New committee created to address homelessness in Baton Rouge
BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana First) — Mayor-President Sid Edwards announced a new committee formed consisting of experts, advocates and local leaders to address homelessness in Baton Rouge.
The mission of the Community Outreach Partners Committee is to develop solutions to give support and resources to those in need. The committee will meet every two weeks.
'At the core of this initiative is a shared belief that every person deserves the opportunity to rebuild their life with dignity,' Edwards said. 'The issue of homelessness requires a collaborative and compassionate approach. By uniting key stakeholders with expertise and a shared commitment to the cause, we can make a real difference in the lives of those affected and create a stronger, more inclusive community.'
Members, all of whom are volunteers for the committee, include:
Addie Duval – START Corporation
Carrie Patterson – Louisiana Balance of State Continuum of Care
Ben Kennedy – First United Methodist Church
Dakasha Leonard – St. Vincent de Paul
Debra Blacher – St. Vincent de Paul
Pam Wall – One Stop
T.C. Lam – Baton Rouge Police Department
Melvilyn Hamilton – Someone Always Cares Foundation
Kerri Tobin – Louisiana State University
Amite River Basin Commission to unveil flood mitigation master plan
Oregon man accused of throwing Molotov cocktails, shooting at Tesla dealership
Derek Chauvin pardon 'would set us back as a society': Minnesota AG
Louisiana coroner seeks help identifying remains found 40 years ago
New committee created to address homelessness in Baton Rouge
Roy Ayers,'Everybody Loves the Sunshine' musician, passes away at 84
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
3 hours ago
- Fox News
LA-area mayors plead with Trump admin to stop ICE immigration arrests
A group of mayors from across the Los Angeles region joined together Wednesday to demand the Trump administration stop federal immigration raids that they say have spread fear throughout their communities. More than 30 mayors from the region stood with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass at a news conference denouncing the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to the city. Bass accused the White House of "provoking" the protests and riots, suggesting Los Angeles "was part of an experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in reaching in and taking over power from a governor, power from a local jurisdiction, and frankly leaving our city, and our citizens, our residents in fear." President Donald Trump, however, posted Thursday morning on the Truth Social platform that Los Angeles "would be a crime scene like we haven't seen in years" if he had not sent in the military. "Los Angeles was safe and sound for the last two nights," Trump wrote. "Our great National Guard, with a little help from the Marines, put the L.A. Police in a position to effectively do their job. They all worked well together, but without the Military, Los Angeles would be a crime scene like we haven't seen in years." Trump again blasted Gov. Gavin Newsom, saying the Democrat "had totally lost control of the situation." Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores, a Marine Corps veteran, said during the news conference that the militarization of immigration enforcement has "no place in our neighborhoods" and further called the deployment of Marines on U.S. soil an "alarming escalation." "As mayors across this region, we stand united in rejecting fear-based tactics that target immigrant communities and erode public trust," he said. Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman told The Associated Press that some 2,000 National Guard soldiers are in Los Angeles and will soon be joined by 2,000 more, along with about 700 Marines. "We are expecting a ramp-up," Sherman said, noting that protests across the nation were being discussed. "I'm focused right here in LA, what's going on right here. But you know, I think we're, we're very concerned." Meanwhile, Downtown Los Angeles remains under a curfew. Los Angeles police have made nearly 400 arrests and detentions since Saturday, the vast majority of which were for failing to disperse, according to the police department. A handful of more serious charges have included assault against police officers, possession of a Molotov cocktail and possession of a gun. Nine police officers have been hurt, mostly with minor injuries.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Some far-left groups have encouraged peaceful protests to turn violent, experts say
It was approaching nightfall in Los Angeles on Sunday when black-clad demonstrators began to torch a row of self-driving Waymo taxis. Within minutes, videos of the fiery scenes began to pop up on social media. 'MORE. MORE AND MORE AND MORE,' a group known as Unity of Fields posted on X, along with a video of the flaming vehicles. The post wasn't an anomaly. Since the start of the demonstrations against immigration raids in Los Angeles, the Unity of Fields X account has been pumping out messages urging people to wreak havoc in the streets and 'give 'em hell.' It's part of a far-left online ecosystem that has proliferated in recent years, experts say. Some of the groups behind the accounts express contempt for peaceful resistance and glorify acts of violence — and even murders, like those of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and two Israeli Embassy staffers. The leftist networks tend to be different from right-wing groups in that they are typically decentralized with no leadership structures. But they can be highly adept at using social media, and some have been working hard to amplify and celebrate the acts of violent protesters in Los Angeles. 