Hundreds of neighbors gathered at Mar Vista Rec Center Tuesday evening for the second annual Westside Night Out for Safety & Liberation, filling the park with music, food, art and organizing while offering an alternative to the “National Night Out” copaganda events taking place across the country.
Twenty-eight organizations participated this year, representing movements for housing and tenant justice,immigrant defense, racial justice, labor rights, Palestinian liberation, healthcare, mutual aid and community defense. Throughout the picnic area, organizers shared resources and offered neighbors ways to get involved.
Night Out for Safety & Liberation is rooted in the belief that safety is something communities create together, not something delivered through policing, surveillance and criminalization. The Westside event began last summer in the immediate aftermath of the immigration raids that swept LA. As federal agents targeted immigrant communities with the help of LAPD, organizers wanted to create a space that rejected policing and copaganda while bringing neighbors together with people already doing the work of protecting and caring for each another.
That mission has only become more urgent. Immigration enforcement continues across Los Angeles, including on the Westside, while unhoused residents face sweeps and criminalization and police surveillance continues to expand. National Night Out conditions us to associate police, surveillance and enforcement with safety, while presenting the institutions that harass, criminalize and kill our neighbors as benign community partners. Night Out for Safety & Liberation rejects that conditioning and puts community-based safety into practice.
Tuesday evening offered a joyful glimpse of what that can look like. Attendees learned about tenant organizing, affordable housing, immigrant rapid response, harm reduction, healthcare and campaigns against mass surveillance. Children made art and played games, musicians performed as the sun went down, and neighbors shared free food purchased from local street vendors through the Westside Street Vendor Buyout.
Speakers connected the celebration in the park to struggles happening beyond it. Public interest attorney and former City Council candidate Faizah Malik joined organizers and advocates including Catie Laffoon, Antoinette Hollamon, Edgar Lopez Curiel, Marianne Shamma, and community defense organizers with DSA-LA. Speakers addressed housing, immigrant justice, Palestinian liberation, policing and other forms of state violence confronting Los Angeles communities.
The evening also reflected an organizing ecosystem that has grown significantly on the Westside. Westside politics may often be associated with some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest and most powerful neighborhoods, but anoth
er Westside is increasingly making itself heard. Tenants are fighting displacement, volunteers are responding to ICE, workers are organizing their workplaces, people feeding their neighbors, advocates fighting for affordable housing and organizers challenging police violence and surveillance.
Organizers plan to build on Tuesday’s gathering by turning the Night Out website into a year-round resource connecting residents with participating organizations, their campaigns and opportunities to get involved. The goal is not simply a bigger Night Out next summer, but stronger relationships and more organizing together throughout the year.