The Brief

An Orange County supervisor’s daughter at the center of a controversy over what happened to millions of taxpayer dollars told LAist she had a limited role in the nonprofit that handled the money, despite records stating otherwise.

Rhiannon Do, in her first public statements since LAist started reporting on questions about the spending in November, also said she no longer works for the organization, Viet America Society (VAS).

Do previously did not respond to LAist, but answered some questions by email early this month. She told LAist: “It has been amply shown that I was never an officer or director for VAS.”

She did not provide information showing that was the case.

Public records obtained by LAist show Do signed as Viet America Society’s president on two mental health services subcontracts funded by the county. Records provided by the nonprofit to the county also list her as one of its three directors and officers this past October, and state that she was appointed to another year as an officer. And she was reported as the group’s only director and officer on the original version of its public tax filing for 2022.

Do did not answer follow-up questions asking how she explains those records.

Do is a second year law student at UC Irvine, and the daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do and Cheri Pham, the assistant presiding judge of O.C. Superior Court.

The responses to LAist — signed “Rhiannon Do” — were from an email address that, according to records LAist obtained from the county, Rhiannon Do used to communicate with county staff. In one of those emails, from February 2022, Rhiannon Do represented herself as Viet America Society’s executive director.

The funding being questioned by county staff was tied to COVID-relief funded meals earmarked for residents in need during the pandemic.

Rhiannon Do says her role was limited

Rhiannon Do said that at Viet America Society she worked on mental health services — and was not connected to millions in coronavirus relief dollars that her father directed to the group.

“I have worked for the past 3 years to help them stand up a mental health clinic, which was the first of its kind for the Vietnamese American community in Orange County,” she wrote.

The clinic — Warner Wellness Center — received authorizations for up to $3.1 million in county-funded subcontracts, which her father voted to fund without publicly disclosing his close family connection.

County records show Rhiannon Do signed $375,000 of those subcontracts as president of Viet America Society, which does business under the Warner Wellness name. Amid questions about her qualifications to lead a mental health clinic, Rhiannon Do’s father has pointed to her undergraduate internship working on mental health legislation at the Steinberg Institute as her experience.

As for her role at Viet America Society, Rhiannon Do wrote to LAist that she “was later hired to work on a proposal for the Elderly Nutrition Program, a food service program for seniors, which was completely unrelated to Covid and any Covid funding.”

“I was never involved in any of the Covid meal gap programs or have ever played any role in the back office or financial side of VAS,” she added.

Millions have gone unaccounted for

At Supervisor Do’s direction, Viet America Society has received more than $9 million from the county to feed needy residents, plus $1 million to build a Vietnam War memorial. He also joined votes to fund up to $3.1 million in mental health subcontracts for the group, all without disclosing his close family connection.

Supervisor Do has not responded to multiple interview requests from LAist over the past six months. In a November interview with another news outlet, he defended his decisions to award money to his daughter’s group without public disclosure, saying he wasn’t required to disclose his family connection.

At issue, as county officials warned in a series of letters in February: the group has failed to document what happened with the first year-and-a-half of meal funding it directly received from the county, totaling $2.7 million in 2021 and the first half of 2022.

County officials set mid-March deadlines for Viet America Society to provide long overdue proof of how that money was used. The nonprofit missed the first deadline, which covered funding for the first half of 2021.

Then, the day after the March 14 deadline, a lawyer for the group said it was working to provide the county what it’s looking for.

Nearly a month later, the group has not yet provided any more documents, according to county spokesperson Jennifer Ayari. She responded via email late last week to questions from LAist.

The county’s extended deadline for Viet America Society to submit overdue documents is now April 24 at 5 p.m., Ayari wrote.

Those documents include accounting records, a list of who received meals, the dates meals were delivered, delivery addresses and contact info for the people who received meals.

Bridgecreek Plaza strip mall, which has offices for Viet America Society and Warner Wellness in Huntington Beach.

