Joseph felt so much angst as a transgender teen. The 28-year-old explained the depths of this to me over Zoom while he sat in his car after work. With his face lit by the overhead light, he told me that the gender-affirming care he received at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles saved his life. And when he learned the hospital was closing its Center for Transyouth on July 22nd, he said, “It was like the air left my body.”
Everyone I interviewed, including former and current patients, and their parents, shared some combination of shock, heartbreak, and anger over the closure. The center gave thousands of kids and their families hope.
Joseph recalled one defining moment. At a routine visit with his mom, one of the doctors was trans. “For my mom, it was like a reassurance that I'd be fine. But for me, it was, ‘Oh, I can age.” I can be an adult and be transgender, and it won't be the end of the world.”
CHLA’s Center for Transyouth Health and Development has provided essential treatments to thousands of trans children and young adults for over 30 years, making it one of the oldest and largest programs in the country. June 22nd was its last day. Now, nearly 3,000 patients there must find new medical providers.
CHLA’s decision follows an executive order signed by President Trump in January that threatened to cut funding for hospitals that help patients under age 19 medically transition. CHLA receives two-thirds of its funding from federal sources, and said in a statement that federal agencies have already terminated some of its grants.
“What this administration is trying to do is to erase trans people,” says Laura Collura, whose 19-year-old has been a CHLA patient. “That disturbs me very much and worries me, not just for my daughter's future, but for everyone's future.”
Immigrants make up more than a third of food service workers in California, Texas, and New York. And so, a lot of restaurants are preparing for federal agents walking in. They’re ensuring employees have their passports on them and their I-9 forms are in order, and a lawyer’s number is handy. It’s also important to make staff feel safe — for example, by picking them up from home if they’re afraid to take the bus. Plus, at Valerie Confections, a lot of doors into kitchens and offices now have paper signs marking the spaces as private.
“ICE can go into the public area right where you're placing your order for your muffin, for your quiche, for your espresso drink,” says Valerie Gordon, owner of Valerie Confections. “But they can't go into the private working area right unless they have a judicially signed warrant.”
After the Eaton Fire, certified hypnotherapist Natalie Bowker began offering regular, free group sessions for survivors on Zoom.
Meanwhile, therapist Gabby Raices leads a free bi-monthly grief circle in Pasadena. “It was just supposed to be a one-day thing, just to see who came,” she recalls. “It was a big mixture of people. People who had lost their homes, people who hadn’t. Families, married couples. That first group was all different.”
Melissa Lopez co-founded the grief circle with Raices and says, “I think one of the things that felt powerful for me was hearing a lot of people say, ‘I feel like I can just be sad here. I feel like I can just grieve here.’ Because the world has moved on.”
Plus, LA County recently expanded a range of free post-wildfire resources at Alta Loma Park in Altadena, including on-site county mental health clinicians. Another effort spearheaded by State Senator Sasha Renée Pérez aims to address the mental health of kids. Other free, virtual group sessions are popping up on Zoom, in backyards, and elsewhere.
About six months after the Eaton Fire, many homeowners hoping to rebuild are slogging through insurance paperwork and government permits.
Len Silvernail and his wife Diane Toomey were among the first to submit their application to rebuild, aiming to be back in their home by the first anniversary of the fire. He says it started with turning in plans to the county Department of Building and Safety and having to pay thousands in permit fees that LA County officials now say will be refunded. Silvernail says they’ve been stuck in the process.
On top of permitting, for most people, state and local building codes have changed in the decades since many of these homes were originally built, meaning the house must have changes and extras that insurance covering a like-to-like rebuild does not account for.
Meanwhile, a survey of fire victims found that the longer it takes to rebuild, the more likely it is that people won’t move back.
Caltex Records, whose parent company is Caltex Music, is a label representing most of the mainstream Iranian songs released since the 1950s. Mehrdad Pakravan, a then 25-year-old Iranian immigrant, founded it in LA after the 1979 revolution. Now his son, Farbod Pakravan, helps manage the label.
During the revolution, many Iranians immigrated to LA. Iran has a strong musical tradition, but the new Islamist regime banned popular music. Uncertainty surrounded the state of art and culture, the younger Pakravan explains. And so, his dad created the record label to carry on the torch and collaborate with artists who moved to LA. Eventually, he also created a popular TV network — considered the Iranian version of MTV.
Caltex caters to a large population of Iranian listeners living abroad. But since a few generations have passed since the revolution, interest in Iranian music may have waned somewhat among the Iranian diaspora. However, Pakravan isn’t worried.
“The following might not be as close as if they were to actually be living in Iran, but there's a huge opportunity, if things were to change in Iran, for that to be a creative boom. … Of course, Iranians love their music, so it’s a matter of time,” he says.
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