Leslie Berestein Rojas
My focus is on our coverage of L.A.’s communities of color and immigrant diasporas. Before this, I spent 10 years covering immigrant communities for KPCC.
When I was a kid, my family left Cuba and landed in Huntington Park. I grew up there, speaking Spanish at home and steeped in Southeast L.A.’s beautiful Latinidad. I love telling the stories of L.A. and its people. Now, I get to help shape those stories and work with talented reporters to hone their craft.
I’ve also covered immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border, reported stories in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, and done lots more for large newspapers and national magazines.
Among the things I love about L.A.: family, food from everywhere, signs in dozens of languages, the smells of chaparral and dusty freeways, the downtown skyline as you cross a bridge from the east. Mostly, I love that it’s home.
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“Recetario Para La Memoria” is an exhibit at La Plaza de Cultura y Artes’ La Plaza Cocina of photos and recipes, the latter contributed by family members of the missing. -
People involved with the beloved Compton Community Garden were alarmed when the land was put up for sale in April. So they sprang into action and raised enough money to buy it.
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The city council chose the West L.A. intersection where Azerbaijan has its consulate to send a message to that country about its conflict with Armenia over the embattled Nagorno-Karabakh region, known to Armenians as Artsakh.
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It's now the only union for strippers in the U.S. A previous strip club that unionized in San Francisco, The Lusty Lady, closed down in 2013.
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Molina’s career was one of firsts: She was the first Latina elected to the California Assembly, the L.A. City Council, and the county Board of Supervisors.
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L.A.’s Armenian community is on edge as tensions have flared again between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region within Azerbaijan that is 95% Armenian. Local Armenian Americans are trying to do whatever they can to help.
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Plans to contract with a consultant who would have helped develop a reparations program for Black and Latino residents forcibly evicted from their homes in the 1950s and 1960s were nixed. City leaders will now seek a new contract focused solely on historical research — and say they’ll deal with reparations later.
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A federal judge in Texas will soon decide the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Edith Nájera of Gardena has built a successful life thanks to the program, and now worries about whether she’ll lose it all.
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California already allows DACA recipients access to Medi-Cal. The president’s proposal would allow those who make too much to qualify to get coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
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Attorney General Rob Bonta says L.A. is not living up to its legal obligation to provide enough staffing so youths can be taken to school and to medical appointments, along with having sufficient time for outdoor recreation and exercise.
