Once again, protesters are turning out across the nation to protest the Trump administration’s violent immigration raids. The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have thrown more fuel on the fire, putting national attention on the ICE surge in Minneapolis. There were several LA area events on Friday in cities including Culver City, El Monte, Monrovia, Pasadena and Torrance. Thousands of protesters gathered near LA City Hall to give voice to their anger.
Protesters gathered in Grand Park in front of LA City HallYou could feel the outrage in the airThe crowd was thick in front of LA City Hall
I showed up at City Hall around one o’ clock. It was an unusually warm January day. Signs calling out the deaths of Good and Pretti were plentiful, but protesters also called attention to those who have lost their lives in detention facilities. As outrage over the immigration crackdown has spiralled, it seems the Trump administration is trying to rethink its approach, but will the changes amount to anything more than a public relations move? Hard to believe Trump will back down.
Signs asked for justice for Alex Pretti……and for Renee Good……and for those who have died in detention facilities.Speakers railed against the violence of the ICE crackdown.As usual, plenty of folks showed up with cameras to document the event.Still more cameras.
The protests aren’t going away. And the pressure has become so great that even some of the Republicans in Congress are speaking up. No doubt some are worried about how this will impact the mid-term elections. But we need to see meaningful investigations, not just for Good and Pretti, but also for the immigrants who have died in detention facilities. And we need to see ICE get out of Minneapolis. Listening to politicians posturing is a waste of time. We need real change
People gather at Fair Oaks Burger in Altadena one year after the fires.
It’s been a year since the fires. As bad as that catastrophe was, with blazes erupting in locations all over the LA area, and the two most devastating conflagrations in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, the year since then has been an ordeal for the thousands of survivors who are trying to rebuild their lives. Some have left LA. Some are working through the arduous process of constructing new homes. Many are still trying to figure out how to move on.
Tonight several hundred people gathered at Fair Oaks Burger in Altadena for a vigil, both to remember those who were lost and to celebrate the community’s resilience as it works to rebuild. Located in the middle of the neighborhoods that were ravaged by the Eaton Fire, Fair Oaks Burger miraculously survived unscathed. As the community struggled to recover, the restaurant partnered with a non-profit to provide free meals to those who needed them.
Before the vigil began, the crowd gathered in the parking lot.A memorial was created to remember those who perished in the fire.Hundreds gathered around the stage as musicians played.Speakers talked about the losses the community had suffered, but also about its tremendous strength.
The mood was both somber and celebratory. Many of those attending lost their homes in the fire. Speakers talked about the losses they had suffered. But they also spoke of the joy they felt as the community came together to support them. It was a cold night, but the vibe was very warm. You could feel the love.
There’s a notice posted on the Glendale Masonic Temple at 234 S. Brand Boulevard. The text says that the City of Glendale is considering an amendment to its Advertising Signage Overlay Zone (ASOZ) which would expand the zone’s boundaries. It gives no further details about the scope of the expansion, or what kind of outdoor advertising is being contemplated.
But I’d be willing to bet that the City of Glendale wants to let advertisers install digital billboards, possibly on the side of the Masonic Temple. You can already find digital signage at the Americana mall on the south side of Brand. Outdoor ad companies are lobbying cities all over the US to open up to bigger and more invasive digital signage. It’s a hugely profitable business that’s growing rapidly.
Personally, I’m against outdoor digital advertising for a few reasons. One reason is that I see it as urban blight. But more importantly, I’m concerned about the way digital advertisers are collecting and sharing cell phone data. There are huge privacy risks here, and most city officials are completely oblivious.
A public hearing is scheduled later this month. If you’re interested in attending, here’s the info….
DATE: Wednesday, November 19, 2025
TIME: 5:00 PM
LOCATION: 633 E. Broadway (MSB), #105, Glendale, 91206
You can also contact Roger Kiesel, of the Glendale Community Development Department, at 818 937-8152.
