Last week, Streetsblog Los Angeles celebrated its fifteenth birthday with a party in Downtown Los Angeles. Over seventy Streetsbloggers showed up to party, from our biggest donor to an urban planner who read his first Streetsblog story earlier that day.
The party was free, but as we’re a non-profit publication that relies on reader donations to operate, so you can guess what comes next.
If you’re a regular reader and you’ve already contributed this year, thank you! If you value Streetsblog and you haven’t already supported us, please consider a donation as part of our End of the Year fundraising drive.
If you’re ready to make a donation, feel free to just click here and get started! If you need a little push, read on.
Every year, Streetsblog has to choose from a list of policy wins and major stories from the year. But our biggest win of the year was clearly when Metro announced it would no longer be destroying hundreds of homes for its 605 Freeway mega-project. Two years earlier, Metro had announced that the project would involve hundreds of demolitions of homes and apartment buildings.
Streetsblog covered 605 Freeway expansion early and exhaustively. We amplified voices of community resistance, and our research helped inform their critiques. Streetsblog breaking the story set the tone for the mainstream media coverage that followed, including at KNBC, KPCC, and the L.A. Times.
Streetsblog also continued its coverage of how policing impacts people’s access to public spaces and transit systems. One story from this year, “No cops with lassos on trains,” explained how the “Bolawrap” device works, how LAPD transit police planned to use it on Metro, why it is untenable in a transit setting, and how activists got Mayor Karen Bass to publicly cancel LAPD’s announced lasso pilot.
We hope you’ll continue to support Streetsblog by reading and sharing our stories. If it’s in your budget to support our work this year, we hope you’ll consider a donation. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at damien@streetsblog.org.
