Quincy "Pastor Blue" Brown, co-founder of the Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary, a half-block long stretch of sidewalk on Los Angeles' Skid Row, speaks to a video blogger as he gets ready for his monthly birthday celebration for his community.
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Topline:
Health experts say overdose prevention centers can save lives, but are illegal in most of the U.S. On Los Angeles’ Skid Row, those in need have built their own.
The backstory: A sidewalk sanctuary in Skid Row meets a need served elsewhere by overdose prevention centers, which are common in European cities but rare in the United States. With overdose deaths rocketing upward, public health officials in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities have called for legalizing such centers, saying there’s now an abundance of evidence that they save lives. But the political will to heed that advice has not materialized.
Read on ... for the perspective of "Pastor Blue" of the Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary. half-block-long stretch of sidewalk on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, where more than 4,400 unhoused people live.
“Come on, kick back,” invites Quincy Brown, co-founder of the Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary, a half-block-long stretch of sidewalk on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, where more than 4,400 unhoused people live.
Four years ago, Brown began serving barbecue here out of the back of his van. He propped up a handful of tents and canopies to shade visitors from the intense sun. Now there are folding chairs and tables where men and women play dominoes, chess and checkers, and enjoy snacks and bottled water donated by local organizations and community members who pass by.
Amid the visitors hanging out and catching up, some smoke crack cocaine, meth or marijuana, sitting on chairs in the sanctuary’s central area. The nonjudgmental environment for drug consumption is on-mission for the sanctuary. Brown, 50, was ordained as a pastor in 2005 and is known by most as Pastor Blue. He started the community space to save lives: whether through food, prayer or prevention of overdose deaths. Here, anyone can obtain free clean pipes and Naloxone (commonly known by its brand name, Narcan), a nasal spray medication with the ability to reverse overdoses. While injection drugs are less commonly used at the sanctuary, free clean needles are available.
“First and foremost, I want people to live,” says Pastor Blue. By creating a hygienic environment with lifesaving medicine at hand, he hopes to prevent overdose deaths, which over the last few years have risen sharply in Skid Row and across the country.
Pastor Blue’s sidewalk sanctuary meets a need served elsewhere by overdose prevention centers, which are common in European cities but rare in the United States. With overdose deaths rocketing upward, public health officials in Los Angeles and other U.S. cities have called for legalizing such centers, saying there’s now an abundance of evidence that they save lives. But the political will to heed that advice has not materialized.
At Blue Hollywood, anyone can obtain free clean pipes and naloxone (commonly known by the brand name Narcan), a nasal spray medication that can reverse overdoses. While injection drugs are less commonly used at the sanctuary, free clean needles are available.
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Darren Willett, director of Skid Row’s Center for Harm Reduction, operated by the nonprofit Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, said the lack of overdose prevention centers in Los Angeles is “infuriating.” If officials approved them, “we could do it tomorrow. And yet, here we are watching people die,” said Willett.
Pastor Blue estimates there have been 20 overdoses at Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary over the last two years — yet not one fatality.
To achieve this, monitoring is crucial. The sanctuary operates with an “I’m gonna watch over you while you use, you watch over me” approach, Pastor Blue says. “I’m constantly walking through, so if somebody sleeps too long, we’re gonna get you up.”
Illicit fentanyl has been the greatest cause of overdose. By weight, the synthetic opioid is about 50 times stronger than heroin. Even small amounts can cause respiratory difficulty, and in some cases death. Fentanyl’s potency and low production cost have led to its increasing use as an additive to other drugs.
In 2021, 2,741 people in Los Angeles County died from an accidental drug overdose, according to the Department of Public Health — more than double the number of lives lost to overdose in 2016. Fentanyl was involved in 109 deaths in 2016 and 1,504 deaths in 2021.
As fentanyl-related deaths in Skid Row began to soar, the head of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and other health officials called for the establishment of official consumption centers to prevent overdoses.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health released a report late last year on fentanyl overdoses that included a call for official prevention centers and other harm reduction measures, such as access to Naloxone and fentanyl test strips. At the same time, Barbara Ferrer and Gary Tsai, director of L.A. County Department of Public Health and director of Substance Abuse Prevention and Control, respectively, endorsed the centers, saying it was time for “bold action.”
