We direct you to the full post that originally appeared as an Esotouric newsletter.
Originally published in our newsletter on September 15, 2026. Read the original with images and videos.
Public records show CD14 was nudged to revive Kevin de Leon’s stalled motion to seek millions in State Park funds, as DTLA Alliance promotes LA28 public-private partnerships
Gentle reader,
When City Hall seeks to misinterpret history for political purposes, there are two choices for the independent historians who have had to become civic watchdogs and investigative journalists in the absence of a robust press: to mindlessly swallow their spin, or firmly take the past back and get the story straight.
Obviously, we pick door number 2.
We’ve been investigating the Pershing Square renaming, but we’re not neutral bystanders. We’re proudly biased in favor of transparency, accuracy and the public process. We will always protect our shared cultural history from political opportunists who cynically seek to misrepresent the past to enhance their power.
So on 9/4/2026 at City Hall, when Ysabel Jurado falsely claimed General John J. Pershing “never [set] foot into the city of L.A.” before asking her colleagues to vote to rename his park, it was like throwing chum in our bathwater.
We’ve been digging like cranky groundhogs ever since, and what we unearthed ought to put a stop to the forward motion of changing Pershing Square’s name.
There is a lot to report, and while it fits into the snappy infographic above, we urge concerned citizens to read to the end, where you’ll find a well-earned treat.
We publish this with respect for Biddy Mason’s accomplishments and status as an exemplar of what is possible for a person of courage and integrity who has the great good fortune to land in Los Angeles. Our sincere hope is that all who care about Mason, Pershing Square and the truth will not be divided by rushed legislative acts.
Note: Our response to Jose Huizar’s Bringing Back Broadway initiative was a series of free LAVA walking tours documenting the small businesses threatened by council-sponsored gentrification. Click the confessed racketeer for videos.
This is not happening in a vacuum. For years, under confessed racketeer Jose Huizar, CD14 land use decisions were made outside the public process and the district’s small business culture and historic buildings suffered terribly. Huizar negotiated directly with developers who paid him off rather than plunging into a messy democratic process that might produce unexpected results. There was no reasoning with him unless you paid to play.
Current CD14 councilmember Ysabel Jurado ran as an alternative to this type of leadership, promising to serve the community and regain its trust.
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Ysabel Jurado presents her anti-corruption platform on TikTok (see also Counterpunch, 2024)
So why has Ysabel Jurado’s motion to rename a major public park been hashed out in a backroom deal so blatant, it would make even Jose Huizar blush? And what can be done to slow the process down and ensure citizens have a voice?
AMERICA’S FIRST WORLD WAR I MEMORIAL?
The proposed change to Pershing Square’s name—so dedicated in November 1918 as a war memorial, with the name of General John J. Pershing representing the millions of Americans who served under him—is advancing at great speed.
The 1918 change from Central Park, too, moved quickly: hours after the Armistice was signed on 11/11/1918, City Council, local newspapers and community leaders rose as one. They were eager that Los Angeles lead the nation in rededicating a key public asset to mark the end of hostilities, the joy of servicemen coming home, and the hope that there might never be another war.
One proposal was to gather hundreds of guns, helmets, tank treads and bombshells and craft a metal sculpture whose meaning was Peace.
This makes Pershing Square not just a war memorial of distinction for Los Angeles, but nationally and internationally, due to the speed with which it was dedicated. (Fundraising for Memorial Park in Jacksonville, FL began the same day, but the park didn’t open to the public until six years later.)
There is no living Angeleno who has known it as anything other than Pershing Square. To change the name is a big deal, and under current city rules, should not happen quickly, nor without a long and open public conversation.
So why the rush with no debate? The evidence suggests the motive is money.
We applaud creative ideas for investing in Pershing Square, and think proposed new honoree Biddy Mason would have done so, too. Great parks aren’t cheap—although in the case of this park, architect John Parkinson donated his design services in appreciation of the city that had been so good to him.
But as the renaming rushes forward, there’s a problem: Biddy Mason already has a public park named after her, a few blocks from Pershing Square, which is a recipe for confusion.