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LAist

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The timeframe for the meals funding that’s under scrutiny overlaps with Rhiannon Do representing herself as the nonprofit’s executive director, in the February 2022 email to a county executive.

What records show about Rhiannon Do's role

LAist has obtained nine different public records listing Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s top leaders, including instances of her signatures as VAS’s president on county-funded subcontracts. Among the records:

• The nonprofit’s original public tax filing for 2022, which marked Rhiannon Do as the only officer and only director during calendar year 2022. It states it was signed under penalty of perjury in October 2023 by Peter Pham, the group’s founder.
• October 2023 board meeting minutes for Viet America Society, which showed Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s three directors and officers, and participating in decisions at the meeting. They show her joining a vote with the two other directors — Peter Pham and Dinh Mai – in authorizing Pham and Mai to sign checks from the nonprofit’s bank account.
• Rhiannon Do signed as Viet America Society’s president on two county-funded subcontracts for mental health outreach services, totaling $375,000.
• Rhiannon introduced herself to a county official in a February 2022 email as “the Executive Director for VAS (Viet America Society).”

Do says she’s no longer working at the group

In her recent email exchange with LAist, Rhiannon Do said she’s parted ways with Viet America Society.

“I am also no longer with VAS or the Warner Wellness Center,” she said, referring to the name the nonprofit has used for its mental health work.

She didn’t respond to a follow-up email asking why she left.

In February, Viet America Society was informed it would no longer be allowed to perform its county-funded mental health work. That work was funded through subcontracts with the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community (OCAPICA) and the OC chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI OC).

NAMI suspended the group from its work effective immediately on March 5, while OCAPICA notified Viet America Society that it was terminating its work with the group by the end of June, and not renewing it for the following fiscal year.

Nonprofit attorney: ‘A lot of things that were screwed up’

In a phone interview with LAist this week, Sterling Scott Winchell, Viet America Society’s lawyer, told LAist that Rhiannon Do “was basically just a caseworker.” He attributed the paper trail showing otherwise to “sloppiness” and negligence.

“Contracts were written with the wrong name on them. She never held that title. Things happen,” Winchell said last week in his first interview with LAist.

“I can speculate for you,” he added. “There was a previous entity, and she may have been an officer in that before the funding started. But I don’t know why the contracts and so forth were drafted that way. I think it was just sloppiness."

He didn’t specify what that entity was. But Rhiannon Do and two other VAS leaders were listed as officers starting in mid 2021 for a private company — Behavioral Health Solutions — that operated under the Warner Wellness name before Viet America Society took on the name in late 2022, according to state and county registration records.

Many of the records showing Rhiannon Do in leadership at Viet America Society — including the subcontracts and directors meeting minutes — are dated many months after Behavioral Health Solutions informed the state in early January 2023 that it had shut down.

LAist asked Winchell about the paper trail showing Rhiannon Do in top leadership positions at the group, including president, vice president, director and officer.

“Yeah, I would agree with you. There [were] a lot of things that were screwed up. It doesn’t make them true, it just makes them negligent,” Winchell said.

Winchell was Supervisor Do’s appointee to the county ethics commission from 2018 to 2023. He told the county he was hired in late February to represent the nonprofit.

Winchell recently told the OC Register that the nonprofit has refiled its 2022 tax filing without Rhiannon Do’s name as an officer. An amended version of the filing, marked as received by the state Attorney General’s charity registry on March 25, no longer lists her as an officer. It has a note at the end stating it was amended to “Remove Rhiannon Do out” and that “She is not an officer of Viet America Society.”

Attorney also says answers will come in audit

Winchell said the county’s questions would be straightened out in an upcoming audit commissioned by the nonprofit. That audit was required under its county contract, and is nearly two years overdue.

As of last month, Viet America Society was trying to find an accountant to conduct the audit, according to a letter Winchell wrote to the county.

In its demand letters in February, the county warned that it could make the nonprofit repay the money if it doesn’t prove what happened with it.

Winchell said the nonprofit and the county are working closely.