“We do not tell people with diabetes that they can’t be eligible for treatment unless they comply with diet restrictions 100% of the time, or that people with heart disease can’t receive care unless they exercise,” Ferrer and Tsai wrote in a Daily News op-ed. “Overdose prevention centers … send a subtle but important message that we want to bring people who use drugs out from the corners of our communities and that they deserve unconditional and nonjudgmental services.”
Despite support from health experts and local officials, federal law bans overdose prevention centers due to the “crack house statute” — a 1986 law that prevents individuals and organizations from maintaining or opening places for the purpose of using a controlled substance. Only New York City, which has two prevention centers, has bucked that law so far, though Rhode Island, Colorado and New Mexico are taking steps to open them.
A nonprofit center operated in San Francisco for one year in 2022 as part of the mayor’s emergency plan to address the overdose crisis, though it has since closed. In recent months, other unsanctioned sites have popped up in the city to address the urgent issue of drug overdose. Like in Los Angeles, the future of prevention centers in San Francisco is uncertain.
Last summer, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) authored a bill to open pilot overdose prevention centers in L.A., Oakland and San Francisco. But Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it, saying that more planning was needed. He expressed concern the centers could open “a world of unintended consequences.”
Newsom was likely hoping to stave off “the largely GOP-driven narrative of California as a needle-infested, drug-overrun dystopia,” CalMatters stated on its website.
Men and women play dominoes and enjoy snacks and bottled water. Photo: Barbara Davidson.
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While Los Angeles has seen a groundswell of support for overdose prevention centers, with local leaders and community nonprofits calling for them to be legalized, none have opened.
So Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary operates as a real-world example of the paradoxes brought about by the nation’s 52-year war on drugs. Worldwide, 16 countries have established more than 120 official overdose prevention centers where people can use drugs in a supervised environment, with staff ready to respond if they overdose. While such official centers are illegal in the U.S., Pastor Blue’s sidewalk setup serves as a one-man version of such a space.
On one summer evening, while people at Blue Hollywood were playing dominoes and hanging out, a resident who frequents the sanctuary accidentally overdosed. After smoking crack in a pipe, he began to have trouble breathing.
Pastor Blue called an ambulance, administered four doses of Narcan and performed CPR. Moments before paramedics arrived, “we revived him,” Pastor Blue said. “We had Narcan, thank god.”
Pastor Blue is fighting a problem that “does not seem to be going anywhere in the near future,” he said. “We have loved ones, we have friends, we have people that are suffering with different addictions. I’m here to meet people right where they are.”
Here on Skid Row, Blue Hollywood is an example of a community-created oasis, said Soma Snakeoil, director and co-founder of the Sidewalk Project, a harm reduction nonprofit in the neighborhood.
The sanctuary receives supplies such as clean needles, pipes and Narcan from local nonprofits like the Sidewalk Project, as well as chairs, tents, food and water from Los Angeles Mission and donors who drop by.
“For the most part, it’s a community,” says Pastor Blue, who resides near Skid Row. “I really want to preserve community, because there’s so many people who have been detached from their biological community.”
The sanctuary offers immediate support, whether it’s a tent for shelter or a freshly cooked lunch.
“By him putting this here, I think he saved a lot of people,” said Rico Solomon, a longtime sanctuary member. Born and raised in L.A.’s West Adams neighborhood, Solomon lived in a tent on Skid Row for four years before moving to an apartment in La Puente, 20 miles east of downtown. Even though it can mean three bus rides for more than an hour and a half, he returns to Blue Hollywood regularly.
A group bible class.
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Solomon says the community keeps him coming back. “It’s a bit of a commute, especially when I’m catching the bus. But I have my habits, you know. So I don’t take this stuff home with me,” he said of the drugs he consumes and the pipe he uses to smoke. “I come out here and do it. Then, when I get ready to go home, I leave it all here.”
