From the Chicano Moratorium to Today: Zepeda-Millan on Boyle Heights’ Legacy

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Chris Zepeda-Millan, UCLA associate professor of public policy and Chicana/o and Central American Studies, emphasized the Chicano Moratorium’s role in shaping immigrant rights activism in a recent article by Boyle Heights Beat. He explained that Boyle Heights–based organizers like Bert Corona and Chole Alatorre developed strategies to defend undocumented communities and trained activists to see migrant rights as human rights.

“Chicanos and Mexican immigrants in Boyle Heights can be credited for laying the foundation for the modern-day national immigrant rights movement,” Zepeda-Millan said, underscoring the community’s pivotal role.

He pointed to young people continuing this legacy: “Today’s activists in Boyle Heights and the broader East L.A. area are carrying on that legacy of fighting to protect and expand the rights of all members of our community, regardless of their citizenship status.”

Perception vs. Reality: UCLA Luskin’s Jorja Leap Talks Crime Coverage with ABC7

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Social Welfare Professor Jorja Leap was quoted in an ABC7 News story examining crime trends in Los Angeles. While data shows violent and property crimes are down 17% in the city, Leap explained that the rise of social media, true crime entertainment, and political rhetoric amplify fear, creating a perception of rising crime despite the statistics.

“I think we’ve got a collective PTSD, and I’m not being flippant,” Leap said.

“You go to divert yourself, and what do you watch? A murder mystery,” Leap added.

Zev Yaroslavsky, UCLA’s Jewish community unite against Trump’s $1B demand

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Over 350 Jewish faculty and community members at UCLA have come together to oppose the Trump administration’s demand that the university pay a $1 billion fine over allegations of campus antisemitism. The “Jews in Defense of UC” letter also decries the government’s freezing of $584 million in research grant funding.

Zev Yaroslavsky, former L.A. County supervisor and director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, was an early signatory of the letter. In the article, he said, “the federal actions are not going to address the issue of antisemitism on campus,” but that they will “blow a hole through” the school’s finances.

“It’s the existence of the institution — that’s what’s at stake here,” said Yaroslavsky.

“Cutting off hundreds of millions of research funds will do nothing to make UCLA safer for Jews nor diminish antisemitism in the world,” the letter said. “It will not benefit Jewish Bruins nor Jews beyond campus who make extensive use of its first-rate medical facilities, ground-breaking scientific innovations, and cutting-edge cultural institutions.”

Zev Yaroslavsky is a former faculty member at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and currently serves as director of the Los Angeles Initiative. A longtime former member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, he continues to contribute to the school’s research and public engagement through his work with the Quality of Life Index, which is highlighted each year at the annual Luskin Summit.

Manville: Ventura’s Main Street Debate Oversimplifies Downtown Challenges The UCLA planning scholar warns that business depend on many factors beyond the street closure.

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As Ventura’s City Council prepares for a final vote on whether to keep Main Street closed to cars or reopen it, business owners and residents remain deeply divided. Some credit the pandemic-era “Main Street Moves” closure with creating a lively, family-friendly downtown, while others say it’s driven customers away and hurt businesses.

Michael Manville, professor and chair of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, commented in an article published by the Ventura County Star against drawing direct conclusions about the closure’s impact. He notes that downtown retail across the country has faced long-term challenges, from e-commerce to competition with big box stores, making it hard to isolate the effect of Ventura’s street closure.

Manville frames the debate as less about hard data and more about perception.

“Downtowns and businesses in downtowns have good and bad periods for all sorts of reasons,” Manville said. “Isolating the amount of good or bad luck that you can attribute to the street closure is difficult. If someone owns a business and the business is flagging a little bit and there happens to be a street closure, it makes sense to blame the street closure and see if changing it up can change your fortunes.”

Cycling Toward Stability: How Bikes Help the Unhoused UCLA ITS’s Jacob Lawrence Wasserman highlights bikes as a low-cost mobility lifeline.

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In San Diego, Deacon John Roberts leads a weekly cycling program that gives homeless participants more than exercise. It offers mobility, community, and a sense of freedom. For many of the participants in the program, cycling is a lifeline for job searches, addiction recovery, and access to services, despite unsafe riding conditions, theft, and persistent stigma.

Transportation is a major barrier for the unhoused, and advocates say bikes should be part of broader mobility strategies. “Bikeshare passes are dirt cheap compared to giving people cars or giving people transit passes,” said Jacob Lawrence Wasserman of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies in a new Bloomberg CityLab article. “But it requires getting over that stigma of thinking every unhoused person on a bike must have stolen it.”

Homeless cyclists. part of the “invisible cyclist” population. often face unsafe riding conditions, theft, and stigma, with limited inclusion in policy discussions. Despite risks, bikes offer independence, health benefits, and social connection.

UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Report Highlights Surge in Non-Criminal Immigration Arrests in Washington State New report documents rising arrests of non-criminal immigrants and disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities

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A new analysis from The Seattle Times shows that immigration enforcement in Washington state shifted significantly during Donald Trump’s presidency. Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) grew more aggressive, with an uptick in people detained who had no criminal record. Data reveals that while deportations declined nationwide in recent years, the share of arrests in Washington involving individuals without prior convictions rose sharply, heightening fears within immigrant communities. Advocates warn that such tactics have lasting impacts on public safety and family stability.

The UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge contributed crucial data to the report, offering a detailed breakdown of arrest patterns and demographic impacts. Their analysis helped quantify how enforcement priorities changed under the Trump administration and illuminated disproportionate effects on certain immigrant groups in Washington. By mapping these shifts, UCLA CNK’s research provided a factual foundation for understanding how federal policy translated into local consequences.

Jorja Leap on Building Trust and Lasting Change in Watts 60 Years After the Riots Leap underscores the need for genuine respect and trust-building, rather than symbolic gestures alone.

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Nearly six decades after the 1965 Watts Riots, sparked by a routine traffic stop that spiraled into six days of violence and civil unrest, the South Los Angeles community has seen pockets of progress, from improved healthcare access to innovative community policing efforts. Yet, for many residents, deep challenges remain: fragile trust with law enforcement, persistent violence, and limited pathways to economic opportunity.

While demographics have shifted and some progress has been made, Watts continues to struggle with issues of poverty and underfunding, with local leaders emphasizing that real change requires sustained public investment,

UCLA Luskin social welfare professor Jorja Leap, who is on the board of the Watts Gang Task Force and Chair the Research and Evaluation Center, stresses that meaningful progress in Watts requires far more than community events like National Night Out or youth outings organized by law enforcement. For there to be meaningful change, “the LAPD and the Sheriff’s Department have to stop being badge-heavy,” Leap told the Los Angeles Daily News. “Day in and day out, they have to act as respectful partners. As long as we have people being stopped without cause, whether they are Black or Brown, we have a problem. And all the National Nights Out isn’t going to matter.”

Michael Manville Critiques L.A.’s Vision Zero: Progress ‘Incredibly Disappointing” Urban planning expert Michael Manville says Los Angeles’ Vision Zero traffic safety initiative has failed to deliver

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The Los Angeles Times article examines the harsh reality of implementation challenges for ambitious urban goals like phasing out gas-powered vehicles or becoming a fully interconnected Smart City. Most notably, the Vision Zero initiative—the city’s pledge to end traffic deaths by 2025—has stumbled amid funding shortfalls, political inertia, fragmented coordination, and a lack of accountability.

On Vision Zero’s failure, UCLA professor and chair of urban planning Michael Manville didn’t mince words: “Incredibly disappointing,” he said. “The city remains incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.”

Despite these setbacks, Los Angeles has committed significant resources to Vision Zero. In the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the city approved a budget of $100 million for Vision Zero initiatives, including road redesigns, improved signage, and enhanced lighting in high-risk areas.

Rising Temperatures Cause Students to Underperform Across the World UCLA’s Edith de Guzman highlights how overheated classrooms are widening educational inequities.

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An article published in the Los Angeles Times quotes Edith de Guzman, a climate researcher at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation, highlighting how rising temperatures are undermining students’ ability to learn—particularly in underserved communities. A comprehensive review, analyzing data from 14.5 million students across 61 countries, found that heat exposure reduces cognitive performance, especially in complex subjects like math. Even moderately warm days, between 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, impair students’ attention, memory, and focus.

Heat doesn’t affect all students equally. Black, Latino, and low-income students experience up to three to four times more learning loss from heat exposure compared to white and affluent peers. This disparity is largely due to inequalities in infrastructure—many under-resourced schools lack adequate air conditioning, shade, or green space, making classrooms unbearably hot during warmer months.

“As classroom temperatures rise over time — especially during extended heat waves or in schools with less shade, poorer insulation and lacking access to air conditioning — students tend to show declines in attention, memory and test performance,” said Edith de Guzman, a climate researcher at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation. Heat can also affect students’ abilities to enjoy outdoor recreational activities, having serious effects on their physical, mental and social well-being, she said.

The study also found that these effects are cumulative, with heat exposure throughout the school year having a greater impact on learning than just exam-day temperatures. Simple solutions—such as air conditioning, improved ventilation, and increasing tree canopy around schools—can dramatically reduce heat-related learning loss. However, many schools lack the funding to implement these upgrades.

D.C. Tops L.A. for Worst Traffic in the U.S. in New Report Mike Manville explains how traffic congestion signals economic growth and how unregulated road access worsens it.

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According to a new MSN report based on Consumer Affairs data, Washington, D.C. now ranks as the city with the worst traffic in the U.S., overtaking Los Angeles.The average commute time in D.C. is 33.4 minutes, edging out L.A., which now holds the No. 2 spot. While Los Angeles still leads in total weekday congestion hours (7 hours and 51 minutes), D.C. follows closely with 6 hours and 35 minutes.

Experts suggest that increased congestion may indicate a thriving economy. Professor and chair of the urban planning department Michael Manville explains that areas with economic opportunity attract more residents, and keeps current residents because of opportunities.

“Because we don’t do anything to regulate access, the roads in an area with a booming economy become overloaded and congested,” Manville added.

The exact causes of D.C.’s worsening traffic remain uncertain but could include a return to office mandates under recent federal policies. In contrast, cities with the least traffic include Rochester, Salt Lake City, Cleveland, Hartford, and St. Louis.