“We’re working together toward a common goal. Our success is their success. It’s not adversarial,” he said. “I understand that controversy gets clicks. But there’s no adversarial relationship between these parties. We’re working together."

“They fell behind on some administrative issues, so they hired me,” he added of the nonprofit.

Winchell said the audit will provide answers about how the money was spent.

Asked if all of the dollars provided to the group for meals went to providing meals, Winchell said: “That’s my understanding.”

“If it’s not the case, the audit will reveal that,” he continued. “My understanding is that all the money — whatever money’s been used, has gone to where it should go.”

Winchell said he thinks the audit will be completed by the end of June.

A county spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that the county is currently working with Viet America Society on compliance requirements.

In her emailed responses to LAist, Rhiannon Do said there was nothing improper about how Viet America Society’s funding was used.

The “insinuation that there was something untoward with the use of VAS funds is fabricated” and a “false narrative,” wrote Do.

In a follow-up email, she said she never “played any role in the back office or financial side of VAS.”

How to watchdog local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention.

Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The next scheduled board meeting is April 23. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

One of America’s most iconic roads is turning 100 this year: Route 66.

Affectionately known as the Mother Road, the historic route idealized ‘getting your kicks’ on a road trip and driving West with the top down. The aspirational ideal of Southern California probably wouldn’t be the same without it, with Route 66 ending at the ultimate sunny destination: the Pacific Ocean.

But beyond the nostalgia, the Main Street of America has another history: a path for migration to the West. Black Americans used it to escape the South during the Jim Crow era, but for them, it was far from a dreamy getaway drive. It’s part of the dark underbelly of Route 66.

Route 66 history 

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed the famed Hollyhock House, once described Route 66 as a “giant chute, down which everything loose in this country is sliding into Southern California.” He was right. Route 66 was, in some ways, a perfect road.

Built in 1926, just before the Great Depression, the path was southern enough to avoid the snow and open all-year round. Crossing eight states and over 2,000 miles, it was designed to link rural communities as far away as Illinois to Southern California.

It was the first highway in the country to be fully-paved in 1938 — a luxury at the time — making it vital to trucking companies and commercial trade. And soon after it also took on a military role. After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the U.S. government decided the Pacific Coast needed more protection, so it invested billions of dollars and moved thousands of military members to California. A desert training facility was also established along the road.

Migration on the Mother Road

The road was also useful for people going on vacations or visiting family. However, its role in migration might be the most influential. Route 66 became an escape route during urgent moments of need, for both Black and white families. Author and cultural documentarian Candacy Taylor has studied Black travel and Route 66 extensively. She said white families used it as a means to get away.

“It became this route for mostly white Americans escaping poverty… [or] the stock market crash in Chicago,” Taylor said. “These men were just saying, ‘well, we’ll just leave and we’ll go to California where it’s better.’ So, the route became this really important method to find salvation for white folks.”

A section of Route 66 near Prewitt, New Mexico in 2003. Rita Powdrell and her sister ended up taking Route 66 a second time to migrate to New Mexico for college.

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For Black Americans, it was about fleeing the crushing prejudice of Jim Crow laws in the South. Taylor said depending where you lived, there were three main paths to take. If you were around the East Coast, you’d likely follow the coast up to New York. If you were in the Mid-South, like Alabama, you’d take the railway up to Chicago.

If you were closer to the West coast, such as Texas, you’d head to Los Angeles, making Route 66 one of the best ways to get out. But it was also highly dangerous.

Racism on Route 66

Rita Powdrell is the 79-year-old director of the African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico. But when she was 16, in 1963, Powdrell got her first taste of the West — and Route 66. Her family traveled to California so her father could attend a National Medical Association conference in L.A.

“We took a week to get to L.A. and we camped all the way to Arizona because my father didn’t want to encounter the segregated hotels and motels that you find along the way,” she said. “He wanted to make sure we’d have a safe space to spend the night when we stopped.”

She remembered they camped on national parkland, and that it was her sister’s job to check all the parks to make sure they had toilets instead of outhouses. Powdrell recalled how cold it was camping, seeing beautiful forests, taking in the smells of the outdoors and her mother cooking over a charcoal fire.