Solomon said he’s seen four overdoses at the sanctuary and has called 911 himself to assist people experiencing an overdose, so they are able “to live to see another day.”
“People are dropping like flies around here,” said Anthony Willis, 60, who lives in an apartment in Skid Row. Born and raised in L.A., he is a father and grandfather.
Nearly a year ago, Willis accidentally overdosed. While looking to smoke crack cocaine, he borrowed a pipe. Before smoking the pipe, he asked if it contained fentanyl and was told no.
The pipe turned out to be laced with it. “I panicked,” Willis said. “I couldn’t breathe.” Emergency services arrived, though he was able to regain his breathing on his own.
Consuming drugs less frequently is one of Willis’ goals. In the meantime, treating those who consume with dignity is imperative. “We’re all human,” he said. “Don’t judge people.”
According to Willett, the Center for Harm Reduction director, a nonjudgmental approach is key.
“There’s a lot of things you can do to help people improve [their] health without stopping using drugs,” he said. Too often, he said, organizations approach the problem by focusing on abstinence. “For many people, that’s a deal breaker,” he added.
Using a harm reduction — as opposed to an abstinence — approach allows the center to engage with 95% of clients who use drugs, Willett said.
While the U.S. is now five decades deep into the war on drugs, the stigma and criminalization of drug use is a relatively new phenomenon. “In the late 1800s, you could buy cocaine and a syringe for $1.50 in the Sears catalog,” Willett said.
“There’s a direct lineage straight from slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration and the war on drugs,” said Willett, adding that all were tools used by the system of white supremacy to maintain control over Black people. He points out that the supposed end of Jim Crow laws in the late 1960s coincided neatly with the start of the war on drugs in 1971, which resulted in a dramatic increase in prison populations. It has cost the U.S. roughly $1 trillion to police, arrest and incarcerate people for drug-related charges, and spiked rates of overdose and death.
Brown sweeps the street with one of the sanctuary's regulars.
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If you ask Willett, the war on drugs has neither met its stated goals nor alleviated the most pressing health issues: It hasn’t reduced overdose rates, soft tissue infection, infectious disease or violence related to drug trafficking. Instead, it has “devastated communities of color through reincarceration, ripping families apart for minor drug offenses and confiscating people’s homes for being associated with illicit drug trade.”
The problem isn’t drug use itself, Willett believes. It’s the way society punishes people for using drugs — targeting Black people, communities of color and low-income people in particular, despite similar rates of drug consumption and sales across racial and economic lines.
“We cannot continue doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result,” L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in an email, speaking to the history of criminalizing drug use and the rise in overdose deaths.
“It’s a reality that people are gonna use,” said Pastor Blue. “So on behalf of trying to keep an atmosphere where they’re at peace … safe consumption sites are very important.”
Countries with overdose prevention centers (the first opened in Switzerland in 1986) show significantly lower rates of overdose than those without. In 2020, 91,799 people died from overdose in the United States — about 58 times more than in Germany, where 1,581 people died from overdose (the U.S. population is only four times larger than Germany’s).
Jeannette Zanipatin, California director for the national advocacy group the Drug Policy Alliance, says these overdose prevention centers are not a substitute for treatment. The centers, which commonly connect clients to other services such as mental and physical health care, “keep individuals alive so that when they are ready to access treatment those linkages can be made for the individual,” Zanipatin said in an email.
In the U.S., critics from both parties have questioned their success. “Enabling those suffering from addiction to go to the brink of death is a dubious treatment,” wrote U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, a President Trump appointee, in a 2020 opinion in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a state measure to open a pilot prevention center in San Francisco, saying, “Fundamentally I do not believe that enabling illegal drug use in government sponsored injection centers — with no corresponding requirement that the user undergo treatment — will reduce drug addiction.” Such sentiments linger today.
In 2022, the American Medical Association called for more funding for pilot prevention centers. And recently the National Institutes of Health announced it will fund a four-year study to investigate the impact of prevention centers on both individual clients and neighborhoods — as well as estimate potential costs and savings for local medical and criminal justice systems.