L.A. IGNORES ITS OWN RENAMING POLICY
There is a clear process for changing the name of any public space, created to ensure equity for citizens and good stewardship by officials, and to prevent special interest groups from unjustly benefiting from their access to City Hall.
When there are multiple layers of protection, the system usually works.
Major reports produced at taxpayer expense have set out guidelines for how Los Angeles is supposed to handle historical monuments and place names.
In April 2021, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Civic Memory Working Group—a 40-member panel of historians, Indigenous leaders, architects, curators and civic officials—produced the 184-page Past Due Report and Recommendations.
This group explicitly looked at the existing Biddy Mason Park and urged city leaders to use it as a springboard to a more robust, modern interpretive program, while warning against initiating top-down decisions that leave citizens out.
Considerable power over creation and naming of public markers rests with elected city officials in a way that can make the process seem capricious or unfair… The naming of sites and commissioning of monuments should not fall to individual elected officials.
In the aftermath of the reconsideration of public monuments sparked by the murder of George Floyd, these experts convened at taxpayer expense to develop best practices for civic memorialization.
The city has since developed specific recommendations for how public spaces already named for a person should be renamed in a fair, thoughtful and transparent manner. The Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department’s report was produced in response to a motion advanced by many councilmembers, among them Ysabel Jurado, after posthumous allegations of sexual abuse were raised against Cesar Chavez, but the recommendations should not be limited only to sites named after the labor rights leader.
It was due in late April, but was only submitted to City Council on 9/4/2026—the same day as the rushed vote to rename Pershing Square. You can read it below.
LINK: Proposed Community Informed Framework And Process For Renaming Cesar Chavez Named Assets (196KB PDF)
It is a thoughtful report. The guiding principles include giving an affected community multiple opportunities to shape renaming recommendations before they are transmitted to the City Council, a focus on historical accuracy, transparency, outreach, a consistent process and community engagement.
And like Past Due before it, the report directly warns against ”establishing a predetermined replacement name before community engagement is completed.”
Since none of the city’s own best practices have been followed in the Pershing Square renaming, it’s no surprise that some constituents feel aggrieved.
Under this rubric, a politician’s motion to rename Pershing Square is a non-starter.
A VOTE THAT MADE US GO HMMMM…
When the matter came up for a vote at full City Council, we watched the live stream and phoned in to make public comment. The Clerk didn’t call on us.
But the people who did get called up to speak had a rare City Hall experience, indeed. If you’ve ever participated in this ritual, you know the drill: you get a minute per item, they start the clock quick and cut you off with no time to spare.
Not if you were there to support the motion to rename Pershing Square, though!
The City’s violation of its own rules was so egregious that our inbox started lighting up with other viewers who couldn’t believe what was happening.
Civic critic and journalist Daniel Guss managed to get through by phone and warned that they were violating the First Amendment through Viewpoint Discrimination. You cannot blatantly favor one side in a public meeting without throwing the validity of any vote into question.
Maybe somebody will file a cure and correct letter causing the City to re-hear these tainted Pershing Square votes, because this makes two that ought not have been counted. They’re welcome to use the infographic we mocked up. The orange into red color scheme represents the steam that came out of our ears!
Park renaming advocate Michael Ellison-Lewis got almost two minutes in the disordered public comment period. He is on the board of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation (BMCF) and is a spokesperson for the First AME Church, from which BMCF emerged as an outreach ministry before becoming an independent 501c3.
The two organizations have been key to delivering support of the renaming, including a thick stack of pre-written public comments. The origin of those comments also shows up in the emails we obtained through a public records request.
On 7/17/2026, CD14 Senior Legislative Deputy Davida Koren emailed Ellison-Lewis:
On the Council File, you will see that some letters of opposition have been uploaded to the public comment section. To ensure your organization’s opinion is also reflected in the record, you all are invited to submit public comment by clicking this button.
Ellison-Lewis responded with thanks and plans for three full days of public events celebrating Biddy Mason over her birthday weekend, where signatures would be gathered for the council file; dozens were subsequently uploaded.
There is nothing wrong with Koren alerting Ellison-Lewis to the imbalance in public comments, nor in FAME and BMCF soliciting signatures. But there is a real difference between organic public comments submitted by concerned citizens, and photocopied form letters passed around at a community gathering.
