roughly $85 per hour to dispatch LAPD officers, while a response from a UMCR team costs roughly $35 per hour.

Last fall, progressive policy advocacy group LA Forward, convened a summit of local and state officials with the goal of making UMCR permanent and expanding it.

Godfrey Plata, deputy director of LA Forward, told LAist his group was “incredibly excited” to see the city make the pilot program permanent.

Plata said he sees enshrining the program as a first step in expanding the program citywide, which his group hopes to do by the 2028 Olympics.

How the program works

In 2024, the city partnered with three nonprofit organizations — Exodus Recovery, Alcott Center and Penny Lane Centers — to provide teams of trained clinicians in service areas spread across L.A. The teams are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week within the Police Department’s Devonshire, Wilshire, Southeast, West LA, Olympic and West Valley divisions.

Crisis response workers are trained in de-escalation techniques, mental health, substance use, conflict resolution and more, according to a report on the program from the Office of City Administrative Officer. The teams don’t have the authority to order psychiatric holds for people in crisis, but they can work with them to find help locally, and spend more time on follow up than law enforcement can.

In its first year, Los Angeles’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response sent teams of unarmed clinicians to  more than 6,700 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. Only about 4% were redirected to the LAPD. Average response times have been under 30 minutes.

Examples of these interactions include members of the teams taking food to a woman who was crying and hungry, working with a business owner to engage with someone sleeping in a parking lot and sitting with a family for nearly three hours to help resolve a conflict involving a relative.

What’s next

The motion approved Tuesday also directs city officials to form a working group made up of the LAPD, the L.A. Fire Department and other agencies to address inefficiencies in the dispatch system. The goal of the working group will be to centralize unarmed crisis response dispatch and improve response times.