The Brief

Any musician who’s ever jammed with a group knows the deep connection that can form between players.

Jam sessions can be a moment of clarity, when all the pressures of the world are drowned out and you commune with other people through the language of music.

That’s part of the idea behind a new effort that seeks to bring people with autism together through the sounds of bluegrass.

There’s something about bluegrass... 

John Frizzell has had a long and successful career as a composer for film and TV.

If you’ve ever seen the 2002 cult horror classic “Ghost Ship,” you’ve heard his eerie scores. And the score for 1997’s “Alien: Resurrection”? Frizzell worked on that one too, among a long list of other TV and film credits.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Frizzell became interested in bluegrass later in life. But he’s attended many jam sessions and festivals within the community.

“I kept noticing at so many bluegrass events, there seemed like a lot of people on the spectrum,” Frizzell, who got a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1 as an adult, said.

“There’s something about bluegrass about maybe the patterns. It’s such pattern-oriented music, it’s [so] detail oriented. The hyper focus is so effective in practicing and learning bluegrass. It just seems like a natural fit,” he said.

That got Frizzell thinking about what an inclusive meetup for fellow musicians on the spectrum might look like.

Enter Spectrum Bluegrass, a new group dedicated to connecting neurodiverse people through bluegrass music.

The Spectrum Bluegrass Band

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Steve Sidney

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The idea is something that made perfect sense to Spectrum Bluegrass co-founder Steve Sidney, whose 43-year-old son, Joel, has autism and is an avid bluegrass player.

“You know, people with [Autism Spectrum Disorder] oftentimes tend to get an obsessive disorder. At 9 years old, he became obsessively interested in bluegrass music. He’s probably one of the most knowledgeable people, I’m guessing in the world. ... He reads everything about it,” Sidney said.

Building confidence through music

Spectrum Bluegrass has had a few meetups at festivals and other events, with more than a dozen people participating in jam sessions over the past year or so.

This spring, the Spectrum Bluegrass Band performed at the Greek Theater for the group Autism Speaks’ “Light up the Blues” concert. They were in good company with performances from Neil Young, Cat Power and others.

Joel got to play on stage with the Spectrum Bluegrass band.

Sidney says being part of the bluegrass community has been extremely important for his son’s social life. Playing bluegrass with other people has been soothing and centering for Joel.

Joel Sidney, left, L and John Frizzell perform at the Greek Theater.

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“To me he was clearly pleased. He looked very happy and relaxed on stage, which was pretty amazing because he’s never been in front of an audience like that ... a nearly full Greek Theater down in L.A.,” Sidney recalled.

Spectrum Bluegrass recruit Melanie Biesecker brings her experience in the nonprofit and charity world to the new endeavor. She said part of the idea is to have open invite jam opportunities at California Bluegrass Association events.

She’s also working to put together resources for jam leaders to be more inclusive and even have people come in to talk about employment opportunities.

“On the spectrum or not, if you go to a jam and you’re able to play along and call a song and lead a song, everybody’s really excited for you. That’s a really great feeling to have and can build confidence in or outside that social interaction,” Biesecker said.

And it’s not just the Spectrum Bluegrass folks noticing how music can be life changing for people with autism.

Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson, a clinical professor at UCLA, says it’s no secret that music can be a really powerful form of communication.

“But this can be particularly true for those who have difficulty with spoken language or social interactions, which is true for many autistic people. And so there have been many studies which have shown that things like music therapy can improve things like social engagement,” Laugeson told LAist.

There’s also research showing that many people with autism can have natural musical talent too, Laugeson said. They often have excellent auditory memory, heightened pitch perception — and sometimes even perfect pitch — at rates that are significantly higher than the general population.

And she said the benefits of playing with a group can stick around long after the jam session.

“For a lot of autistic people who have experienced peer rejection or social exclusion, difficulty connecting with other people, participating in a group with some sort of shared purpose like music-making can be very empowering,” Laugeson said.

Frizzell said that’s really the goal for Spectrum Bluegrass, even if they’re just getting started.

“I’d love to look back in 10 years and go, ‘Hey, you know, there’s this many hundreds or this many thousands of people on the spectrum who had a great time playing bluegrass and just clocked in a lot of beautiful hours of feeling good,” he said.

Next event

The next Spectrum Bluegrass meetup is slated for Nov. 8 at the South State 48 bluegrass festival in Carlsbad.

You can learn more about Spectrum Bluegrass on their website — and sign up for their newsletter.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

When a school suddenly loses its name, what should the new one represent? At the Long Beach campus formerly known as César Chávez Elementary, students and parents had a clear-eyed answer: It should represent them.