It’s no Parker Center, where emails showed Jose Huizar and Gil Cedillo had citizens bussed in to demand the landmark be demolished, but these comments might not be in the council file if CD14 didn’t ask for them.
A SMOKING GUN ON THE BACK BURNER
When we started working on this newsletter, we thought the smoking gun hinting at financial motives behind the City’s rush to rename Pershing Square was a highly unusual email sent from Michael Ellison-Lewis.
Ellison-Lewis is attached to FAME and BMCF, West Adams-based entities with a profound interest in promoting Biddy Mason, and it’s perfectly normal he would be concerned about the expiration of Kevin de Leon’s park renaming motion.
But he didn’t send an ordinary email, asking what was up with the motion and if he could talk with legislative staff to urge it be brought back for a vote.
Instead, he laid out a precise and highly informed schedule of dates by which the matter needed to be heard before the motion officially died, and informed the council office that the park could seek Proposition 4 State Parks funding, with reference to grant dates and amounts available.
We note with urgency that Council File 24-0751 is currently set to expire on June 21, 2026. Furthermore, we note that significant state grant funding appears to be available through the Statewide Park Program (SPP) Round 5 in Summer/Fall 2026. This cycle has $188.5 million allocated from Proposition 4, which could be vital in the event additional funding is needed to ensure the park’s success.
Excerpts from emails obtained from CD14 through a public records request.
This is the type of communication one would expect to see from a legislative deputy, grants professional or registered lobbyist, not a member of the public.
Anyone can appeal to an elected official—there’s nothing untoward in it. But when a citizen displays unexpected familiarity with the legislative calendar and obscure state funding mechanisms, it’s worth asking where they got their information and if they are being advised by unnamed officials.
We don’t know if CD14 intends to seek State Parks funds for a renamed Pershing Square. But if it does, shouldn’t the decision to apply for a large grant be a public discussion open to the community who uses this and other parks?
Despite increasingly urgent emails from Ellison-Lewis, Kevin de Leon’s motion was not scheduled for a hearing by Jurado. It expired under Council policy on 6/26/2026.
But Ellison-Lewis didn’t spend those last few days fretting.
On 6/22/2026, Senior Legislative Deputy Davida Koren emailed him:
I am reaching out to follow up on our earlier messages regarding the renaming of Pershing Square to Biddy Mason Square. Councilmember Jurado plans to introduce a Motion to initiate the renaming. I will be sure to follow up with you once that Motion is introduced in Council, as well as update you as the Motion moves forward in the Legislative process.
You can read these CD14 emails below.
Cd 14 Biddy Mason Pershing Square Renaming Public Records Request Watermark (1.63MB PDF)
Five days after the motion expired, on 7/1/2026, Ysabel Jurado revived it as her own, with new language. The changes might be in response to criticism from historian Nathan Marsak, who mocked Kevin de Leon for his false claim that General Pershing never visited Los Angeles.
Nathan Marsak blows a gasket, June 2024
But on Council floor on 9/4/2026, Ysabel Jurado repeated de Leon’s false claim!
This is maddening to those who care about getting history right, and sent us deep into the legislative weeds, seeking motivations for this rushed and sloppy motion, because the press isn’t doing its job.
It seems worth noting that Jurado’s Chief of Staff, Lauren Hodgins, was a registered lobbyist until May 2024. She left that position to help manage Jurado’s campaign, in which the non-politician was presented as an alternative to City Hall corruption who could “break the CD14 Curse.” After Jurado’s election, Hodgins was hired as Chief of Staff.
It’s reasonable to assume that Hodgins’ prior experience advancing private interests through City Hall’s opaque legislative process might lead to an office-wide comfort working outside of an open public process.
But naming a public park should never be decided by people in a back room.
SKID ROW PARKS NEED THE MONEY MORE
Los Angeles has been assessing the state of its parks through a robust public and internal process, but you would never know that from reading the Pershing Square motion.
However, should you consult the LA Parks Needs Assessment (December 2025), you’ll see the results of community discussions and an online poll that included thousands of participants citywide.