She didn’t realize why the family was camping at the time — which felt like a vacation — but Powdrell said she learned about it later on.

It wasn’t just the segregated hotels that needed to be avoided. Route 66 went through a lot of sundown towns, white communities which prohibited Black people from staying after sunset. If you found yourself in one of these towns after dark, Taylor said it wouldn’t be good.

“There was usually either some kind of sign that said ‘N-word don’t let the sun set on you here’, or they would ring a bell at 6 p.m. because,” she said, “Black people who were working in the towns, that was their cue… to leave, because you shouldn’t be there.”

At best you’d be harassed for staying and escorted to the border, according to Taylor. At worst, your life would be at risk. Sundown towns were known for bigoted people who would carry out beatings, lynchings and other serious threats.

“ Given that 44 of the 89 counties on Route 66 were sundown towns, traveling Route 66 was like a minefield,” Taylor said.

The Green Book

Black travelers had to plan ahead, just like Powdrell’s father. You’d have to bring your own supplies on long drives, like cans to urinate in, extra lunch boxes for meals and bedding to sleep in. It was fairly common for Black drivers to crash on Route 66 as well. According to Taylor, the NAACP told a local newspaper that the crashes were happening because sleep-deprived drivers couldn’t find a place to sleep.

This is where the Green Book came in. It was essentially a national Black Yellow Pages, a key for survival. The travel guide was written by postal carrier Victor Hugo Green for Black folks to find safe places to visit. You could find welcoming communities and things like rest stops, restaurants, gas stations and even real estate offices. While there were multiple Black travel guides, the Green Book was the longest-running and most well-known, published between 1936 and 1967.

“As far as movement, the freedom to move comfortably from one space to another,” Powdrell said, “I think that’s what the Green Book gives African Americans.” She doesn’t know if her father used it on their trip, but Powdrell said it helped people avoid discrimination — like she experienced traveling.

As her family got closer to California, they stopped camping and began to look for motels. Her father thought they’d be fine the closer they got to the coast.

“I remember us going from motel to motel and they would have the vacancy sign out and as soon as my dad would walk in, they would say, ‘oh, we just rented the last room. We’re so sorry.’” she said. “That happened a few times and I could feel the anxiety of my parents because it’s night, they hadn’t planned on camping anywhere.”

Once they reached Barstow in California, it became crystal clear the progressive state in the 1960s wasn’t immune to racism. It was a hot day, so Powdrell and her sister wanted to swim in the hotel pool.

“ We run down to the pool, we get in and all the other guests get out of the pool as soon as we get in,” she recalled.

Since Powdrell was a teenager, she was old enough to know of racism but still hadn’t yet experienced it like she did on this trip. Growing up, her father was the first African American doctor in the Pennsylvania state hospital system. They were the only Black children in an all-white environment. She said because of that her perception of prejudice and segregation was a little skewed.

“When I’m traveling, I’m really thinking that the country is a more accepting place than it is,” she said. “So the type of treatment we start to get as we travel Route 66 — I don’t know how to explain it, but it floods you with an immense sense of shaming. That there’s something wrong with you. That you’re not allowed into these spaces.”

Today, Powdrell admires her father for coming up with an enjoyable camping experience, despite the circumstances. She said it’s another sign of the “sovereign resilience” of Black Americans to resist restrictions on movement, a cornerstone of segregation.

The end of Route 66

Route 66’s demise came with the creation of the Interstate Highway system, through the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.

The interstate was designed to be straight and fast, a superior alternative to Route 66, which intentionally wound through remote towns. Because it was straight, the speed limit was higher, so people could even drive faster.

In L.A. County, the 10 Freeway took the place of Route 66, opening in Santa Monica in the 1960s. The route was ultimately decommissioned in 1985 and removed from the U.S. highway system.

The 10 Freeway west of the East Los Angeles Interchange on March 20, 2026.

