Knock LA

On Tuesday August 4, progressive and leftist community organizations on the west side of Los Angeles held a triumphant Night Out for Safety and Liberation at the Mar Vista Recreation Center. The event brought together more than thirty organizations and community members in a celebration of community self defense and social justice. 

The Westside’s 2026 Night Out for Safety and Liberation was the second event of its kind and served as a response to annual National Night Out gatherings hosted by police departments across the country on the first Tuesday of August. Such police-sponsored events are said to build more connections between police and community members but in reality serve as pro-cop propaganda and whitewashing. For the organizations participating in the Night Out for Safety and Liberation, it was important to build a contending event in order to imagine a world free of police violence and state forces that oppress rather than protect. 

“Every year, these propaganda events are trying to promote and condition people to accept police and police violence,” said Bitta Sharma, an organizer with Mar Vista Voice. “So we’re saying no. We believe that we keep us safe, community keeps us safe.” 

The tradition of countering the police-led Night Out events with the Night Out for Safety and Liberation (NOSL) was started by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, CA. The purpose, according to the organization’s website, was to create a “police-free event promoting a community-centered public safety narrative.” 

At LA’s Westside Night Out for Safety and Liberation, organizers took particular care to build an event that countered the dominant narrative about the residents on the city’s western edge. 

“I think the Westside is sometimes thought of as very conservative, that it’s just a bunch of white folks, mostly homeowners,” Sharma told Knock LA. “But there are so many people from so many backgrounds. There are so many people of color.” 

As Los Angeles and Southern California in general become increasingly expensive, affordability and having basic needs met is top of mind for many residents. For Sharma, the event also served as a time to bring community members together in order to create symbiotic support networks among neighbors during this difficult political moment. It also allowed for people to become familiar with local organizations doing mutual aid. 

“So many people on the Westside cannot survive right now, whether that’s folks who are being evicted, people who are struggling to stay in their housing, who are living in garages, who are living on the street. I think there is a general awareness that just surviving is becoming impossible,” Sharma said. “That is especially clear in a place like this that is traditionally thought of as doing just fine.”

Much of LA’s Westside is under the purview of Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the city’s eleventh council district. Neighborhoods within Council District 11 include the Pacific Palisades, Venice, Mar Vista, and West LA/Sawtelle, among others. Park has gained a reputation for being a reactionary, conservative representative with an allegiance to landlords, NIMBYs, and federal agents conducting immigration raids. She has been frequently criticized for unprincipled stances and policies surrounding homelessness, automatic license plate readers, and undocumented people. Park will serve another term in City Hall, having won her primary after a challenge from civil rights attorney and progressive candidate Faizah Malik in June. 

Despite this, Sharma maintained that a large number of Westside residents support progressive and leftist causes and remain quite active in local organizing. 

“Politically, there is a tremendous appetite,” she said. 

One of the organizations doing grassroots harm reduction work is Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid (PUMA), which provides essential supplies directly to unhoused people without means testing and connects them to free street medicine and healthcare services. PUMA operates within the Westside neighborhoods of Palms, Mar Vista, and Culver City, and collaborates with likeminded organizations throughout LA County. Part of their work also includes advocating for more policies at the city level that protect and affirm the humanity of unhoused people. 

“Basically the services we have in place [through the city] are centered around budgets and centered around the will of people who are housed, not the needs of the unhoused,” said Sebastian Hernandez, an organizer with PUMA. 

Another issue plaguing the Westside has been ICE and Border Patrol raids over the last year. Grassroots rapid response organization West Los Rapid Response Network reported two ICE kidnappings in the last two weeks of July Both were targeted arrests that focused on singular individuals. Throughout the last year, Home Depots on the Westside were sites of frequent ICE activity. Though the federal agency’s tactics have shifted over the last twelve months and kidnappings have become less frequent, Bitta Sharma asserted that the violence has not stopped. 

“Even as the stories go out of the headlines, the raids continue right here on the Westside,” she told Knock LA.  

The Night Out for Safety and Liberation was made to be a bridge so that people passionate about building community self defense, supporting unhoused neighbors, and fighting for other causes could gather, mingle, and leave with a deeper sense of belonging. It also served as an invitation to community members who were not aware of the event and just happened to be in Mar Vista Park on that night. While the event was bustling with friends and acquaintances that frequent community organizing spaces, it also lured in curious bystanders who wanted to get a closer look at the tables and signage. Purely for this reason, the Night Out for Safety and Liberation was a rousing success. 

“My broader hope is that people who are in the community, who are just at Mar Vista Park and had no idea that these organizations existed, can get plugged in, even in a small way,” Sharma said. “Because when you get plugged into this work, you can’t help but dig deeper and want to do more.”

Rosalind Jones (she/they) is a queer, Los Angeles-based writer and community organizer. She is a contributor for the online publication Knock LA, a founding member of the social justice organization Community Solidarity Project, and authors a Substack titled ‘Another World is Inevitable’. Rosalind holds a BA in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College and a certification in Creative Writing from the UCLA Extension.