NIMBYism is also an obstacle to opening prevention centers, said Zanipatin, with some fearing a center would negatively impact their community. Yet “crime rates have been reduced, syringe litter is reduced, and open drug use is reduced in places where centers are co-located in communities,” she wrote in an email.
A study of one unofficial overdose prevention center in the U.S. found that in the five years since its opening, crime decreased in the surrounding area. A review of government-sponsored prevention centers in Vancouver, Canada, found no increases in drug-related crimes or public nuisance.
As part of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles in Skid Row, a trained overdose response team of staff and clients canvasses the neighborhood in golf carts seven days a week. They are armed with a broad range of tools, including Naloxone injections, concentrated oxygen, artificial breathing masks, pulse oximeters and automated external defibrillators.
Still, one crucial service is missing: providing a safe environment for clients to consume drugs on-site.
In 2016, Homeless Health Care Los Angeles formed a partnership with The Men’s Home in Copenhagen, which operates two overdose prevention centers, and has been sending staff to Denmark to learn from these centers ever since.
A bandage is seen on a child's arm after she received a COVID vaccine Nov. 3, 2021, in Shoreline, Wash.
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Topline:
The federal government has drastically scaled back the number of recommended childhood immunizations, sidelining six routine vaccines that have safeguarded millions from serious diseases, long-term disability, and death.
What does this mean? Vaccines against the three diseases, as well as those against respiratory syncytial virus, meningococcal disease, flu, and COVID, are now recommended only for children at high risk of serious illness or after "shared clinical decision-making," or consultation between doctors and parents.
What experts are saying: Experts on childhood disease were baffled by the change in guidance. HHS said the changes followed "a scientific review of the underlying science" and were in line with vaccination programs in other developed nations.
Read on ... for details on the vaccines and what they prevent.
The federal government has drastically scaled back the number of recommended childhood immunizations, sidelining six routine vaccines that have safeguarded millions from serious diseases, long-term disability and death.
Just three of the six immunizations the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it will no longer routinely recommend — against hepatitis A, hepatitis B and rotavirus — have prevented nearly 2 million hospitalizations and more than 90,000 deaths in the past 30 years, according to the CDC's own publications.
Vaccines against the three diseases, as well as those against respiratory syncytial virus, meningococcal disease, flu, and COVID, are now recommended only for children at high risk of serious illness or after "shared clinical decision-making," or consultation between doctors and parents.
The CDC maintained its recommendations for 11 childhood vaccines: measles, mumps, and rubella; whooping cough, tetanus, and diphtheria; the bacterial disease known as Hib; pneumonia; polio; chickenpox; and human papillomavirus, or HPV.
Federal and private insurance will still cover vaccines for the diseases the CDC no longer recommends universally, according to a Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet; parents who want to vaccinate their children against those diseases will not have to pay out-of-pocket.
Experts on childhood disease were baffled by the change in guidance. HHS said the changes followed "a scientific review of the underlying science" and were in line with vaccination programs in other developed nations.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, pointed to Denmark as a model. But the schedules of most European countries are closer to the U.S. standard upended by the new guidance.
For example, Denmark, which does not vaccinate against rotavirus, registers around 1,200 infant and toddler rotavirus hospitalizations a year. That rate, in a country of 6 million, is about the same as it was in the United States before vaccination.
"They're OK with having 1,200 or 1,300 hospitalized kids, which is the tip of the iceberg in terms of childhood suffering," said Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a co-inventor of a licensed rotavirus vaccine. "We weren't. They should be trying to emulate us, not the other way around."
Public health officials say the new guidance puts the onus on parents to research and understand each childhood vaccine and why it is important.
Here's a rundown of the diseases the sidelined vaccines prevent:
RSV. Respiratory syncytial virus is the most common cause of hospitalization for infants in the U.S.
The respiratory virus usually spreads in fall and winter and produces cold-like symptoms, though it can be deadly for young children, causing tens of thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths a year. According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, roughly 80% of children younger than 2 who are hospitalized with RSV have no identifiable risk factors. Long-awaited vaccines against the disease were introduced in 2023.