The Glendale Masonic Temple was dedicated in 1929 and served as a meeting place for different Masonic Lodges into the 50s. It was designed by Arthur Lindley, who also designed the nearby Alex Theatre. Rick Caruso’s company bought the building about a decade ago and refurbished it, making some changes to the design. The building is a Glendale Historical Landmark and also on the National Register of Historic Places.
Rendering of Convention Center expansion project recently approved by LA City Council.
I’ve been critical of the LA City Council for years, so I don’t expect a lot from them. But even I was stunned by their vote to approve the LA Convention Center expansion in September. The Council is not known for fiscal responsibility. You may recall that they’ve been struggling to deal with a $1 billion deficit during the current fiscal year. So you’d think the councilmembers would be a little hesitant to plunge the city even further into debt. But on September 19, the LA City Council approved the expansion in an 11 to 2 vote, with two absent. Mayor Bass signed off on it a few days later.
Supporters of the Convention Center expansion promoted it as a great idea, and a crucial step in attracting events to Downtown LA. No one disputes that the Convention Center needed repairs and upgrades, and the expansion could provide benefits. But the cost of the project will bury the City of LA in debt for decades. Don’t take my word for it. Read what LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia had to say about the impacts it will have on the city’s budget….
The City of Los Angeles is currently contemplating a $2.7 billion expansion and modernization of the Convention Center, which will end up costing taxpayers $5.9 billion with borrowing and other costs included, of which $5.45 billion will be paid for by the General Fund. If this plan goes through, the City is projected to need an additional average of $116 million from the General Fund each year for the next 28 years starting in FY2029. $116 million is the equivalent of nearly 1,000 City jobs.
The City isn’t expected to see a related net positive General Fund impact for 30 years (in FY2057 once the debt service payments end). However, at that time, the City will still be down $3.2 billion from the General Fund and will take an additional 25 years or so to truly break even.
Mejia goes on to point out that if the city can’t bring in the revenue necessary to cover the cost of the expansion, it would likely have to make further cuts to funding for city departments, which are already understaffed. The quality of services could decline even further. Beyond that, rating agencies have put the City’s credit rating on negative watch status, which means we could be heading to a rating downgrade. That would make it more expensive to borrow money, raising the deficit even further.
So why did the Council okay this project? Let’s start with a little background. The City has been talking about expanding and modernizing the Convention Center for years, and again, there are certainly good arguments for making that happen. But it was clear that the expansion would be extremely costly, and there were budget conscious folks at City Hall who argued that the City couldn’t afford it. It’s important to remember here that the City of LA has a history of staggering from one budget crisis to the next. Because there’s no meaningful long-term fiscal planning, the City’s budget process invariably involves a lot of wishful thinking and a fair amount of financial sleight of hand.
You would think the fact that the 2025-2026 Budget resulted in a $1 billion shortfall would serve as a clear warning to elected officials that the City was in serious trouble. There were folks at City Hall who saw the flashing red lights and tried to move things in a different direction. On September 16, the Budget & Finance Committee voted to approve a scaled down version of the project, involving repairs and upgrades to the Convention Center now, and deferring the expansion until after the 2028 Olympics. This would have been a much more realistic, much more manageable option. The vote was 3 to 2, with Councilmembers Yaroslavsky, Blumenfield and Hernandez supporting the reduced project. Observers who had been alarmed by the cost of the expansion breathed a sigh of relief. If the City Council accepted the Committee’s recommendations, disaster could be averted.
But on September 19, just three days later, the Convention Center showed up on the Council’s agenda, along with a motion presented by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson that ignored the Committee’s action and asked for approval of the expansion. The Council voted 11 to 2 in favor. Councilmembers Blumenfield and Rodriguez were absent. The two no votes were from Nithya Raman and Katy Yaroslavsky. At the meeting, Raman rightly pointed out that the City of LA had just declared a fiscal emergency in June, and spoke about the devastating impacts the project would likely have on funding for public services and homeless programs. Yaroslavsky gave a detailed breakdown of her reasons for opposing, including the likelihood of cost overruns and the unrealistic timetable for completion. Alissa Walker published Yaroslavky’s comments on Torched, and it’s worth taking the time to read them.
