The Brief

Tekoah “TK” Flory was thrilled to receive a job offer from the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting last September. Flory had been directing traffic at Dodger stadium, a seasonal job that would be coming to an end soon.

After taking on a series of minimum wage jobs, Flory, 31, was looking forward to starting a career in a city job Flory believed would pay $40,000 to $60,000 a year.

“I was so excited, elated, ready to budget for the year,” said Flory, who uses they/them pronouns. “I was excited to have a career in this city instead of just working a job, instead of being just above broke or just making enough to eat.”

But in January, the city rescinded the job offer. Flory was back where they started.

Flory applied for office work in the street lighting bureau through the city’s Workforce Equity Demonstration Program, a partnership between the Los Angeles Black Worker Center and the L.A. Department of Public Works. Participants who get several weeks of training at the Black Worker Center can apply for positions in Public Works without having to take a civil service exam, often a barrier for applicants.

The partnership contract signed in 2022 promised the city would hire 200 Black workers trained by the Black Worker Center. Trina Traylor, campaign director for the center said the city agreed to hire them by June 2024.

But so far only 49 of the 83 people trained have been hired. Besides Flory, one other applicant had their job offer rescinded.

“We are nowhere near that (200) number for different reasons, some that are not clear or satisfactory to us,” said Yodit Semu, a program specialist at the L.A. Black Worker Center’s Ready to Work program.

While organizers are pleased that some program participants were placed, they fear the slow pace of city bureaucracy is hindering opportunities for other Black workers.

Meanwhile, as the city faces a 17.5% job vacancy rate, Mayor Karen Bass is moving to cut vacant jobs to deal with a budget deficit.

“It is vital that Black workers have access to jobs offered by the city and across the city and the mayor will continue work to make sure the current economic picture does not roll back that commitment,” Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for the mayor, said in an email.

The public works department did not grant interviews and said they would send a written response to questions. They did not by deadline.

A promise of city jobs for Black workers

Since the Reconstruction Era, when the U.S. Postal Service first hired formerly enslaved Black workers, the public sector has long been a source of good jobs for Black people, according to a 2020 report by the UCLA Labor Center.

One in 5 Black workers in Los Angeles County works in government, compared to 1 in 10 non-Black workers, the report says. In L.A. County, Black workers in the public sector make 46% more than counterparts working in the private sector. And about 44% of Black public sector workers owned homes, as opposed to 28% of Black private sector workers.

“There’s this general saying in Black communities of, ‘Get you a good government job,’” said Déjà  Thomas, the report’s coauthor. “The data affirmed that. Black workers in the public sector were faring better when it came to income, insurance, home ownership — all those metrics of socioeconomic status.”

And Black government workers enjoy better job benefits and protections than workers at other jobs, because those are union jobs that include built-in raises.

Now Black workers are retiring at high rates, with no pipeline to replace them, said Thomas, who also is a program manager for UCLA’s Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity at Work.

The COVID-19 pandemic worsened employment opportunities for Black workers.

Black workers lost jobs at higher rates than other demographic groups during the pandemic and have not recovered them to the same extent as other groups, said Sarah Bohn, a labor economist with the Public Policy Institute of California.

Unemployment among Black workers is 7.4% compared to 5% for the state overall, Bohn said.

“The discrimination piece is a really important one to think about, because it’s not just educational attainment and where you live or where the jobs are,” Bohn said. “There’s a lot unexplained in comparing people with similar education levels and backgrounds.”

From 2000 to 2018, the percentage of Black workers in public sector jobs declined from 27% to 22%, Thomas said.

In response to shrinking government job opportunities for Black workers and job loss during the pandemic, the L.A. Black Worker Center created the 1000 Strong coalition of unions and labor groups to push the city and county of Los Angeles to create more pathways to city jobs.

The Workforce Equity Demonstration program launched in 2022. It’s similar to the city’s Targeted Local Hire and Bridge to Job programs, which recruit, hire and train local workers from disadvantaged and low income communities.

Ready to work

A friend told Flory about the opportunity to get a city job through the L.A. Black Worker Center. Flory signed up for the center’s workforce development program, Ready 2 Work, which trains participants over five to seven weeks on various skills they may need to find a quality job.

Participants get training on resume building, financial literacy, leadership, interview preparation and workers’ rights, as well as how to use Microsoft Word and Excel.

Attendees participate in a Los Angeles Black Worker Center training session on leadership and workers’ rights in 2022.

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Los Angeles Black Workers Center

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Flory said the Ready 2 Work program was “where I was able to find myself again and recognize that I have a lot of strengths and I have a lot of talents I can share with my community.”