Hepatitis A. Hepatitis A vaccination, which was phased in beginning in the late 1990s and recommended for all toddlers starting in 2006, has led to a more than 90% drop in the disease since 1996. The foodborne virus, which causes a wretched illness, continues to plague adults, particularly people who are homeless or who abuse drugs or alcohol, with a total of 1,648 cases and 85 deaths reported in 2023.
Hepatitis B. The disease causes liver cancer, cirrhosis, and other serious illnesses and is particularly dangerous when contracted by babies and young children. The hepatitis B virus is transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids, even in microscopic amounts, and can survive on surfaces for a week. From 1990 to 2019, vaccination resulted in a 99% decline in reported cases of acute hepatitis B among children and teens. Liver cancer among American children has also plummeted as a result of universal childhood vaccination. But the hepatitis B virus is still around, with 2,000-3,000 acute cases reported annually among unvaccinated adults. More than 17,000 chronic hepatitis B diagnoses were reported in 2023. The CDC estimates about half of people infected don't know they have it.
Rotavirus. Before routine administration of the current rotavirus vaccines began in 2006, about 70,000 young children were hospitalized and 50 died every year from the virus. It was known as "winter vomiting syndrome," said Sean O'Leary, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado. "It was a miserable disease that we hardly see anymore."
The virus is still common on surfaces that babies touch, however, and "if you lower immunization rates it will once again hospitalize children," Offit said.
Meningococcal vaccines. These have been required mainly for teenagers and college students, who are notably vulnerable to critical illness caused by the bacteria. About 600 to 1,000 cases of meningococcal disease are reported in the U.S. each year, but it kills more than 10% of those it sickens, and 1 in 5 survivors have permanent disabilities.
Flu and covid. The two respiratory viruses have each killed hundreds of children in recent years — though both tend to be much more severe in older adults. Flu is currently on the upswing in the United States, and last flu season the virus killed 289 children.
What is shared clinical decision-making?
Under the changes, decisions about vaccinating children against influenza, covid, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, and hepatitis A and B will now rely on what officials call "shared clinical decision-making," meaning families will have to consult with a health care provider to determine whether a vaccine is appropriate.
"It means a provider should have a conversation with the patient to lay out the risks and the benefits and make a decision for that individual person," said Lori Handy, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
In the past, the CDC used that term only in reference to narrow circumstances, like whether a person in a monogamous relationship needed the HPV vaccine, which prevents a sexually transmitted infection and certain cancers.
The CDC's new approach doesn't line up with the science because of the proven protective benefit the vaccines have for the vast majority of the population, Handy said.
In their report justifying the changes, HHS officials Tracy Beth Høeg and Martin Kulldorff said the U.S. vaccination system requires more safety research and more parental choice. Eroding trust in public health caused in part by an overly large vaccine schedule had led more parents to shun vaccination against major threats like measles, they said.
The vaccines on the schedule that the CDC has altered were backed up by extensive safety research when they were evaluated and approved by the FDA.
"They're held to a safety standard higher than any other medical intervention that we have," Handy said. "The value of routine recommendations is that it really helps the public understand that this has been vetted upside down and backwards in every which way."
Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Orange County, Calif., said the change in guidance will cause more confusion among parents who think it means a vaccine's safety is in question.
"It is critical for public health that recommendations for vaccines are very clear and concise," Ball said. "Anything to muddy the water is just going to lead to more children getting sick."
Ball said that instead of focusing on a child's individual health needs, he often has to spend limited clinic time reassuring parents that vaccines are safe. A "shared clinical decision-making" status for a vaccine has no relationship to safety concerns, but parents may think it does.
HHS' changes do not affect state vaccination laws and therefore should allow prudent medical practitioners to carry on as before, said Richard Hughes IV, an attorney and a George Washington University lecturer who is leading litigation against Kennedy over vaccine changes.
"You could expect that any pediatrician is going to follow sound evidence and recommend that their patients be vaccinated," he said. The law protects providers who follow professional care guidelines, he said, and "RSV, meningococcal, and hepatitis remain serious health threats for children in this country."