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The building of the freeway system often cut through Black neighborhoods, said D’Artagnan Scorza, executive director of racial equity for L.A. County.

“The thing about Route 66 in particular is that while it opened the door for western migration, the freeways built in L.A. undermined a lot of the gains that Black communities made,” Scorza said.

He pointed to Sugar Hill in West Adams, a once wealthy Black neighborhood in L.A. County that was split in half by the 10 Freeway’s construction. That, along with redlining and urban renewal, meant Black and brown communities did not have the political power to fight back, he said.

And now, Black communities are leaving the metropolitan areas where they initially gathered, like South L.A. According to Michael Stoll, a professor of public policy and urban planning at UCLA, families are increasingly moving to places like the Inland Empire and Antelope Valley largely because of housing costs and gentrification.

While transit is just one part of systemic issues facing Southern California, Route 66 is an example of how roads are never just roads. Over 100 years, it’s redefined the West and influenced what happens to communities.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

On a weeknight in April 2016, about 20 people gathered in Koreatown for a run organized by two friends who weren’t sure what they were doing or if anyone would even show up.

Ten years later, that group has become Koreatown Run Club, a weekly fixture that now draws hundreds at a time and roughly 800 to a thousand runners across a typical week, according to co-founder Duy Nguyen. The club has expanded well beyond the neighborhood through partnerships with major brands, including sneaker collaborations with Nike and a banner encouraging the group for this year’s L.A. Marathon.

Neither Nguyen nor co-founder Michael Pak expected it to last this long, or to take on the kind of role it has in people’s lives. The pair, Nguyen said, were “just looking for stuff to do together.”

“I don’t think we thought that far ahead. The idea itself was kind of spur of the moment and then when we had the first run, we were like, ‘oh, what are we doing next?’ And then you blink and it’s 10 years later,” he said.

The first run was loosely organized. Nguyen, an avid soccer guy, had originally planned to start a soccer club, but field access and liability concerns made that difficult. Running was simpler to coordinate and required little beyond a meeting point and a time.

“You could run for free and people could come out at their own will and join,” Pak said.

Even then, they were unsure how it would work in practice.

“None of us are runners,” Nguyen said. “So we were worried like, what route do we run?”

Koreatown Run Club founders Mike Pak and Duy Nguyen at Love Hour in Koreatown.

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About 20 people showed up that first night, many of them friends who came to support the pair. Pak said much of the attendance over time happened through word of mouth rather than any formal outreach.

As the runs became more organized and more people came out to run, the nature of the group began to change. Pak said he started to notice it in conversations with runners who were willing to share more about their lives outside of running. He recalled one woman telling him about her struggle with alcohol addiction and how the club had helped her through it.

“That’s when a light bulb went off,” he said. “They have their own personal life, they’re going through their demons in life, and for them to express those feelings at a run club where they don’t know anyone, I realized, well, if it’s just that story, I’m sure there are thousands of other stories that maybe we have an opportunity to learn from.”

For many members, the club functions as a place to build relationships that extend beyond the runs themselves.

Julie Lee, co-captain of the crew on Thursdays, joined in 2023 after seeing its runners hype each other up in the Rose Bowl Half Marathon. She already knew who they were from Instagram, but said experiencing their energy in person made her want to join.

Originally from Maryland, Lee said finding a community she can trust in a new place has been life-changing.

“These are the friends that I call when I’m having hard times in life, when I’m going through my breakups, when I need a ride to the airport. This has become my family outside of my actual home,” she said.

Charles Austin, another co-captain, said the club filled a similar role for him after returning to the city after college. He’s invited people he met through the club, including Lee, to his wedding last year.

“That’s the sort of bonds that you end up building. And that’s something that kind of fulfills me day in and day out,” he said. “I probably couldn’t make it through some of the harder things I’ve been through in the last couple of years if not for KRC.”

Runners pose for a group photo before running with Koreatown Run Club at Love Hour in Koreatown.

