Stay ConnectedImperfect Paradise is LAist’s weekly on-demand news magazine show that pulls back the curtain and dives deeper into the biggest and most consequential SoCal stories of the week from our newsroom. New episodes drop every Friday.
Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.
California is home to around 2 million undocumented people. And in Southern California, roughly 80,000 of them have DACA, Deferred Action Childhood Arrival (although some stats put that number higher). It allows people to get a work permit, to pay in-state tuition, and to get a drivers license. But there are a lot of freedoms it doesn't grant, like freely traveling outside the US.
How to LA host Brian De Los Santos has had DACA for about a decade. He recently got approved to do something big: he's going to Mexico for the first time since he was 2 years old, through a process called advance parole.
It's a travel permit that allows DACA recipients to leave the country and come back. However, the permit is issued with a very specific time window, and is only given for certain travel reasons.
And the big one: it doesn’t guarantee admission back into the country. But despite the stress, Brian's taking the opportunity to go Mexico and see family he hasn't seen since he was a toddler.
In the first part of this series, Brian's bringing in a couple of his friends and fellow DACA recipients to talk about all of his hopes and fears for the trip, and what it's like to live with DACA in the U.S., which is very much like living in limbo every day. We've got more of Brian's story over on LAist.com, so be sure to check that out.
As A DACA Beneficiary, I’ve Been Waiting For This Trip To Mexico All My Life
If you have DACA and want to apply for advance parole, it's very important that you consult with an immigration attorney. These organizations can help get you started:
CALIFORNIA MEXICO CENTERhttps://www.california-mexicocenter.org/cmdsummer2023/
CARECEN LAhttps://www.carecen-la.org/can_i_apply_for_advance_parole?locale=en
Guests:
Chris Farias, LAist social media producer; José Alonso Munoz, deputy communications manager for United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led support network
Music Credits This Week:
Chris Schlarb, The Mod Archive, Quetzal, Naran Ratan, Natalia Lafourcade, Austin Cross, Old Saw, & Anthony Barilla
Support How To LA and other LAist Studios podcasts by donating now at LAist.com/join
Hey, Imperfect Paradise listeners, this is Emily Guerin. I'm one of the hosts and senior producers of this show. We're doing something a little different and we're bringing you an episode of the NPR podcast Code Switch. My colleague Josie Huang is talking to one of their hosts about the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, and what it says about the dark side of the Asian American dream. I hope you like it.
In early 2020, just as fears about coronavirus are worsening, women begin accusing the founder of Kundalini Yoga, Yogi Bhajan, of sexual assault. Guru Jagat’s surprising response sets the stage for her radicalization during the pandemic.
Katie Griggs, a young woman from rural Maryland, discovers Kundalini yoga in her early 20s and goes all in. She transforms herself into Guru Jagat, a beloved and controversial yoga and wellness influencer in Los Angeles. In this episode, her friends, family, and coworkers grapple with how she changed in the final years of her life. And we explore the connections between yoga and conspiracies like QAnon.
Guru Jagat starts the pandemic with an understandable skepticism of official medical advice, but quickly grows to embrace an array of far-right conspiracy theories.
Before her sudden death in 2021, Guru Jagat had become a famous Kundalini yoga teacher based in Los Angeles. But as the global pandemic grew, she started talking like a far-right coronavirus conspiracy theorist. What does her journey down the rabbit hole tell us about the appeal of conspiracies in the yoga and wellness community?
This 3-episode season explores Guru Jagat’s rise to fame and follows along as she responds not just to the pandemic, but to a #metoo movement scandal that rocked the Kundalini yoga world in early 2020. It also explores themes of misinformation, how a healthy distrust in government and medicine can turn dark, the "relativism around truth" in the wellness industry and the influence of social media on radicalization.
Episode #1 will be available to stream on January 3rd.
Alex Villanueva has conceded the election. The next sheriff of LA County will be Robert Luna. More analysis to come soon.
By the end of 2021, Alex Villanueva has done a 180. Once supported by the local Democratic party, he’s become a darling of Fox News. Instead of working closely with immigration activists, he’s proposing a military-style approach to clear all the unhoused off the streets. He’s won the intense loyalty of the overwhelming majority of his deputies, but lots of people who voted for him in 2018 have changed their minds. Villanueva now faces an uphill fight to win another four years in office.
In 2019, LA County Sheriff’s deputies shot and killed Marco Vazquez, Jr. outside his home while he was having a mental health crisis. Later, members of Vazquez’ family say they were followed and harassed by Sheriff’s deputies. They’re not the only ones.
There have been deputy gangs in the LA County Sheriff’s department for almost as long as anyone can remember. These groups can be violent, misogynistic, discriminatory and powerful – they can control much of what happens at some sheriff’s stations. Sheriff Villanueva simultaneously denies gangs exist and claims he has banned them.
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