Long Beach Unified is kicking off an official renaming process for the school, and at Thursday’s back-to-school night families came ready with their suggestions.

Sea Lion Elementary (a nod to the school’s mascot) and Long Beach Elementary have proven popular choices among students, according to one Chávez teacher. 

Many suggestions from parents converged around themes of unity, community and place. Dimarrie Price, who has three daughters at Chávez, suggested “Third Street Elementary” while Elicia Duran, whose daughter is in second grade, suggested “Golden Elementary,” each inspired by the streets bordering the school. 

Other parents said they hoped a new name could emphasize inclusion and togetherness. Johanna O. suggested Our School, and S. Kennedy — who asked not to have their full names printed — proposed The Family School. “It’s important to unify people by utilizing words that connect people,” Kennedy said.  

Long Beach Unified removed the school’s original name after revelations surfaced in March that Chávez had sexually abused girls and women. Since then, the school community has been using makeshift monikers and DIY-ing their school spirit wear to avoid invoking the labor activist.

“We just say ‘school,’” said Chávez parent Natalia Bermudez, an approach other parents said they’ve adopted in the vacuum of a new name. At back-to-school night, Laura Martinez sported a T-shirt adorned with patches that obscured Chávez’s name. New apparel featuring Sea Lion Scholars was also available.

A 2019 event celebrated Cesar Chavez Day at Cesar Chavez Elementary School.

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Bill Alkofe

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Long Beach Post

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Calls for LBUSD to adopt a new name have mounted as other schools, parks and monuments named for the political activist have had their names taken down. In the last six months, the district has removed murals depicting Chávez, unveiled new art and removed signs with the school’s name, priming the campus and community for a new identity. 

In the meantime, parents have been talking to their kids about the upcoming change, attempting to tailor the message to young children. 

Martinez’s daughter, a current Chávez student, heard about her school in the news, prompting Martinez to explain the situation. “There’s people in this world that do good things that are for good causes, but do bad things to people,” she said she told her daughter. “Just because they’ve done something right doesn’t make them a good person inside.”

Some Chávez parents explained that once more information had surfaced, they could no longer honor Chávez as they had previously — and that they had a responsibility to course correct. “We find out things and we do our best to correct what we can control,” Elicia Duran said she told her second grader. 

Now, the school community is being invited into the district’s process, and on Thursday, students and parents began submitting their suggestions

Though the district nomination form says that proposed names may fall into one of three categories — place, idea or person — one parent shied away from selecting a person’s name in case negative information comes to light in the future, she said. 

She said she wished the renaming process had occurred over the summer. Now, she said she hopes the process is completed by the end of the school year so that her fifth-grade daughter’s promotion certificate will say “anything but Chávez.” 

Proposed school names will be accepted through Friday, Sept. 25, and students, families, staff and members of the school community can submit names through an online Google form, at a community meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 23, or in the Chávez front office, according to a letter from the school’s principal, Brenda Ocampo, to the Chávez community. 

After that, the submissions will be reviewed and narrowed by an advisory committee, including parent representatives and Lucy Salazar, the director of engagement for LBUSD. On November 4, “a recommended school name will be brought forward for consideration by the LBUSD Board of Education,” according to another letter from Ocampo. 

“It’s been healing for us,” Ocampo said of the renaming process.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

From the outside, the Gothic architecture of Masjid At-Thohir does not immediately announce itself as a neighborhood mosque.

The white facade, arched windows and steep roofline are now home to an Islamic community of Indonesians in Pico Union. 

For years, Indonesian Muslims in Southern California gathered at the Indonesian Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard for prayer. The congregation transformed a diplomatic space into a temporary spiritual refuge. The arrangement worked, but there was always a longing for home. 

“The idea is you want to have a space where you belong, be someone who is regular, and have a safe space. Those are things where you can grow as an individual,” said Honest Qashidi, 33, who serves as the resident Imam at Masjid At-Thohir. 

Women pray inside the mosque.

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For Indonesian Muslims living across Los Angeles, it has become a kind of third space somewhere between the private world of home and the demands of work and public life. 

That distinction matters in Los Angeles, where the Indonesian community is substantial but geographically dispersed. Unlike communities with a concentrated ethnic neighborhood, Indonesian Angelenos do not have a single “Indonesia Town” around which daily life revolves, Qashidi said. The mosque on Kenmore Avenue is that constant for the community.