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The club has also influenced how participants interact with the neighborhood itself. Pak said that before joining, he felt some people were hesitant to spend time in the neighborhood or felt unsure navigating it.

“When you have friends in the neighborhood and you live in the neighborhood, you get a little curious and have curiosity to explore more of the neighborhood that you live in. And I think we just opened a little door,” he said.

Nguyen agrees.

“I think maybe the run club opened it up more to being like, ‘Oh, I’m just gonna walk to get coffee after a run and stumble upon all these places and meet all these people,’” he said.

Running through the neighborhood also shapes how people experience it. While the streets of Koreatown are “unpredictable,” Pak said, moving through the area on foot allows runners to notice details they might otherwise miss.

“I think in the beginning, I didn’t expect to see some really undiscovered restaurants and businesses,” Pak said.

Over time, Koreatown Run Club has expanded well beyond the city. Lee said that while traveling in South Korea for a marathon, she was welcomed by a local run club simply because she was associated with KRC.

Nguyen described a similar experience while traveling in Taiwan, where someone recognized the club’s name on his shirt and came up to talk to him.

Similarly, Pak said while traveling Japan, he ran into someone wearing a KRC shirt and ended up going to dinner together.

But Pak felt one of the clearest indicators of the club’s reach was when runners began sending him photos of unofficial club merchandise being sold overseas.

“That’s when I thought we really made it,” he said, laughing. “We didn’t know we could be bootlegged.”

The club has also taken on a larger role during moments of crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pak and Nguyen said runners used group chats to coordinate grocery deliveries and other forms of mutual aid.

More recently, after the L.A. fires, the club converted one of its spaces into a relief center, collecting and distributing donations to affected families. Pak said volunteers from the community showed up consistently to help run the effort.

“There were just so many volunteers that came through every single day,” he said. “It’s the community that we built. They all come together in a time of need.”

To Austin, the run club has become something he could rely on.

Runners along their route with Koreatown Run Club at Love Hour in Koreatown.

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“It’s a spot where I can come to and I can build on friendships and family,” he said. “It all starts here and it just kind of branches out from here.”

On a recent weeknight at Love Hour — a burger joint co-owned by Pak and Nguyen — Lynn Nguyen, who joined the club in 2017, was in the middle of an interview after a run when she turned to Pak.

“I’m getting married, Mike! You’re invited to my wedding!” she said, before returning to her answer.

A few moments later, another runner walked by and stopped to greet her. Nguyen mentioned she had officiated their wedding three years earlier, then laughed and gestured toward the exchange.

“See? That’s how it is.”

Both founders said their lives have changed dramatically. Neither expected to run full marathons — Pak has done 10, Nguyen 31 — or to meet people from around the world and see strangers become friends who go on to get married and have kids.

“It’s really inspiring to see how many people look at us outside of just Los Angeles. And at this point, it’s way bigger than us and it’s really cool to see new people coming in who I have no idea who they are, but they are part of this long-term journey,” Pak said.

Ten years after the first run, they say they still approach running the club without a long-term roadmap and take things day by day.

“We’ve been doing that from the start and it’s gotten us here, so I think we’ll just keep going at it,” Nguyen said. “We never think too far ahead.”

For Fatmah Muhammad, Astralab is a home away from home. 

The community space sometimes feels safer than the confines of her home, where she sits alone watching the constant reports of violence and death flash across her screen — reminders that her homeland of Palestine is being torn apart by war.

There isn’t much she can do from thousands of miles away, so she and hundreds of others find solace in the refuge that Astralab provides. 

And the space is at risk of closing.

After nearly two years in the Westlake neighborhood, the founders of Astralab say they’ve been told to leave. The news arrived abruptly as the founders said they were in talks to extend their lease with their landlord JMF Development.

The building manager had even thanked them for bringing life into the studio and creative office space.

“We’ve been great tenants and kind neighbors. We’ve really built a space for people to come and to gather and not just grieve, but also joyfully be together,” said Yusuf Misdaq, co-founder of the third space venue that borders Koreatown.