The most impactful element of the program, Flory said, was being able to build a community of Black women and non-binary folks to support each other. That element of community, organizers said, is essential for succeeding in often discriminatory or challenging work environments.

“I feel like in that space, we were able to cultivate a loving community environment where we each felt safe, seen, heard, respected and empowered,” Flory said.

Attendees participate in a Los Angeles Black Worker Center occupational safety training.

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Los Angeles Black Workers Center

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When the Workforce Equity Demonstration program was created, the L.A. Black Worker Center had provisional offer letters from the city’s sanitation department that guaranteed nearly all of the Ready 2 Work graduates that year had jobs, Thomas said.

Since then, things have been a lot more challenging, organizers said.

The city has assigned Kevin Gresham as a coordinator to the L.A. Black Worker center to help navigate the Workforce Equity Demonstration program. “Kevin has faced so many obstacles,” Traylor said. “Nobody returned his phone calls. The other departments don’t even respond to him when he requests meetings.”

Sanitation so far has been the most helpful department in Public Works, Traylor said; it has taken most of the 49 workers the city hired through the program. Other departments with hundreds of open positions have not been as cooperative, she said.

Engineering, for instance, has 218 open positions, sanitation has 786, street lighting has 112, contract administration has 104 and street services has 404 open positions.

City officials did not grant CalMatters interviews with Gresham or anyone in the public works or sanitation departments.

Budget cuts threaten open jobs

Even when city departments agree to hire workers, the application process is often slow. Applicants in the workforce equity program reported going through multiple interviews and waiting months for background checks.

Flory said they interviewed with street lighting in August, completed a background check in October and received a provisional start date of Nov. 6.

It wasn’t until January that the department told Flory the job they had been offered was classified as above entry level, and so they didn’t qualify. Flory said Gresham suggested they apply to the open jobs in sanitation.

Flory said they were baffled and had been looking forward to employment stability, after going through other employment difficulties, especially as a Black, trans, non-binary person.

“So even though I’m qualified, even though I meet all of these things, just because of that one stipulation I no longer had an opportunity to work with the city,” Flory said. “And yes, I was given other opportunities to do manual labor. But when you’re excited to start a career and transition into an office setting, doing manual labor for the city doesn’t cut it.”

Flory has done odd jobs such as helping friends move, to make ends meet. For now, they’re back to working at the Dodger Stadium.

Traylor said it appears that with her program participants, things seemed to come to a halt when their applications reached the city’s personnel department.

“We’re not getting a whole lot of reasoning,” Traylor said. “We know that Kevin is working very hard inside the city to get other departments to offer jobs to our participants. But it’s like they don’t really want to engage the program.”

The city did not grant CalMatters an interview with anyone in the personnel department.

Bass had promised to improve hiring practices in November, when the city reported 10,000 vacant positions.

Since then, Seidl said, more than 3,500 positions were filled after citywide career fairs and hiring programs “helped break down barriers” to city jobs. He added that the mayor’s administration has assigned staff to support training programs to fill public works vacancies.

Now, the city is facing a nearly $300 million budget deficit and Bass has announced plans to eliminate 2,000 vacant positions.

According to a city memo, the mayor ordered departments to “halt all hiring processes” and implement a “prioritized critical hiring” process. That means only jobs that fulfill a limited list of requirements can be filled.

It’s unclear how the job cuts will affect the workforce equity program, but city officials said public works jobs are a priority.

The L.A. Black Worker Center officials said they still consider the program a success, with 59% of the Ready 2 Work graduates landing city jobs. The program is continuing to train people who will be eligible for city jobs.

“We acknowledge that there is always room for improvement, and we are committed to continuously striving for better outcomes for all participants,” said Ashley Clayton, a spokesperson for the center. “We believe that with the continued support and collaboration of the city and other stakeholders, we can enhance the effectiveness of the (Workforce Equity Demonstration) project and further increase placement rates in the future.”

Black Worker Center organizers planned to meet with Bass today about ways to make the program work better.

Financial support for this story was provided by the Smidt Foundation.

That ocean breeze is just not cutting it in schools in Torrance and Long Beach as Southern California reels from a heat wave.

Parents have taken to social media, created petitions and are proposing a bond measure in order to address the sweltering classrooms as temperatures hit triple digits in some areas.

Only 25% of Torrance Unified classrooms have air conditioning, according to a district spokesperson. And while 90% of Long Beach Unified schools have air conditioning, the schools without air conditioning have to bear this heat spell until the end of 2027 when new air conditioning will be in all classrooms.

What are schools doing to beat the heat?

In Long Beach, the district says there are portable fans in classrooms without AC and the district has installed heat-blocking window covers.