“For the elders, it’s where they find their nostalgia. It’s a home away from home. But folks that grew up here, and trying to make sense of what it means to belong in a place; that is the aim of what I am trying to do in this space,” Qashidi said. 

A gift to a father and community

Built in 1920, the building once served as the place of worship for the Los Angeles Samoan Community Christian church.

When that congregation left the neighborhood, the church’s pastor negotiated a deal in 2017 to sell the building to the Indonesia Muslim Foundation, the nonprofit group that coordinates activities in Los Angeles for the Indonesian Muslim community.

The nonprofit purchased the building for approximately $1.8 million, according to Qashidi.

Today, the historic structure is home to what many Indonesian Muslims in Los Angeles had long been missing: a mosque of their own.

A devotee praying from the Quran in the almost empty hall after the main prayer is over.

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Qashidi said, “The pastor wanted this space, if it were to be passed down, it would still stay a space of worship.”

The sale and conversion of the building was made possible by Indonesian billionaire Garibaldi Thohir, former CEO of Alamtri Resources Indonesia, one of the world’s top coal exporters. Garibaldi studied at USC and his brother, Erick Thohir, was also educated in Southern California.

The doors at the mosque officially opened in March 2022 after several delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The mosque was named “At-Thohir” to honor their late father, Mochamad Thohir.

 “When we were studying in Los Angeles around 2015–2016, my father often visited,” Garibaldi said at the mosque’s opening, according to reporting from Indonesian media. “When he was going to Friday prayers, he often complained about the lack of a mosque nearby owned by the Indonesian community. That’s why we promised to make it happen.” 

‘I will make food every single Friday’

Calling At-Thohir simply a mosque misses the spectrum of events inside. Located not too far from Pico Boulevard, the mosque shares the neighborhood with other religious institutions like the Sae Han Korean Church and the Pico Union Shalom Ministries. 

Food is a big part of the social life, turning prayer gatherings into opportunities to linger over familiar flavors. Every Friday, after the prayer, lunch is served in the backyard. Home-cooked Indonesian food items like bakwan, satay, soto ayam, perkedel, tahu kuning, telur balado and tempeh. 

Lola Kamelia, left, Resy Ismail, Raninta Nailah and Lily Yulani serve lunch on a Friday after prayer.

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Lily Yulani, 53, one of the women who helps with food every week, joked about her teenage son’s pronunciation of perkedel, a simple mashed potato patty dish. 

“My son cannot pronounce P-E-R-K-E-D-E-L yet, so he calls it C-R-O-C-O-D-I-L-E,” Yulani giggled. 

Resy Ismail, 65, the woman in charge of serving and preparing food on Fridays, said that much of the food is donated, but she will not let that stop her from giving back to the community. 

“Whether there is a donation or not, I will make food every single Friday,” Ismail said. 

Ismail is a rantang chef and brings the food from her home in stacked, metal containers. She is proud to serve the community and initiated the meal system in the mosque and continues to coordinate with whoever wants to contribute to the weekly food distribution. Together, they bring different home-cooked items to put together a meal for the visitors at the mosque. 

Imam Qashidi said that in a multicultural setting food becomes a gateway to culture. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he attended high school in Jakarta, Indonesia, completed his undergraduate degree in Egypt and is currently pursuing a degree in Islamic Studies from Bayan Islamic Graduate School.

“When you are in America, and you grew up with whatever background you have, the starting point is just food,” Qashidi said. 

The lunch is served to the guests at the mosque.

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Avidha Raha

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Third space

Apart from food being the most visible marker of community within the diaspora, there are regular Islamic studies classes on weekends taught by Qashidi. There are also workshops on calligraphy, immigration rights, digital literacy and Canva. 

Additionally, there are also dance and music classes that do not happen inside the mosque, but in the adjoining auditorium.

People can enroll in a traditional plate dance, or musical performances like Angklung and the Bedug, a large drum traditionally associated with communities in Indonesia.

Raninta Nailah, 13, a Pico Union resident and food distribution volunteer, tries to come to the mosque whenever she’s not in school. 

“It’s very close to my community and I feel safe,” Nailah said. “I come to Saturday school here for social studies and I feel good because I have been learning new stuff.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required more polluting facilities built near homes and schools to undergo environmental review — a decision that keeps in place looser rules he championed to speed up development in California.

The bill authored by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, responded to fears raised by a chemical incident in Orange County that led to evacuation orders for 50,000 people.

It would have narrowed an exemption of the California Environmental Quality Act that covers a broad swath of advanced manufacturing sites. Only facilities handling the final stages of production would have kept the exemption.