The City of LA is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. We have a huge homeless population, and in spite of repeated promises from City Hall, progress has been minimal at best. Transit ridership has been declining since 2014, and still hasn’t even recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Our sidewalks are a mess, and it can take years for repairs to happen. We have a growing solid waste crisis that few people are even talking about, even though illegal dumping has become a chronic problem. And the Palisades fire made it clear that there are serious questions about the City of LA’s ability to deal with disasters.
We could be doing a whole lot better if our elected officials made a serious attempt at planning for the future. Instead, the majority seem determined to ignore reality and pretend that were doing just fine. They give us a lot of talk about their vision for the future, but if you look at the facts, they seem to be flying blind.
US ships are firing on boats off the coast of Venezuela. Masked ICE agents are grabbing people off the street. Troops have been sent into cities governed by Democratic leaders. The Federal government has cut billions in funding for universities that don’t teach what the President wants them to. This is the new reality under Trump, and millions of Americans are seriously concerned about what they believe are grave threats to democracy and the Constitution.
On Saturday people across the US turned out for No Kings rallies to voice their opposition to the current administration. According to the LA Times, 2,700 protests were scheduled to take place, about 600 more than for the previous day of protest in June. According to the No Kings organizers, more than seven million people turned out to protest yesterday. There were events scheduled throughout the LA area, including Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale, Hollywood, Lynwood, Long Beach, Torrance and Whittier.
I went to the protest in Downtown LA and took some photos. Actually, the photo at the top of this post was taken several blocks south of the event on Olympic Boulevard. I snapped it while I was on my way to the protest. Something about the size and the colors seemed to capture the urgency of the moment. When I arrived at the Civic Center, crowds were marching into Grand Park carrying all sorts of signs and wearing all sorts of costumes.
Protesters gathered at City Hall in Downtown LA.
Crowd gathered near the steps to LA City Hall.
The fact that many protesters carried US flags seems to undercut the argument that they’re anti-American.
A friend of mine sent me these photos from the protest in Burbank. Looking at these photos it struck me how much that city has changed over the years. When I was growing up in Burbank, it was a fairly conservative town, and I don’t recall ever seeing a protest on this scale in the 60s and 70s. This kind of activism shows how much the city’s politics have shifted. The gathering was held at the intersection of Buena Vista and Verdugo.
Many protesters expressed their anger over troop deployments in US cities.Photo by Michael Golob.I don’t remember seeing anything like this when I was growing up in Burbank.Photo by Michael Golob.Some protesters wore colorful costumes. Photo by Michael Golob.When the introverts are angry, watch out. Photo by Michael Golob.
Thousands gathered at Pasadena City Hall to demonstrate against the Trump administration. Speakers included Congressional Rep Judy Chu, Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo and Councilmember Rick Cole.
No Kings protest in Pasadena. Photo by Denise Goddard.Another image of Pasadena No Kings protest. Photo by Denise Goddard.
On my way to Downtown, I stopped at the Hollywood event. Protesters gathered at the intersection of Hollywood and Vermont. As people waved signs, drivers passing by honked their horns.
A lively crowd gathered at Hollywood and Vermont.Passing drivers honked their horns in sympathy.
The crowd spilled off the sidewalk and onto the street.
I am really worried about the future of this country, but I’m also really encouraged by the scale of the response. Not only do millions of people think we’re going in the wrong direction, but many of them are willing to show up at events across the country to make their anger known. It ain’t over yet.
A few hundred protesters gathered in Hollywood on Wednesday night to protest ABC’s decision to pull the Jimmy Kimmel show, at least for the time being. I’ve never seen the show. If I’d heard that he was going off the air for low ratings, it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. But it appears that ABC pulled the show because of pressure from the Trump administration over comments Kimmel made in the wake of the Charlie Kirk shooting. This is really disturbing.