"The things that we do immediately and have been doing for several years, hydration stations,” Keith Butler, the deputy superintendent at TUSD, told the school board early this week. “So our nutrition services freezes blocks of ice, puts them into containers with water, and students are — and staff are able to rotate through and at least get ice water.”

There is also a classroom rotation system so everyone gets a turn in cooling zones, he said.

Can schools close on extreme heat days?

Eric Mitchell, a spokesperson for LBUSD, told LAist, “The District will not close schools because of extreme weather unless the City of Long Beach Public Health Department or a state-authorized emergency response agency directs it.”

Baillie echoed his words adding that a state-declared emergency allows schools to close temporarily without needing to make up teaching time. School funding is dependent on attendance and instructional time.

If a local emergency is declared, school districts, she said, must consult with labor unions to adjust the school schedule to either extend the school year or move to a student-free professional development day.

“Our district is actively discussing creating union-approved ‘weather days’ that would provide a mechanism to adjust the schedule,” Baillie said. “Thresholds would be part of that discussion and might focus on when national weather alerts elevate a heat advisory to an extreme heat event, as they did this week.”

So how can Torrance get ACs in the classroom?

School districts like Torrance pay for facility upgrades like new ACs through district issued bond measures. A school district takes a loan and the people in that city pay back that loan through an increase in their property taxes. That is because there is no specific state allocation of funding for major upgrades or construction. Most of the money schools get from the state is spent on instruction and other student services. There have been some occasional grant programs, like CalShape, but no ongoing source of funding.

This week, a petition to get TUSD to place a bond measure on the ballot to fund ACs has already garnered over 1500 signatures.

But, Baillie said, “Third-party polling completed earlier this year showed a willingness to vote for additional future bonds; however, when specifically asked about the costs of specific bonds to fund the $520 million needed to upgrade the electrical systems and install AC at all 34 campuses, polling showed there would not be enough support (bonds require 55% +1 of voters in an election) to pass a bond for AC.”

And so the bond measure was not placed on the upcoming ballot.

Butler, the deputy superintendent, explained during this week’s school board meeting that parents cannot simply donate an AC unit.

“ One [reason] is it's not super effective to have a typical window unit from a home that would be trying to cool a 960 sq. ft. classroom with 27 students and a teacher, maybe an instructional aide,” he said. “But the bigger issue is the ones that are large enough to really do that, the room has to have a large electrical load, and our electrical system within our buildings where most of them were built in the 1960s, it's just not meant to handle what it does.”

LAist reporter Mariana Dale contributed to this article. 

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office is hosting a buyback event Sunday where people can exchange their e-bikes and e-motorcycles for up to $1,000 in gift cards. The goal is to reduce the number of illegal bikes on the road, and give parents an incentive to get dangerous vehicles out of kids’ hands.

“These vehicles are not child’s play, and the consequences are incredibly dangerous and increasingly deadly,” DA Todd Spitzer said in a news release announcing the event.

Communities in Orange County have been grappling with a surge in e-bikes and e-motos on the road, including among young kids, and an accompanying increase in serious crashes.

“Our area has pretty much the highest concentration of e-bike injuries and e-bike accidents in the country,” said Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the trauma medical director at Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo.

Takeuchi said  just over 70% of the children treated at the hospital for e-bike injuries had some level of head injury, “from a simple concussion to devastating brain damage, brain bleed and skull fracture."

A lot of those injuries are among teenagers not wearing helmets, he said. Plus, many e-bikes on the market are too heavy and fast for children to control, Takeuchi said.

Besides safety concerns, tensions have flared with other drivers, pedestrians, and neighbors in areas with heavy concentrations of e-bikes.

Newport-Mesa Unified School District became one of the first districts in the country this year to restrict e-bikes to high school campuses only. District leaders say the policy is working to disincentivize young students from riding e-bikes to school. But at one middle school, students with e-bikes have opted to ride them anyway, parking in the surrounding neighborhood and raising the ire of homeowners.

The DA’s approach

The DA’s office has started to target parents who allow their children to ride e-bikes and e-motorcycles that have been illegally modified for high speeds, sometimes with deadly consequences. In April, the district attorney filed child endangerment charges against a mother from Aliso Viejo after her 14-year-old son struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest. The boy was riding an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 mph.

Details of the buyback program

The e-bike and e-motorcycle buyback program is part of the DA’s plan to address safety concerns with e-bikes. Local police departments, hospitals and the California Office of Traffic Safety will also be onsite with information booths.

People can bring in functioning or non-functioning e-bikes, e-motorcycles, e-scooters and pocket bikes and exchange them for gift cards worth up to $1,000 — while supplies last.

The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13, at Angel Stadium in Anaheim.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.