Does it irk you that the Rec and Parks Department would host public events to collect constituent feedback, and then produce a lengthy report that scores parks based on their current status and future needs, but then one citizen who represents organizations headquartered in a completely different council district can request specific legislative action on a Downtown city park and get it?
You will be irked if you look at the data in the LA Parks Needs Assessment. The report says that San Julian Park in Skid Row is #3 on its citywide calculation of parks most in need of investment and improvement. This is derived from a data-driven assessment of tree cover, amenities, population density, park conditions and objective need. Pershing Square, in contrast, is rated #118, a stable space.
If the aim here is to honor the legacy of Biddy Mason, who through her philanthropy provided aid to the poor Black community, why isn’t CD14 looking to do anything to improve the neglected parks that serve this constituency?
We wish our friend General Jeff Page was still here to speak up for his community and share his thoughts on Pershing Square
If millions in Proposition 4 funds are available to invest in new or existing parks, is the best use of scarce grant resources cleaning up Pershing Square, or in trying to give Skid Row a truly great park to be used by homeless people and the Skid Row tenants who live in SRO rooms without amenities?
MONETIZING BIDDY MASON FOR LA28
Immediately following the unanimous City Council vote, Nick Griffin from the business booster group DTLA Alliance posted on his personal LinkedIn account that major donors were sought to sponsor Biddy Mason Park leading up to the 2028 Olympics.
This is a similar, but more explicit, message to the one Griffin shared at the Arts, Parks, Libraries, and Community Enrichment Committee, when he made public comment right before Kim, with a pamphlet about reviving Pershing Square sticking out of his back pocket.
It’s reasonable to assume that the public comment and post were not the first CD14 has heard about DTLA Alliance’s belief that a larger and more central Biddy Mason Park has real sponsorship potential.
Does City Hall intend to use Olympic planning and zoning relief to create a fan viewing venue at Pershing Square? DTLA Alliance has explicitly placed it along the LA28 Path of Progress, a public-private initiative connecting parks and public spaces ahead of and during the Games.
Such activation sounds reasonable—but if this is happening, we think it ought to be presented to the public, especially as it involves the potential renaming and rebranding of a war memorial.
And no economic justifications were presented by Ysabel Jurado before the vote.
If the intent is for Pershing Square to be more marketable to corporate sponsors for a sporting event that lasts just 16 days, should a 108-year-old war memorial be erased for such short-term gain? Why not consider instead a temporary LA28 rebranding, with installation of a permanent Biddy Mason memorial fountain that can remain as a souvenir of the Games?
We believe it would be no honor at all for Biddy Mason’s name to be used to advance an LA28 public space re-branding agenda that leaves the poor, largely Black Skid Row community and its neglected parks behind.
When Nick Griffin goes to business leaders to pitch investment in the LA28 Path of Progress, he uses a variation of a European folk tale about hungry strangers hustling suspicious villagers out of their last onions and potatoes.
But this rubs against a gritty reality. Yesterday morning, video on the Citizen app showed police and medical crews responding in Pershing Square, and a white tent — the kind used to shield a body — going up over the scene. According to incident report chatter, a person had overdosed at the park, then a thief snatched the victim’s pink backpack and took off with it.
That’s not a fable. That’s the space the City seeks to rebrand and rename—without the robust, slow moving public process its own rules require.
And wouldn’t it be a more attractive pitch to corporate donors to be part of a park that’s not embroiled in a public fight about top-down erasure of a war memorial?
THE CD14 CURSE ABIDES
Since 2013, when we formed the Pershing Square Restoration Society to be a citizen’s voice advocating for the city to restore John Parkinson’s 1910 design instead of using one of the new concepts submitted in Jose Huizar’s international competition, we have been watching with dismay as Downtown leaders act in bad faith and a bad public space gets worse.
Twelve years ago this month, Huizar blatantly lied to Kim’s face when she asked him if the public would have a chance to vote in his park redesign competition, and if the options would include restoration. We are certain the restoration choice would have been the overwhelming favorite of Angelenos.
But there was no public vote that included Parkinson’s essentially perfect park.
The winners were French architects Agence TER, whose “radically flat” concept proved unbuildable because they didn’t take Metro infrastructure into account.