Crowd listening to speaker at protest.
According to both the New York Times and Fox News, in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, Kimmel said on air that the right was working hard to portray the killer as a leftist in order to score political points. Apparently, Kimmel mistakenly believed that that killer had right wing views. Brendan Carr, the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Trump, was angered by Kimmel’s comments, which he believes were part of a concerted effort to lie to Americans. According to the New York Times, Carr stated that broadcast companies needed to “find ways to change conduct and take action”, or the FCC might take action against them.
Unfortunately, while Carr claimed that Kimmel’s statements were part of a “concerted effort to lie to the American people,” I couldn’t find any reports that he gave other example of those lies, or that he talked about who was involved in the effort. No doubt he’s pointing the finger at the “liberal media”, a loosely defined term that seems to include any broadcaster or publisher that presents news that could be seen as critical of Trump.
Plenty of signs objecting to ABC’s action.
None of the published accounts I’ve read quote Kimmel as saying anything negative about Kirk himself, nor does it seem like he made any comments that could be perceived as condoning the killing. He made an inaccurate comment about the killer. TV personalities say things that are inaccurate all the time. They often make inaccurate statements because of their own personal bias. They often say controversial or shocking things because that draws media attention. This is true of celebrities on the right and the left. American popular culture rewards people who create controversy.
As many people have pointed out, when Trump was re-elected he claimed that he was going to restore free speech in America. But just in the last two years, he’s aggressivley gone after news organizations that have published stories he doesn’t like, suing the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and CBS for billions of dollars. Now it looks like the Trump administration is willing to use the power of the FCC to punish broadcasters that don’t fall in line.
Free speech is under attack. This is a scary time for America.
California Sen. Scott Wiener is celebrating the passage of SB 79, which requires local governments to approve qualifying housing projects if they’re located near transit. Wiener says in an analysis of the bill:
“SB 79 tackles the root causes of California’s affordability crisis by allowing more homes to be built near major public transportation stops and on land owned by transit agencies – bolstering transit use, slashing climate emissions, and supporting public transportation in the process.”
Unfortunately, Sen. Wiener hasn’t bothered to check the facts. Los Angeles and San Francisco have built thousands of new units near transit over the past decade, but transit ridership in both cities has been in steady decline.
It’s maddening that Wiener continues to jam legislation like this through the legislature when he clearly doesn’t understand the facts. And it seems most of the members of the California Legislature haven’t bothered to check the facts, either.
Photo by Sal Castro, Security Pacific Bank Collection, LA Public Library
Journalist Rubén Salazar was killed 55 years ago today. He’d been covering a large protest in East LA that was part of the Chicano Moratorium. Salazar was taking a break at the Silver Dollar Cafe when a sheriff’s deputy standing outside fired a tear gas canister into the bar. The canister hit Salazar in the head and killed him instantly.
Salazar worked at the LA Times in several capacities for more than a decade. At the time of his death, he was news director at Spanish-language KMEX-TV, though he still wrote a weekly column for the Times. Salazar reported on tensions between the Latino community and the cops, and it was no secret that law enforcement officials weren’t happy about his reporting.
It’s important to remember Salazar’s work, but also to think about his death in the context of what journalists are facing today. Both in the US and abroad, journalists are increasingly being targeted for doing their job. Beyond that, fair and objective journalism is increasingly threatened by the changing economic landscape and a social media sphere that values likes more than facts.
LA Times columnist Gustavo Arellano wrote an excellent piece on Salazar today. See below. I’m also including a link to Salazar’s own reporting. It’s worth taking some time to think about Rubén Salazar today. Fifty five years later, his life and his death still hold meaning for us.
Protesters gathered in front of LA City Hall on Saturday, June 14.
Thousands of people gathered in Downtown LA on Saturday for a boisterous, hours-long protest . Attendees held signs voicing anger over a number of issues, but the overarching message was that the protesters were not happy with President Trump. The air was filled with music and chanted slogans. Helicopters and drones flew overhead.