'Whether they directly threw a Molotov cocktail is actually not as essential as the ecosystem of encouragement and coordination they have created,' said Joel Finkelstein, a co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that tracks online extremism. The unrest in Los Angeles follows a pattern that has played out in numerous cities over the past five years in which protests that break out remain mostly peaceful during the day, but at night agitators engage in fiery clashes with police. That dynamic tends to distract from the focus of the demonstrations — in this case, workplace immigration raids by federal agents — and provide fodder to people who oppose them. In this case, that's President Donald Trump and his supporters, who have sought to dismiss the broader protest movement as the work of 'paid insurrectionists.' 'What's concerning is the attempt to conflate the individual actors who do commit violence with the mass movement as a whole,' said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He said the narrative pushed by some people on the right — in his words, that there's a 'roving band of antifa groupies who are following protests from city to city' — doesn't comport with reality. But, Lewis added, there has no doubt been a normalization of violence in parts of the left, although it is more fractured than in right-wing groups. 'It's a little bit of anti-capitalist stuff in one case. A little bit of antisemitic stuff in another case,' he said. 'I think that reflects the nature of those online leftist movements where there is no cohesive, central structure.' More than 300 people have been arrested since the demonstrations broke out Friday in Los Angeles, police say. The charges include failure to disperse, looting, arson and attacks on police officers. Police Chief Jim McDonnell said demonstrators have shot commercial-grade fireworks at police officers and hurled pieces of concrete at them. Were they the acts of lone wolves seizing an opportunity to target police? Or was there a level of coordination and planning among the instigators? Experts say it's likely to be a combination of both. 'You have the organized protests by people who are committed to a particular cause, and then you have radical fringes,' said Dan Byman, the director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'They might put on airs and call themselves anarchists or something like that, but they're young people who like destruction.' The Network Contagion Research Institute has been analyzing the rise of what it calls 'anarcho-socialist extremism.' It has found that the chaos and violence that have broken out at some of the major protests in recent years, like those against the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, weren't as spontaneous as they might have seemed. 'What we found in our research is there are groups that were attempting to exploit the situation, oftentimes after dark, and their coordination was somewhat sophisticated,' said Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser to the Network Contagion Research Institute. That involved demonstrators' surveilling police movements and sharing tips about making the most destructive Molotov cocktails, Goldenberg said. 'They were trying to exploit an already volatile situation in an attempt to provoke violent clashes with police, create viral moments to inflame tensions and draw in others through emotional triggers,' he said. Soon after it launched in 2019, the Network Contagion Research Institute focused on right-wing threats like the Boogaloos, a loose-knit anti-government movement that calls for violence against law enforcement and political opponents. But it soon found that left-wing groups were using many of the same tactics to incite violence. A 2022 report by the institute found that animus toward law enforcement among anarchist types had been proliferating online for years. The appearance of posts with anti-police outrage and/or memes and coded language increased over 1,000% on Twitter and 300% on Reddit during the period of the Floyd protests in 2020, the report found. One anti-police group, the People's City Council Los Angeles, has taken to calling out the actions of officers at the protests, using expletives and slights. Just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, it posted on X the name and picture of a police officer it said was firing rubber bullets at protesters. He is 'f-----g unhinged and unloading on protesters at point blank range,' the post read. 'F--K THIS PIG!!' On Sunday, the group posted a video showing a line of police officers in riot gear. 'LAPD trying to kettle right now,' the group wrote, referring to a crowd control tactic used by police. 'Oink oink piggy piggy, we going make your life s----y…' The violent demonstrators seemed to represent a mishmash of causes. Many of the people seen hurling objects at police and setting fires were dressed in all black, their faces covered in masks. Some waved Mexican flags, others Palestinian flags. At least one man was photographed wearing a Hamas armband. 'Angelenos throwing Modelo Molotovs at ICE while wearing Keffiyehs,' read a post on X by Unity of Fields. 