Sherman Austin<\/a>, a Long Beach resident, founder of StopICE.net and one of the event organizers. \u201cAt this point, I was convinced that either someone in the city or someone pressuring the city was working overtime to stop our event, because that\u2019s exactly how it looked.\u201d<\/p>\nCity officials, however, said they have a responsibility to ensure that all public events and entertainment activities are properly permitted. The permit process is necessary for the \u201csafety and well-being\u201d of everyone involved, the city said, as well as to ensure appropriate measures are in place for those who want to enjoy adjacent spaces and residences.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe permitting process can take several days to finalize and issue,\u201d the city statement said, \u201cdepending on the scope and complexity of the event.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city does not target unpermitted events, officials said. Notices and other communications are issued when the city becomes aware of illegal events or entertainment activity through public complaints, word-of-mouth or advertising.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, advance planning is appropriate for an event that promoted a musical lineup with fundraising on public property that already had heavy public use and nearby homes,\u201d the city\u2019s statement said. \u201cAdvanced planning for this event would include conditions to strike a balance between all users of the space, and address parking and safety concerns created from potential power-related equipment utilized to amplify the music and other issues that are regularly considered by experienced city staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long Beach, through its Business Services Division and Special Events and Filming Office, regularly engages event organizers either through the permitting process or because of issues with unpermitted events, officials said.<\/p>\n
City officials said that they were engaged with the organizers of this event and provided options to hold it by obtaining either a special event permit or an occasional event permit.<\/p>\n
While organizers tried to compromise after the first cease-and-desist the city sent, Austin said in an interview, it felt like even if they had moved the event a third time, the same situation would have happened. Over the weekend, organizers shared on social media what was happening between the city and the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that our event was closely followed, tracked and targeted in such a manner,\u201d organizers said, \u201cappears to be discriminatory and raises serious First Amendment issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizers accused the city of saying the event was not allowed to \u201csolicit funds.\u201d But organizers said they emphasized that their flyers and messages mentioned that the event was free and only mentioned fundraising for different causes before the event. On Saturday, the city contacted the venue for a required inspection, which created confusion among the organizers, because city doesn\u2019t typically have inspectors available on the weekends.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is highly unusual that the City of Long Beach would go far out of its way to selectively target a live music event, which is a typical occurrence on any day here in Long Beach,\u201d organizers said, \u201cand target a known venue while there was absolutely no threat or risk to public safety, nor were there any complaints indicating such would occur.\u201d<\/p>\n
While this event was canceled, organizers said they plan on hosting another in Long Beach soon.<\/p>\n
Austin, along with other organizers and artists meant to perform during the event, brought the issue to the Long Beach City Council on Tuesday, Oct. 14. Speakers asked Mayor Rex Richardson and the council why their event felt targeted and questioned if the elected officials really stood for the city\u2019s Values Act, as the event was supporting causes the city has previously said they stood for. The Long Beach Values Act was established to help protect the city\u2019s immigrant communities by setting clear guidelines for handling sensitive personal information and preventing local cooperation with federal immigrant enforcement.<\/p>\n
The mayor and City Manager Tom Modica responded to the situation and said the city would work on ensuring the next event happened with the proper permitting. The council quickly adjourned the meeting after organizers in the crowd continued to question the city\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou quash peaceful protests, people wanting to celebrate with music and art,\u201d an organizer in the Civic Chambers yelled. \u201cYou pretend to care about people of color, you pretend to care about immigrants, but you do nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richardson and councilmembers have previously said that they are continuing to protect Long Beach\u2019s immigrant community by reenforcing its Values Act and approving the Defend Our Long Beach Values plan in the fiscal year 2026 budget.<\/p>\n
But organizers say it\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like they\u2019re just trying to dampen the fire,\u201d Austin said in an interview after the council meeting. \u201cThey know that people are pissed off. They see all the attention that it\u2019s getting on social media. It puts them in a bad light, like I said it would.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not here to try to reach out to them for support,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019m just letting them know, putting them on notice, you pissed a lot of people off. And we\u2019re going to do another event, and if you act out the same manner next time, you\u2019re going to piss even more people off. We\u2019re not going to stop; the work continues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach officials this week denied allegations that the city was \u201ctargeting\u201d an anti-ICE, pro-Palestinan event that was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,179,23,131,133,132,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-9544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-community","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-los-angeles-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}