Partamian described the event as an effort to unite communities through art while recognizing the city’s layered history.

“Glendale Art Show is an idea that brings different cultures together,” he said. “It’s not only an art showcase. It is bringing artists from different angles of the world.”

The festival itself grew out of a promise. After hosting the Armenian Gata Band at a concert two years ago, Partamian said he committed to organizing a larger, public event when the group returned. That vision ultimately became a street festival supported by the Glendale Arts and Culture Commission and in association with the Glendale Sister City Program.

Despite gusty winds that at times disrupted displays, the turnout remained steady, with crowds moving between booths, music and performances throughout the day.

Culture on display — and in motion

What stood out most wasn’t just what people saw — it was what they joined.

Dozens of attendees stepped into traditional Armenian line dances as live music filled Orange Street. Many participants regularly take classes to learn the dances — part of a broader effort to preserve cultural traditions within Glendale’s large Armenian community.

Young children, arms stretched wide, hopped to keep pace with the rhythm, occasionally missing a step but quickly finding it again.

Nearby, older men — some with bellies jutting forward — linked arms and moved in unison through the Kochari, a staple of Armenian folk dance known for its strength and communal energy. Women of all ages formed their own lines, adding personal flair to the movement as the beat of the music echoed through the street.

The dancing blurred the line between performer and audience, turning the festival into something participatory — a shared expression of culture rather than a staged one.

Music from the visiting Gata Band underscored that connection, reinforcing what organizers described as a commitment to authenticity while also making room for broader representation.

City leaders back a growing arts scene

Glendale City Councilmember Ara Najarian echoed that message, praising the event as a reflection of community strength.

“We’re rich because of all of you, because of all of your culture, your creativity, your artistic endeavors,” Najarian said, adding that the city wants to see more cultural programming like it.

Both organizers and artists are already pushing for expansion. What began as a planned annual event may soon double in frequency.

“Almost every artist … is asking me to do it twice a year,” Partamian said.

He confirmed a second festival is now being considered for October, potentially alongside the Armenian Wine and Spirits Festival, another large cultural event that draws international participation.

A city shaped by waves of newcomers

Partamian described Glendale as “the melting pot that never melts,” pointing to decades of migration that have shaped the city’s identity.

“Every 20, 30 years, we have newcomers,” he said. “Each will stay fixed to their roots … but the beauty is that all of us together represent Glendale.”

That observation aligns with broader demographic trends. Glendale has long been known for its Armenian American population, but recent years have also seen growth among Asian communities, including Korean and Japanese residents. Much of that increase has been tied in part to programs within the Glendale Unified School District, where dual-language immersion programs have attracted families seeking multilingual education.

The result is a city where cultural identity is both preserved and continuously redefined.

Inclusion as a deliberate goal

Partamian said future festivals will aim to reflect that full spectrum more clearly, with plans to include Armenian, Mexican, Korean and Filipino performers in upcoming events.

“We all belong to the city of Glendale,” he said. “Regardless of where you came from … we are all Glendalians.”

That sense of belonging — and the effort to make it visible — is what organizers say will define the future of the Glendale Art Show.

Because in a city where cultures don’t disappear but instead stand side by side, inclusion isn’t automatic. It has to be built — one event, one performance and one shared space at a time.

This year’s broadcast features a virtual journey through Armenia, offering viewers a vivid look at historic landmarks, rich traditions, and everyday life. The special is hosted and reported by the talented, long-time FOX 11 anchor and personality Araksya Karapetyan.

The Armenian travelogue at the beginning of the FOX 11 Armenian Heritage special highlights Armenia’s ancient monasteries, welcoming streets, and a culture built on resilience. It also shows how affordable food and drink, street safety, and deep hospitality make Armenia an inviting destination for travelers.

“This special really opens a window into Armenia,” says Karapetyan. “You see the history, the beauty, the culture, and you realize how accessible and welcoming it is for anyone thinking about going.”

The special includes an update on the Armenian American Museum in Glendale, a landmark cultural project designed to celebrate Armenian heritage and serve as a global hub for education and community. The museum’s design emphasizes connection, identity, and shared history, with architects and builders working to create a space that reflects both tradition and modern vision.

“This museum is about preserving who we are and sharing it with future generations,” Karapetyan says. “It’s a place that connects our past with what comes next.”

Viewers will also meet Tro Khayalian, a mechanic turned artist who transforms scrap metal and discarded car parts into striking works of art. His creations blend Armenian identity with elements of pop culture, turning industrial materials into symbols of pride and storytelling.

Another featured voice is Dr. Andre Panossian, a Los Angeles-based, board-certified plastic surgeon who leads humanitarian missions to Armenia. Specializing in pediatric reconstructive surgery, including cleft lip and palate repair, he works with organizations like Mending Kids to provide life-changing care to children in need.