Huizar treated the park selfishly and is now serving 13 years in federal prison.
We have no reason to believe any hidden agenda was known to the descendants of Biddy Mason, nor to the congregation of First AME Church nor the board members of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation when they supported renaming the park. But, as usual, the City is definitely up to something.
Today, we share our video from former councilmember Kevin de Leon’s Juneteenth 2024 press conference announcing his intent to rename Pershing Square to honor Biddy Mason.
Like Huizar, Kevin de Leon sought to use the park to advance his political career, left the public out, and soon lost his council seat.
Now Ysabel Jurado seeks to finish his work. We think she needs to be very careful, because there appears to be a political curse on this parcel, and officials who seek to advance their own agendas have been burned before.
With de Leon, his ulterior motive was obvious. He’d been caught on an illegal recording making racially insensitive remarks about a Black child, then refused to resign his seat in the face of community protest and even President Joe Biden saying c’mon, man, git!
This was an incredible opportunity for anyone with a pet cause they wanted to advance, because de Leon was ready to embrace any idea, no matter how screwy, if it involved Angelenos smiling alongside him for a photo op.
In fact, before the 2024 press conference began, Kim spontaneously told the councilmember about the missing plaque honoring Benny, a beloved squirrel crushed while chasing walnuts near the Biltmore in 1934.
He immediately offered to replace it and told her to call his office. But following up would have meant participating in an apology tour that was de Leon’s dharma, not ours. Sorry, Benny.
That’s the tell. A man who will say yes on the spot to memorializing a squirrel, no questions asked, is a man who will say yes to anything—including renaming a war memorial after a woman who already has a park bearing her name a few blocks away, because her great-great-great-great granddaughters think it’s not sunny enough. It’s ridiculous. But he did it. And that’s the moment that set the stage for the motion Ysabel Jurado is now pushing through.
De Leon might have been City Hall poison, but Biddy Mason’s descendants and the unrelated First AME parishioners who manage the BMCF—not to be confused with the family’s own Biddy Mason Foundation—didn’t mind.
The First AME church was another matter. You may notice some awkwardness in the formal remarks. Just minutes before the press conference began, recently installed Pastor Robert R. Shaw II posted on the church Instagram that he would not be participating for moral reasons. This left City staff scrambling to fill his time, while hoping reporters wouldn’t ask awkward questions.
It seems impossible that some of Biddy’s descendants dislike Biddy Mason Memorial Park, on the actual site of her homestead, even though the family lobbied councilmember Joy Picus to create the space and were there when it was dedicated by the city’s first Black Mayor, Tom Bradley.
They told Kevin de Leon Biddy Mason deserved something more; a motion to rename Pershing Square was born.
He also moved that a large section of Spring Street be renamed, and while the Pershing Square motion never advanced under de Leon, ceremonial signage was unanimously approved. Two years later, none have been installed.
So we know where Kevin de Leon was coming from. But why would Ysabel Jurado reactivate a stalled concept advanced by a politician she loathes?
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Sorry, Jake, it’s not Chinatown this time.
Try Sacramento, and California’s Proposition 4 (Climate Bond) with generous grants that could replace the Pershing Square redesign fund that confessed racketeer Jose Huizar never delivered to Rec and Parks.
Emails we obtained through a public records request show this to be the spark that reignited de Leon’s stalled motion in early 2026.
And the opportunity was brought to Council District 14, not by legislative or grants professionals, but by a board member of a non-profit named for Biddy Mason based in the West Adams District.
One thing is sure: after years of public corruption and sloppy accounting, Pershing Square is in a financial hole, with no clear way out.
Our Pershing Square Restoration Society blog reported on the tense RAP Commission grilling that then-Rec and Parks GM Mike Shull received in May 2022 about money that was supposed to be turned over by Huizar’s in-house non-profit, Pershing Square ReNew. PSR quietly dissolved and Rec and Parks couldn’t find the million dollars raised from developers for the competition. A month later, Shull retired.
Despite recent landscaping, sightline and elevator improvements, the park needs a lot of work, and it makes sense the city would be scanning the horizon for granting opportunities at the local, state and federal level.