Protesters marching up Hill Street.
Late morning, a friend and I got on the subway heading to Downtown. Unfortunately, the driver announced that the stops at Pershing Square and Civic Center were closed due to police activity, so we got off at 7th and Metro. This meant we had to hike about a mile and a half to get to City Hall. While walking up Grand, we could see the throng of protesters marching up Hill Street in the distance.
Windows were covered with boards at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).
We also saw that the windows were boarded up at the Museum of Contemporary Art. A number of businesses had boarded up their windows to protect against the vandalism that’s been occurring in Downtown over the past week or so. The raids by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), where agents have grabbed undocumented immigrants, sparked an outpouring of anger, and groups opposing the raids have held numerous gatherings to voice their outrage. But it’s hard to say who exactly is responsible for the graffiti, broken windows and retail theft. No doubt, some of it’s tied to the protests, but I think it’s also likely that some of the damage has been caused to opportunists who are taking advantage of the unrest to grab some merchandise or promote general mayhem.
Protesters arriving at Grand Park after marching up Hill Street.
When we arrived at Grand Park, protesters were still streaming in from Hill Street. While many came to speak out over the ICE raids, as well as Trump’s order to send the National Guard and Marines to LA, the event had been planned long before as part of a nationwide movement to push back against the President’s policies. On Saturday protests were held in New York, Chicago, Sacramento, Raleigh, St. Louis, Dallas, and many other US cities.
“Legalization is the answer.”
“I.C.E. Fuera de Tovaangar” (I.C.E. Out of Los Angeles) (Tovaangar is the name that was used by the indigenous people living in the LA area before Europeans arrived.)
“Feliz Dia del Padre” (Happy Father’s Day)
While I was there, the protest seemed completely peaceful. Hard to say how many turned out, but I’d say several thousand. Apparently things got rough later in the afternoon. The LAPD said that around 4:00 pm some protesters began throwing rocks, bricks and bottles. They responded by issuing an order to disperse. From an account published in the LA Times, it appears officers then used rubber bullets and tear gas to clear the streets. No serious injuries were reported.
Law enforcement stationed above the steps to LA City Hall.
An image of the Constitution standing in front of City Hall.
The protests will continue. While most of Trump’s supporters seem to stand firmly behind him, there are millions of Americans who believe his administration is deliberately undermining the Constitution and that he’s trying to assume power as an authoritarian dictator. Personally, I think there are dark days ahead of us.
I went down to City Hall for a hearing this afternoon. I got off the subway at Civic Center and walked across Grand Park to Spring. The park seemed peaceful, as usual, but as I got closer to City Hall I saw a crowd of around a hundred protesters gathered on the steps at the entrance. Activists spoke passionately about the injustice of the ICE raids.
I entered City Hall and attended the hearing, which lasted until about four fifteen. Then, since I hadn’t had lunch, I walked up First Street looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately, these days its hard to find a restaurant that’s open in the Civic Center. As companies have reduced their footprint in Downtown or abandoned it altogether, many local businesses have cut their hours or closed down.
As I walked up First Street, I saw that the ground floor of the former LA Times building was covered with graffiti. A little farther up there was a row of parked police cars. Helicopters crisscrossed the sky overhead. Even though things were calm, there did seem to be tension in the air.
Thinking that the cafe at MOCA might still be open, I headed up to Grand. I walked into the cafe and saw that they were cleaning up. The woman behind the counter said they were open for another 20 minutes, so I ordered a sandwich. When it was ready, I went out to the patio and sat down to eat it.
The woman at the counter spoke with a heavy accent. My guess is that she had come from somewhere in Central America. In the time I was there, she made my sandwich, wiped off the tables in the patio, straightened the chairs and emptied the trash cans. When I left she was sweeping up inside the restaurant.
These are the people that keep this city going. These are the people that keep this country going.
The Horizon and the Skyline 