This story comes from NPR's health reporting partnership withKFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. KFF Health News is one of the core operating programs at KFF, the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
The Interior Department's new "America the Beautiful" annual pass for U.S. national parks.
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The National Park Service has updated its policy to discourage visitors from defacing a picture of President Donald Trump on this year's pass. The use of an image of Trump on the 2026 pass — rather than the usual picture of nature — has sparked a backlash, sticker protests, and a lawsuit from a conservation group.
What is the pass? The $80 annual America the Beautiful pass gives visitors access to more than 2,000 federal recreation sites. Since 2004, the pass has typically showcased sweeping landscapes or iconic wildlife, selected through a public photo contest. Past winners have featured places like Arches National Park in Utah and images of bison roaming the plains.
What's with this year's pass? Instead, of a picture of nature, this year's design shows side-by-side portraits of Presidents George Washington and Trump. The new design has drawn criticism from parkgoers and ignited a wave of "do-it-yourself" resistance.
Read on ... for more on the backlash surrounding this year's pass.
The National Park Service has updated its policy to discourage visitors from defacing a picture of President Donald Trump on this year's pass.
The use of an image of Trump on the 2026 pass — rather than the usual picture of nature — has sparked a backlash, sticker protests, and a lawsuit from a conservation group.
The $80 annual America the Beautiful pass gives visitors access to more than 2,000 federal recreation sites. Since 2004, the pass has typically showcased sweeping landscapes or iconic wildlife, selected through a public photo contest. Past winners have featured places like Arches National Park in Utah and images of bison roaming the plains.
Instead, of a picture of nature, this year's design shows side-by-side portraits of Presidents George Washington and Trump. The new design has drawn criticism from parkgoers and ignited a wave of "do-it-yourself" resistance.
Photos circulating online show that many national park cardholders have covered the image of Trump's face with stickers of wildlife, landscapes, and yellow smiley faces, while some have completely blocked out the whole card. The backlash has also inspired a growing sticker campaign.
Jenny McCarty, a longtime park volunteer and graphic designer, began selling custom stickers meant to fit directly over Trump's face — with 100% of proceeds going to conservation nonprofits.
"We made our first donation of $16,000 in December," McCarty said. "The power of community is incredible."
McCarty says the sticker movement is less about politics and more about preserving the neutrality of public lands. "The Interior's new guidance only shows they continue to disregard how strongly people feel about keeping politics out of national parks," she said.
The National Park Service card policy was updated this week to say that passes may no longer be valid if they've been "defaced or altered." The change, which was revealed in an internal email to National Park Service staff obtained by SFGATE, comes just as the sticker movement has gained traction across social media.
In a statement to NPR, the Interior Department said there was no new policy. Interagency passes have always been void if altered, as stated on the card itself. The agency said the recent update was meant to clarify that rule and help staff deal with confusion from visitors.
The Park Service has long said passes can be voided if the signature strip is altered, but the updated guidance now explicitly includes stickers or markings on the front of the card.
It will be left to the discretion of park service officials to determine whether a pass has been "defaced" or not. The update means park officials now have the leeway to reject a pass if a sticker leaves behind residue, even if the image underneath is intact.
In December, conservation group the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C., opposing the new pass design.
The group argues that the image violates a federal requirement that the annual America the Beautiful pass display a winning photograph from a national parks photo contest. The 2026 winning image was a picture of Glacier National Park.
"This is part of a larger pattern of Trump branding government materials with his name and image," Kierán Suckling, the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, told NPR. "But this kind of cartoonish authoritarianism won't fly in the United States."
The lawsuit asks a federal court to pull the current pass design and replace it with the original contest winner — the Glacier National Park image. It also seeks to block the government from featuring a president's face on future passes.
Not everyone sees a problem with the new design. Vince Vanata, the GOP chairman of Park County, Wyoming, told the Cowboy State Daily that Trump detractors should "suck it up" and accept the park passes, saying they are a fitting tribute to America's 250th birthday this July 4.
