los angeles

Prism | September 22, 2025

Migrants Crossing road sign, San Ysidro

Meet Yamilet Galvan

Meet Yamilet Galvan, the trauma-informed voice of a generation. Like many youth across Los Angeles County, the 11-year-old Chicana has plenty to say about Trump, ICE’s racist raids, and the many failures of grown-ups who voted for the mess young people find themselves in.

Yamilet’s family belongs to Los Angeles County’s immigrant community, and like most girls her age, the 11-year-old Chicana worries a lot about her friends. Some have undocumented parents and grandparents who chose to repatriate rather than take their chances with the roving bands of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents that have become familiar sights at car washes, grocery stores, Home Depots, and construction sites.

LA Taco | July 13, 2025

Picture of a childrens swing

Summer In L.A. Is Canceled, Kids. Blame ICE.

On the morning of June 19, federal agents stormed a bus stop where laborers waited to be transported to construction sites in nearby neighborhoods devastated by wildfires. The agents wore masks and brandished firearms. The laborers clutched cups of coffee and baked goods. Agents abducted one man while he held a glazed donut. “These gentlemen were filling their stomachs to be able to work,” says Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, himself an immigrant.

Places Journal | March 16, 2025

Peacock in front of burned building in Altadena

Altadena: Four Stories

This January, a blaze began in Altadena’s Eaton Canyon. From my porch, I watched as the brightest orange overtook the San Gabriel Mountains, turning them the same color as the marigolds that I brought to the cemetery in November. Santa Ana winds moving more than 100 miles per hour carried embers into neighborhoods where wooden bungalows ignited, palm trees combusted, and coyotes panicked. More than 9,000 buildings were destroyed. To quote Butler, we were lucky with the fire. When I evacuated, I took a small bag with me. In it was a small jar filled with plants harvested from the forest that was now burning. This was my small way of trying to save the forest by preserving her seeds.

LA Times | November 14, 2023

Detail of painting of the citadel by aliana mt

Liner notes for the Citadel

Henry awed and terrified me. He had wanted to be a paleontologist. Instead, he became one of countless young Chicanos drafted by the U.S. government to fight the Viet Cong. The U.S. Army trained him to kill and exercising these murderous skills had destroyed him. He left his sanity in Asia and returned to his childhood home a crazed and haunted man. I understood that Henry had undergone his own apocalypse.

Tasteful Rude | March 14, 2023

Photo of a man holding a surf board at Venice Beach

Beautifully Ruined: Kate Braverman’s Lithium for Medea

The last time I visited Venice Beach, I made one of my wildest teen fantasies come true.

At one of the many beachfront stores where bathing suits cost five times what they should, I bought myself a gold lamé string bikini. The day was overcast but warm enough to be mostly naked outdoors and so I wore my purchase out of the shop and onto the footpath.

A nasty breeze blew my bowl cut crooked. The clouds parted. I wondered if the 24-karat glare from my bikini was bothering any seagulls. I curled my toes. Moist earth sucked them. I thought of Rose, the cocaine-fueled protagonist of Lithium for Medea, the late Kate Braverman’s first novel. In one of the book’s later chapters, Rose has an epiphany about the wetness that I let lap and slurp at my feet. Rose arrives at the understanding that our ocean isn’t pacific.

New York Times | April 28, 2022

Former Cop Don Jackson on TV

Former police officer Don Jackson helped reveal the brutal reality of policing for Southern California’s Black citizens

Before George Holliday caught the L.A.P.D.’s beating of Rodney King on camera, the former police officer Don Jackson helped reveal the brutal reality of policing for Southern California’s Black citizens.

The night of Jan. 14, 1989, Don Jackson, a police officer turned activist, arrived in Long Beach, Calif., riding in the passenger seat of a rental car driven by Jeffrey Hill, another activist and an off-duty state corrections officer. Both men wore plain clothes, and clandestine chaperones escorted their Buick. A van carrying a television crew tailed the rental car.