The special also highlights the new TUMO Center in Los Angeles. Originally founded in Armenia, TUMO has grown into a global education model focused on technology and creative learning. The program offers young people hands-on training in fields like animation, filmmaking, and coding, combining self-directed learning with mentorship in a model now replicated around the world.

As part of the celebration, Karapetyan welcomed the Gevorgian Dance Academy to Good Day L.A., FOX 11’s eight-hour morning show she co-anchors, for a live performance that brought traditional Armenian dance to large morning audiences across Southern California and beyond.

Good Day L.A. also featured Armenian American basketball player Gary Chivichyan, who made history as the first Armenian drafted into the NBA G League. Known for his scoring ability and international play, Chivichyan continues to build a professional career while representing Armenian athletes on a broader stage.

Karapetyan, a long-time voice for the community, shared her pride in the month-long celebration. She says she was extremely pleased that, for the first time this year, she was able to take her production team and shoot the special on location at the Armenian American Museum.

“This is more than a broadcast. It is a chance to share who we are with the world,” she says. “All month long, we’re highlighting our music, our food, our art, and the strength of more than one million Armenians in California.”

“I’m also incredibly proud of the team behind this,” she added. “From our newsroom to our creative services department, our videographers, editors, and the entire FOX 11 management team, this was a true group effort to bring these stories to life.”

FOX 11’s Armenian Heritage Month special continues to connect audiences across Los Angeles and beyond, offering a meaningful look at a culture rooted in history and alive in the present.

The special will stream regularly on FOX 11’s website at https://www.FOXla.com/live and on the FOX Local Los Angeles app.

Faced with his own deadline to either double down or stand down, Trump announced a proposed two-week ceasefire late Tuesday, conditioned on Iran’s “complete, immediate, and safe opening” of the Strait of Hormuz. In a social media post, he claimed the United States had “already met and exceeded all Military objectives” and was moving toward what he described as a “definitive Agreement concerning long-term peace with Iran, and peace in the Middle East.”

The shift in tone comes after earlier warnings of potential strikes on Iranian infrastructure — including power plants and bridges — rhetoric that had raised fears of imminent escalation.

But for many with lived experience of war and displacement, the reality on the ground is far more human — and far more urgent.

I’ve spent the last 25 years as a journalist. Before that, I lived through a revolution and a war. And what I’m seeing unfold now feels familiar.

If an attack is coming — and all signs suggest it may — then millions of ordinary Iranians are likely doing what we once did: gathering what they can carry, piling into cars, and trying to get as far away as possible from anything that could become a target. Military installations. Government buildings. Bridges. Power plants.

This is how civilians survive war. Not through politics or ideology, but through instinct.

Recent reporting from international outlets, including BBC Persian and regional analysts, indicates diplomacy between Iran and Western powers has deteriorated sharply. The strategic Strait of Hormuz, a critical global oil route, remains under Iranian control, raising fears of broader economic and military fallout if conflict escalates.

Iranian state-linked messaging has reportedly encouraged civilians to gather near infrastructure sites — including bridges and power plants — in what appears to be an attempt to deter potential strikes. Videos circulating online show groups forming human chains around key locations.

Whether those calls are followed widely is unclear. What is clear is this: if strikes happen, it will not be governments that absorb the consequences first. It will be people.

And yet, even as the risk of war grows, so does something else — confusion.

Information coming out of Iran remains limited and tightly controlled. What does emerge is often delayed, filtered or contradicted by competing narratives. Between state propaganda, foreign media framing and the rapid spread of misinformation online, it has become nearly impossible to fully understand what is happening in real time.

This is not new. It is the reality of modern conflict.

But what is often missing from the conversation is nuance.

Iran is not a monolith. Its population of roughly 90 million people is made up of diverse ethnic and religious communities — including Persians, Armenians, Kurds, Baluchis and others — all living under a government that has held power for more than four decades.

To reduce that complexity into a binary choice — destroy or don’t destroy — is not only inaccurate. It is dangerous.

There is also a deeper, more uncomfortable truth that many in the Iranian diaspora are grappling with right now: multiple realities can exist at once.

There is a long-standing desire among many Iranians to see the current regime come to an end, shaped by decades of repression, violence and control. At the same time, there is fear — real and immediate — about what war would mean for the people inside the country.

Those truths are not mutually exclusive.

They coexist in tension, in conversation and, often, in conflict within families and communities.

And while governments posture and threaten, it is worth asking a more difficult question: what does accountability look like when power — on all sides — is exercised without regard for civilian life?

Because when rhetoric escalates to the point where the destruction of infrastructure is openly discussed, the consequences are not abstract. They are measured in lives disrupted, families displaced and futures erased.

The U.S. has evacuated personnel from embassies in parts of the region. Iranian officials have warned of retaliatory actions that could disrupt global energy supplies for years.

The stakes are clear.