'We are locked the f--k in, folks.' Unity of Fields, which was formerly known as Palestine Action US, describes itself as a 'militant front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism.' 'The Unity of Fields concept comes from the Palestinian resistance,' the group said last year in a blog post announcing the name change. 'It refers to the coordination between all the factions on the battlefield despite their geographic fragmentation or ideological differences.' Finkelstein, the co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said such groups and the people who follow them represent what he described as 'assassination culture' — in which targeted killings are considered acceptable by those who harbor an array of grievances. Unity of Fields, for example, is helping raise money to cover legal costs for Elias Rodriguez, the Chicago man accused of fatally shooting the Israeli Embassy workers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington last month. 'My sense is that beneath these grievances is a shared sense of loss of control,' said Finkelstein, who is a psychologist and a neuroscientist. 'Who are the people that really feel a sense of hopelessness in their lives? Most are looking for significance, and they think they found it here.' In response to a request for comment, Unity of Fields wrote: 'We will never condemn people who fight to free themselves. When the masses in Los Angeles began using direct action as a means of halting ICE-gestapo disappearances, the media saw only the violence of resistance and never the violence of the status quo.' It added: 'All acts of resistance to state violence are justified and all power belongs to the masses.' The People's City Council Los Angeles didn't respond to a request for comment. While the violent parts of the protests in Los Angeles began to die down Monday, demonstrations against the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants have spread to several other cities, including Boston, Chicago, Dallas and New York. So far, none has experienced violence at the levels in Los Angeles, but whether that will remain the case is an open question. Unity of Fields has made it clear it's hoping for a repeat in cities like New York. 'NYC, how are you gonna let Angelenos beat you at your favorite pastime (terrorizing police officers)?' the group said Monday on X. 'Hamas Marxist Army get down there and show them what New Yorkers can do when they put their heads together!" This article was originally published on
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
Officers believe some protestors tried to make Molotov cocktails during anti-ICE protest
DENVER (KDVR) — Police say that 18 people were arrested during anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests that started at the State Capitol Tuesday evening. Police records indicate that officers believed some of the protestors were trying to make Molotov cocktails. Police arrest records show people were arrested for, among other things, obstruction of a roadway, failure to obey a lawful order, graffiti and second-degree assault of an officer. Over a dozen arrested in Denver Tuesday during ICE protest; police use smoke, pepper balls The protest was mostly peaceful, according to Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas. '(I'm) Disappointed, though, that there were agitators in the crowd that really wanted to try to taunt the police, create dangerous situations for the community,' Thomas said. Tensions grew as the crowd left the Capitol grounds and headed toward Broadway and Interstate 25. There was concern that the protestors would walk onto the interstate. 'Our first tactic was to use smoke as a deterrent and let them know that we are serious. We don't want to continue with the activity that you're engaged in right now. That was effective in getting a number of people to leave the area and stop their attempts to gain access to the highway,' Thomas said. The crowds in Colorado were protesting ICE raids taking place in Los Angeles and across the U.S. A spokesperson said they wanted to show their support for protestors in California. About 500 National Guard troops in LA are trained to accompany agents on immigration raids In one instance, arrest records show a protester scratched an officer, which led to an assault charge. 'They will be the cases that we'll see more attention from prosecutors and courts in terms of holding individuals responsible,' FOX31 Legal Analyst Christopher Decker said. However, Colorado 50501, which is planning the 'No Kings' events for Trump's birthday, said that it did not participate in planning the march on Tuesday night, but did promote the nonviolent march and peaceful protest, 'in support of immigration rights and demanding an end to the criminal executive overreach of the current administration.' The organization said that a group 'splintered' at the end of the peaceful event and proceeded to protest into the evening, which 50501 said was not represenative of the group's values. 'We wholeheartedly support everyone's right to protest,' the group wrote. 'This fundamental freedom is a pillar of democracy and a vital expression of invidual and collective voices.' The group said it will continue to commit to nonviolence, inclusivity and conflict resolution. DPD said pepper balls were also fired at the ground to create a deterrent and break up the crowds. FOX31 was told that many of the tactics that were used during the protest Tuesday night were implemented after the George Floyd protests in 2020. FOX31's Heather Willard contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