"The 250th anniversary of our country only comes once. This pass is showing the first president of the United States and the current president of the United States," Vanata said.
But for many longtime visitors, the backlash goes beyond design.
Erin Quinn Gery, who buys an annual pass each year, compared the image to "a mug shot slapped onto natural beauty."
She also likened the decision to self-glorification.
"It's akin to throwing yourself a parade or putting yourself on currency," she said. "Let someone else tell you you're great — or worth celebrating and commemorating."
When asked if she plans to remove her protest sticker, Gery replied: "I'll take the sticker off my pass after Trump takes his name off the Kennedy Center."
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General views outside of at The Beverly Hilton Hotel during Golden Globe Awards weekend at the Beverly Hilton on Feb. 28, 2021, in Beverly Hill.
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Topline:
The 83rd annual Golden Globe Awards take over the Beverly Hilton Hotel Sunday evening.
That means... Road closures and parking restrictions. Read on ...for all the details.
The 83rd annual Golden Globe Awards take place Sunday evening beginning at 5 p.m.at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and that means parking restrictions and street closures in the city.
Here are places to avoid, as well as some alternative routes:
North Santa Monica Boulevard:
Westbound lane closures: Complete lane closures, from Wilshire Boulevard to Century Park East through 6 a.m. Monday.
Eastbound lane closures: Complete lane closures, from Century Park East to Wilshire Boulevard from 2 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Monday.
The city suggests using South Santa Monica Boulevard, which will remain open in both directions. There also are alternative east-west routes such as Olympic, Sunset and Pico boulevards.
Wilshire Boulevard:
Eastbound/Westbound lane reduction: Lane reductions are in effect and will last through 9 p.m. Wednesday.
Eastbound/Westbound full closure: All of Wilshire Boulevard between Comstock Avenue and North Santa Monica Boulevard will be closed from 10 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Monday.
Eastbound lanes of Wilshire Boulevard: An eastbound closure from Comstock to North Santa Monica Boulevard will occur between 10 p.m. Monday through 6 a.m. Tuesday.
Other streets:
Several other streets like Whittier Drive, Carmelita Avenue, Elevado Avenue and Lomitas Avenue, as well as Trenton Drive and adjacent alleyswill have limited closures with local access available only to residents. Closures begin at 10 p.m. Saturday and last through 6 a.m. Monday.
Parking notices:
Residential streets surrounding the venue will be completely restricted, no exceptions made, from 6 a.m. Sunday until 6 a.m. Monday on the following streets:
Whittier Drive — from Wilshire Boulevard to Elevado Avenue
Carmelita Avenue — from Wilshire Boulevard to Walden Drive
Elevado Avenue — from Wilshire Boulevard to Walden Drive
Trenton Drive — from Whittier Drive to Wilshire Boulevard
Walden Drive — from Santa Monica Boulevard to Elevado Avenue
Lomitas Avenue — from Wilshire Boulevard to Walden Drive
Residents without permit parking can obtain parking exemptions by contacting the city of Beverly Hills’ parking exemption line at (310) 285-2548 or online at beverlyhills.org/parkingexemptions.
People on Thursday continued to mourn at the street where 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed Wednesday by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
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Demonstrations against this week’s deadly ICE shooting in Minneapolis are planned this weekend across Los Angeles. The protests are being organized by the “ICE Out For Good Coalition” — a network of several groups including the ACLU and 50501.
The backstory: An ICE agent shot and killed the 37-year-old Good in her vehicle during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis this week, prompting nationwide protests.
Read on ... for a list of actions planned this weekend in L.A.
Demonstrations against this week’s deadly ICE shooting in Minneapolis are planned this weekend across Los Angeles. The protests are being organized by the “ICE Out For Good Coalition” — a network of several groups including the ACLU and 50501.
Here are a some of the planned actions across the city:
Saturday
Pasadena: Noon to 2 p.m. at Garfield and Colorado Boulevard, across from the Paseo Mall
Eagle Rock: 1 to 2 p.m. at Colorado and Eagle Rock boulevards