Yet Ysabel Jurado has not said that renaming Pershing Square is necessary to qualify for a Proposition 4 grant. Nor has she suggested that a new interpretive program honoring Biddy Mason might strengthen the City’s application or make the project more compelling to the granting agency.
Kevin de Leon had a hard time finding anyone willing to risk their reputation by standing beside him. His second on the 2024 motion: Curren Price of CD9, who had been charged with public corruption a year earlier.
When Jurado revived the motion, she found a new second: Heather Hutt, who represents the West Adams district, which is home to First AME and BMCF.
But even though he’s no longer advancing the motion, Curren Price (third from the left) appears prominently in the City Hall photo with happy folks from FAME and BMCF posted to Jurado’s social media accounts after the vote.
Apparently, breaking the CD14 curse is easier said than done.
A RUSHED VOTE IS NOT THE END
On 9/4/2026 after an interminable City Council meeting rife with dancing and martial arts demonstrations, followed by the public comment session that suggested the City had its thumb on the scale, all 11 members present voted yes.
This was followed by headlines saying Pershing Square had been renamed after Biddy Mason. Wrong. The Council voted to direct the renaming, but the implementation remains with Recreation and Parks.
The matter next goes before the appointed Rec and Parks Commission, the only body that can rename a park. This puts civic erasure of what we believe to be America’s first World War I memorial squarely in the lap of Mayor Karen Bass.
Both Bass and Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman should be asked if they believe civic landmarks should be renamed by a councilmember with no public process. If you see them, ask them yourself, because the press isn’t going to do it!
You can learn more about de Leon’s stalled 2024 proposal and about Jurado’s revamped 2026 version in previous newsletters.
We’ve also posted video from the 8/25/2026 hearing of the since-dissolved Arts, Parks, Libraries, and Community Enrichment Committee—including what we believe to be disqualifying remarks by Chair Jurado, in which she directly criticized a citizen who opposed her proposal, just before she called for a vote.
LET’S STOP THE CLOCK AND START TO TALK
This is all upsetting. But it’s not too late for Ysabel Jurado to reconsider how she’s handling the matter and to open the floor to her actual constituents, as well as to those whose interest in Biddy Mason’s legacy is based in the West Adams District on the other side of the 110.
It would be great to have an open discussion about potential State Parks funding, LA28 sponsorship and how these opportunities might be tapped to make CD14 a better place.
As for us, we’ve reached out to ask for a pause in the Pershing Square renaming to allow for discussion. You can read that below. You can email councilmember.jurado@lacity.org with your own message, too
Esotouric Pershing Square Cd14 Letter (35.2KB PDF)
But until and unless Ysabel Jurado hits the pause button, this process continues, and we’ll keep advocating for the beautiful, neglected Biddy Mason Park, for the war memorial and for citizens to have a voice.
What now? If you’ve read this far, why not let the councilmember and Rec and Parks Commissioners know what you think by clicking the NEW button? We’ll look forward to seeing your comments hit the council file, and to seeing some of you in person at the RAP hearing when the matter comes up for discussion.
One good thing came out of Ysabel Jurado repeating false claims about General Pershing on the council floor: it made our pal Nathan Marsak absolutely furious.
Instead of throwing his cuspidor through a window, Nathan turned his ire into research and produced this must-read deep dive blog post, unpacking Biddy Mason’s late 20th-century mythology as the most interesting Black woman in Los Angeles to find a multi-generational game of telephone, a missing gravestone and years of civic and journalistic carelessness and deception.
It’s fascinating stuff, as much about how Angelenos interpret and adapt the past as it is about the life and legacy of Biddy Mason. If you haven’t had enough yet, go read Nathan’s post. That’s your treat!
And if you agree with us that the 9 reasons to slow down before renaming Pershing Square should be known by more Angelenos you can send this newsletter to a friend, or just download and share the graphic on your social media accounts.
Saturday’s walking tour is Know Your Downtown Los Angeles featuring the Dutch Chocolate Shop, and it’s now full with a waiting list. We’ll repeat this tour on December 19. Next Saturday, we’d love to see you for a Westlake Park Time Travel Trip, to explore the beauty, terror and oddities of the residential hotel and art school district where genteel decay meets urban birding. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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