“But they just took it off the table and gave us no response since then,” he said.

For Fatmah Muhammad, Astralab is a home away from home.

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Located in the Granada Buildings — a block-long Mediterranean and Spanish Colonial Revival complex on La Fayette Park Place with open courtyards and greenery — Astralab sits as a kind of refuge in an otherwise blighted stretch of the neighborhood. 

In February, Astralab received a 60-day notice to vacate. Co-founder Christina Lila said they are now working with a pro bono lawyer to challenge the landlord. 

When reached by phone, a person at the real estate office declined to provide his name and questioned why anyone was asking about the notice to vacate. 

“Why is this a story? I don’t know why I’m even entertaining this conversation,” he said. 

He said Astralab’s tenancy ends April 19 and that they would need to vacate the space. The real estate company did not respond to requests for comment via email. 

'Community is medicine'

While all are welcome at Astralab, the space was created to provide refuge with a specific community in mind.

Lila is half Iranian and Misdaq is originally from Afghanistan. The community space was meant to cater to people from Southwest Asia and North Africa, or the SWANA region, who often feel unmoored away from home.

“We really saw the lack of cultural centers in America, frankly. And while working in the SWANA region, I saw the vibrant cultures and the community love and how powerful it was,” Lila said. “It feels like there’s almost a psychological torture in America, and you can’t get the medicine. Community is medicine, and we just don’t have it as much here.”

For Fatmah Muhammad, Astralab is a home away from home.

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Courtesy Astralab

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Muhammad said that sense of community is what drew her to Astralab.

“My kids have performed cultural songs and dances there. That place just reminds me of who we are and it just gives me that comfortability of being there,” she said.

Muhammad, who owns Knafeh Queens, a dessert shop based in Rancho Cucamonga, has also hosted workshops at Astralab, teaching people how to make the dessert and sharing its history.

“I’ve rarely been able to find spaces like this that I barely have to put effort into. I always show up as my full self, but there’s something really special about Astralab and how welcoming they are to everyone regardless of background and faith,” she said.

Shortly after opening, Astralab quickly started hosting a steady rotation of gatherings, drawing people from across Los Angeles and beyond. Some nights are quiet, with poetry readings or small group discussions, Lila said. Other nights spill into the courtyard.

“We host regular bazaars where we open our courtyard, and there’ll be 30, 40 creators and so many people, artists, musicians, healers — we have a ‘Silk Road’ type of space where people will come and put their creations — all sorts of different medicines and jewelry and things like that,” Lila said.

More than 200 artists, musicians and small business owners have participated through those events over the last two years, according to the founders. Astralab is sustained through event-based income and the bazaar, Lila said, but most paid events include sliding scale or free tickets for those who could not otherwise afford to attend. 

For Fatmah Muhammad, Astralab is a home away from home.

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Misdaq can tell that people often visit carrying the weight of what’s happening back home.

“With Iran being so prominent, people are coming in tears. We’ve had a lot of grieving events where people can just come and just be,” he said.

But “a lot of dance happens here, a lot of celebration happens here. It’s not all sad. In fact, it’s mostly joyful, actually,” Misdaq adds.

'A drop of solace'

Parisa Nkoy, an Iranian-Congolese organizer, had been following Astralab online before visiting earlier this year. She has used the space to host workshops connecting struggles across the world, including Congo and Palestine.

Earlier this year, she led a teach-in on Congo, inviting Congolese organizers who do advocacy work for refugees and immigrants.

“We did a little presentation and a workshop, and then we were able to connect to Palestine as well. It was a fundraiser as well to raise money that we donated to folks on the ground in Congo and I just don’t know that I could have found another space that would have been as comfortable for me to do that,” she said.

“I think that that’s super important and we need more of that, not less of that,” she said.

Neighbors say they haven’t seen similar action taken against other tenants.

“As far as I know, no one else here has gotten something like this just randomly. I mean, most people will move out on their own accord if they can’t pay rent. We’ve only really had positive interactions with them,” said Eric Gorvin, who runs a branding agency next door.