In his veto letter on Friday, Newsom said Senate Bill 954 would have effectively repealed the advanced manufacturing exemption.

“Protecting communities and strengthening California’s advanced manufacturing economy are not mutually exclusive goals,” he said. “The exemption was designed to advance both and should be given a meaningful opportunity to work.”

Newsom added that if problems arise, the Legislature should address them through targeted changes “not by preemptively rolling back our progress.”

Blakespear in a statement said she’s disappointed by the veto and will raise the issue again next year.

She pointed to the near disaster GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove as an illustration of the danger.

“We should not have to wait for another emergency before recognizing that sweeping – and rushed – exemptions from environmental review need reasonable guardrails,” she said. “Protecting communities and workers is not an impediment to economic growth – it is part of responsible growth.”

Roots in last year's budget fight

The veto is a setback for legislators who advocated for fixing last year’s major overhaul of the state’s landmark environmental law, which Newsom had a heavy hand in shaping and pushed through by threatening to withhold budget funds if lawmakers refused to act.

Lawmakers went along with the overhaul, but expressed concerns about an unprecedented, broad exemption for polluting manufacturing sites from strip mines to clean energy projects.

Environmental advocates said the bill would have still allowed for manufacturing developments, with guardrails to protect communities.

“It's really unfortunate that we have to wait until something bad happens before we make an adjustment,” said Kim Delfino, a lobbyist for environmental justice groups. “A foundation of environmental law is the precautionary principle: that we try to protect instead of waiting for something bad to happen. This is flipping it on its head.”

Asha Sharma, deputy director at Sierra Club California, said California is losing “an important opportunity to protect communities that are once again being asked to bear the risks of industrial development without the safeguards and public participation they deserve.” .

Business and industry groups, including the Bay Area Council and the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, opposed the bill and praised Newsom’s veto, arguing it would stunt economic development.

“From autonomous vehicles and clean energy systems to revolutionary medical devices and digital technologies, advanced manufacturing is building the future and creating the good-paying, high-skilled jobs that California desperately needs,” said Libby Schaaf, chief executive of the Bay Area Council.  

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

A high-profile fight between California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Paramount Skydance resolved Monday with a settlement that clears a path for the company to continue with its planned acquisition of another century-old studio, Warner Bros. Discovery.

The deal comes after Paramount threatened to leave the state over an antitrust lawsuit led by Bonta and attorneys general from 11 other states that sought to block the $111 billion merger.

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison reportedly told senior leaders of the company “clearly we’re not wanted here,” during a meeting in August. However, California has taken several steps since the 2000s to retain studios like Paramount.

The fight was the latest chapter in the battle for Hollywood, which has been a priority for California lawmakers and the last three governors.

Here are some ways the state has tried to keep its storied industry:

• Program 1.0: In 2009, in response to other states beginning to offer financial incentives for motion picture production, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state’s first California Film and Television Production Tax Credit. The program allocated $100 million per year to eligible film and TV production companies through 2017.

• Program 2.0: In 2014, lawmakers approved Assembly Bill 1839, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law, creating a new version of the Film and Television Production Tax Credit program and more than tripling the credits to $330 million annually through 2020.

• 2018 expansion: In 2018, Brown again authorized an extension of the program for another five years, through 2025. Following the COVID-19 pandemic that shut down productions, Gov. Gavin Newsom boosted the credit temporarily to $420 million annually.

• 2025 increase: Hollywood was struggling following the “quadruple-whammy” of the COVID-19 pandemic, a writers strike, deadly wildfires and growing production incentives from other states that lured movies out of California. In response, lawmakers increased the yearly credit in 2025 to $750 million per year until 2030. Newsom championed the boost, saying the industry was “on life support.”

• This year, when the film and television production tax credit clashed with an initiative to cap corporate tax breaks, lawmakers carved independent film producers out of the groups subject to a new cap.

• In July, Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas of Salinas created the “Select Committee on Growing and Retaining the Creative Economy in California” to, in part, keep film and television production in the state.

• On Saturday, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2319 by Burbank Democrat Nick Schultz to create a new tax credit for post-production work, including editing and visual effects.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a Democrat representing Hollywood, said he was delighted a deal was reached to keep Paramount in California, but that the state needs to do more to retain the industry. Zbur is chair of the state’s new Assembly committee focused on keeping film production in California.

“Now that other states are realizing what important, family-sustaining jobs these are, they're competing very aggressively for these jobs,” he said.

Zbur said the committee will explore new state incentives during its first meeting, which he expects will take place in October in Los Angeles.

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