Formerly incarcerated, so one I'm actually established now.

I have a job, I have residency, I have a steady income, I have my medical coverage and everything, and that was all made possible through resources.

I was connected with Andrew T through the library.

The library is the right platform for all the service provider.

Um the library has already a name.

He has a location known by everybody, but also has the resources that we need.

You can cruise through, maybe get a free pen, and in the process, you can learn about services that maybe you didn't even know you needed.

We got air conditioning, restrooms, charge your phone.

Just look at the fact that you have people out here who love you who are generally concerned about you, who've been down the same path that you're navigating right now, and we're here to help.

So no matter how bleak it looks, no matter how bad, there's people here to help you like me, and uh we're gonna get it, we're gonna get it done.

You know, and with the resources being available, we're gonna get you connected.

That's what my job is, that's what my passion is, and I think I speak for the vast majority of these people here at the source today too.

That's why they come every last Tuesday of the month.

Today we're here in Lincoln Heights in Council District One, hosting our third annual backpack giveaway where we're giving out 1,700 backpacks to families across the district.

We know that coming into the new school year gets expensive, right?

You gotta buy new shoes, new pants, new uniforms, backpacks, pencils, paper.

Kids matter and Lincoln Heights has been putting kids first and the community at the center.

Do whatever we go through, ups, downs, we stick together, and that's why these events are important and need to continue for years on.

How about you, buddy?

It's great for the kids just to uh get them ready for school.

They can come and get a backpack with school supplies for their kids.

There's a lot of different service providers that are providing different resources and services.

These events are incredibly important to the community because right now families are struggling.

Uniforms are expensive, school supplies are expensive, the rent is too damn high.

We are here to try to lighten the load on our family so that they can focus on staying housed, on feeding their families, and the events like these kind of close the loop for some of the struggles that they have or some of the gaps that they might have.

It's just it brings a community together, it supports one another.

It's a lot of fun and uh we love the turnout.

I think it's great, and uh, you know, definitely gonna be here next year again.

We are here in front of Santee High School, a location where an individual from our community was shot by ICE agents last year, and we know that what often happens when law enforcement has shot someone, they aren't allowing medical aid to be rendered to our community members.

And what we wanted to do along with voters of tomorrow, young people who are truly our next generation of leaders who said we need to do something about this, and so we brought together folks to pass AB2318, focus on providing timely medical aid, and if you don't allow that, once a scene has been secured, then you have to provide documentation showcasing why not.

As an EMT, I think that giving care to a patient preserving life is one of the utmost responsibilities that I have, and I think that ensuring that that is placed in the legislature and placed in laws is super important.

I love the fact that a lot of young people like myself are able to come out and speak on it today.

When we have grown up here in Los Angeles, we're seeing that our communities are being torn apart apart by federal law enforcement officers who are coming in, they're people being killed, they're people that are not getting their right to do process, which is so important in this country.

It's one of the promises that any people in the United States are are given.

And so for us, we thought, you know what, we have this amazing platform of voters of tomorrow.

We can use voters of tomorrow to kind of build partnerships with other organizations who believe in the same vision that we do.

Democracy hinges on civic engagement, political participation.

If we bar ourselves completely from the entire process, we render ourselves silent.

We have to stand up and we have a voice, and now I'm in the legislative space.

I was able to write this bill with my colleague Ashi, and now we're kind of expanding more toward immigration policy.

And I am happy to be in full support of this bill for something that should be common sense.

I love this place.

I think everyone's kind of exploring cyanography on Instagram, so I wanted to come and check out so today we're doing uh cinotography.

So it's probably the oldest version of photography that we have.

So it was invented in the early 1800s, and it uses two different chemicals to that you combine in equal parts to create a photograph.

You start by combining the two chemicals into a little bit of a science project first, and then you also get set up the pieces that you would like to make on your um art so they turn it essentially creates a negative.

So then from there um you put it out in the sun for about anywhere from five to thirty minutes, depending on how bright you want it to end up looking, and then after that you wash the chemicals off in a bucket of water for a few minutes, and then when it comes out, it turns from yellow to blue, and you see the negative of whatever object you placed down.

It came out really good.

Came out really good.

I see the essence of how going through how the sun light goes through leaves and how it goes through feathers, and it is really nice, interesting to subject to play with Woo!

Look at that bright!

That's turning out!

It's already doing it.

And then eventually you dry the final products.

We have some over there.

And so, yeah, basically the light does all the work, which is really good for lazy artists like myself.

This fire wasn't an abstract thing.

It was personal, and all of these resources not reaching anybody is not an effective recovery.

We were in city council voting on charter reform when I first got a text that there was a fire in our neighborhood.

Hearing about there was an evacuation order, folks who are being told to shelter in place, and really rushing out of council in order to make it here in time to see what was happening in the neighborhood.