“Every time they’ve had an event, it’s been really respectful people. It’s always community-driven,” he added. “I didn’t know much about that community until meeting them, and it’s been really refreshing to have them around.” 

The founders say they haven’t been given a reason for the notice to vacate, but they believe it’s due to their pro-Palestine stance. 

“We’ve basically been speaking a lot about the genocide in Palestine, and we’ve used our platform to try and not shy away from that too much, but we also do a lot of other things besides that,” Misdaq said.

“We just had a Passover [seder] led by a Jewish mystic, and it’s a testimony that we feel the world needs right now where there can be an alliance of all these different people,” Lila said.

“We can share the beauty of our uniqueness together,” she said.

The founders said they invested most of their personal savings into creating Astralab and had only recently moved beyond breaking even. Lila said that milestone would have allowed them to begin offering new programs.

“We’ve become a home to so many people separated from their families during these wars, our space gives people a drop of solace while watching their homelands being bombed,” they said.

“If we have to, we’ll be nomadic, which is kind of appropriate maybe in some ways for our people. So maybe we’ll take it on the road for a little while before we find a space if they do kick us out,” Misdaq said. 

Astralab will host HAYAT, a Middle-Eastern/Persian celebration of dance and music on April 18. More details can be found on their Instagram page, @astralab_la .

Brandee Williams, a 2007 graduate of Inglewood High School, pulled over on Grevillea Avenue Wednesday to witness the destruction of buildings at her alma mater. 

Through a gap in the fencing, she filmed a video for a friend after discovering the senior square where they used to play Twister during breaks was gone. 

“I get what they’re trying to do,” she said. “Seeing it being torn down, that’s so many memories.”

Driving down Manchester Avenue, Williams and other IHS alumni saw heavy construction equipment, fencing and a partial demolition near Grevillea Avenue where the century-old high school used to sit. It’s all a part of the campus’ transformation after voters passed Measure I in 2020, which allotted $240 million for the project that is scheduled to be completed in December 2027, according to James Morris, the district’s county administrator. 

As of this month, most of the school’s original buildings have been demolished. Two structures — the gym and the auditorium — will remain, though both will be renovated as part of the new campus design, Morris said.  

Brandee Williams, a 2007 graduate of Inglewood High School, pulled over on Grevillea Avenue Wednesday to witness the destruction of buildings at her alma mater.

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Isaiah Murtaugh

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The LA Local

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Students will attend classes on the new campus at the start of the 2028 school year, according to Morris. For now, all of Inglewood’s high school students are being housed at what was Morningside High School near Century Boulevard and Yukon Avenue.    

“There are no plans for Morningside and we won’t make any decisions about that campus until the students move out in two years,” Morris told The LA Local before Wednesday’s school board meeting. 

While the city did have two high schools at one point, it now has one, Inglewood High School.

The transformation of Inglewood High School comes amid broader changes within the district. Morningside High School was officially closed as part of districtwide school closures in 2025. The district’s been under a 14-year receivership, or state control, that could end as soon as next year, Morris said, after closing nearly half of its schools between  2018 and 2025 due to financial constraints. 

However, Morris said the Inglewood High rebuild is not tied to its receivership status and is an investment he believes is long overdue.

“It’s been 102 years since that building was originally built,” Morris said. “This is a part of history and it’s going to be a part of the future when the kids get the school that they deserve.” 

As the physical campus changes, the school’s identity remains strong within the community. It’s still technically named Inglewood High School, though some students advocated for a new name: “Inglewood High School United,” Morris said, adding that the board will have to officially approve a name change once it regains control from the state.  

Just before Wednesday’s school board meeting, Morris displayed a brick he collected as a memento from the construction site he toured earlier that day with other board members. The brick is imprinted with the number 1924, the year the high school was built. 

“We are trying to work closely with Inglewood and Morningside alumni groups to honor that history, honor the traditions and collect certain things,” Morris said. 

The LA Local’s Isaiah Murtagh contributed to this report. 

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