But what is less clear — and often overlooked — is who gets to decide what happens next.

For those watching from afar, especially from the safety of the United States, there is a temptation to reduce this moment into opinion, into certainty, into declarations about what should or shouldn’t happen.

But the reality is: we are not the ones who will live with the consequences.

The people inside Iran will.

And they deserve more than narratives shaped by propaganda — from any side.

They deserve to be seen in their full humanity.

They deserve to be heard.

And at the very least, they deserve a conversation that acknowledges the complexity of their reality — not one that erases it.

Because this is not a simple story.

It never has been.

But for those who have lived under the Iranian government, these images and messages are familiar.

I’ve seen this before. I grew up under the regime and the was witness to the tactics used to control public perception. The tools may be new, but the messaging is not.

In recent weeks, fabricated and AI-generated videos tied to the conflict — including viral “Lego-style” animations — have spread widely online. Some clips mix humor with political messaging, while others lean into more emotional or ideological themes.

News organizations including the Associated Press have documented how AI-generated war content, including fake battle scenes and manipulated footage, has reached millions of viewers, often blurring the line between reality and fiction.

Messaging designed for Americans

Many of the viral videos contain distinctly American cultural references — cues that suggest the content is not intended for audiences inside Iran, but rather for viewers in the United States.

To those familiar with both cultures, that detail stands out.

These are not references that land with people inside Iran. They require a deep understanding of American culture, media and politics. That tells us who this is for.

Researchers have found that influence campaigns linked to Iran often tailor messaging to Western audiences, sometimes using accounts that mimic local voices to make the content more persuasive.

The effect is subtle but powerful — content that feels native to American audiences while advancing a specific geopolitical narrative.

A warning shaped by experience

For members of the Iranian diaspora, the spread of this content carries a deeper concern.

Sharing and amplifying these videos — even casually — can contribute to a broader propaganda ecosystem, one that often obscures the realities of life under the Iranian government.

This is a regime that has imprisoned writers, executed dissidents and violently suppressed women for decades. That context gets lost when people treat these videos as entertainment.

Human rights organizations have long documented widespread repression in Iran, including crackdowns on protests, restrictions on free speech and punishment for those who challenge state authority.

Those realities, many say, are often absent from the viral content circulating online.

Echoes of past propaganda

For those with lived or inherited experience of Iran’s modern history, the messaging also echoes earlier campaigns.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the government used imagery, music and storytelling to frame the conflict as both patriotic and spiritual — encouraging young people to see sacrifice as honorable and necessary. Mother would send their boys to war — some as young as 12 years old.

Some of today’s AI-generated videos appear to draw from those same themes.

A recent clip circulating online featured Farsi-language music and imagery of families sending loved ones to war — a shift from earlier satirical content toward something more emotionally charged.

That’s not random. That’s how you begin to prepare a population — by shaping how they see sacrifice, how they see war.

The role of social media

Experts say artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever to produce and distribute persuasive content at scale.

The speed and volume of these posts can overwhelm efforts to verify them, allowing misinformation to spread rapidly across platforms.

Even users who recognize the content as fake can still contribute to its reach by sharing or engaging with it.

Every share matters. Whether it’s coming from the U.S. or Iran, once we amplify it, we’re part of how it spreads.

A battle over perception

Analysts say the conflict has become as much about narrative as it is about military outcomes.

Who controls the story — and how it is told — can shape public opinion far beyond the region.

For those with lived experience of Iran’s political system, that battle is deeply personal.

This isn’t abstract for us. We know what this government is capable of. We’ve seen how it uses messaging, how it uses fear, how it uses belief.

As AI-generated content continues to flood social media, that perspective offers a reminder: behind every viral video is not just a message, but a broader effort to influence how the world understands a conflict — and the people at the center of it.

Waving American and Iranian flags, demonstrators filled the lawn near the White House, chanting and holding signs as they called for an end to Iran’s current system of government. Some attendees pointed to exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi as a possible transitional figure, while others focused more broadly on the prospect of a democratic future.

The rally drew Iranians from across the United States, including more than a dozen from Los Angeles and South Florida, many of whom documented the event through photos and video they shared with the Inclusive Voices Project.

But the gathering drew some criticism.

Just beyond the main crowd, counter-protesters held signs reading “No War” and “Protect Americans,” reflecting opposition to U.S. involvement in the conflict. At one point, tensions escalated when a man confronted rallygoers, shouting at them over their support for the war.

The moment underscored a broader divide — not only among those gathered in Washington, but across the country, where public opinion on the conflict remains split.

In coverage following the rally, many headlines described the demonstration as one of “Iranians supporting war.”

But that characterization does not fully capture the message expressed by many in attendance, who framed their presence as support for regime change, freedom and regime change in Iran — even as they backed military action as a means to that end.

History shows how a group is portrayed in those moments carries weight.

Iranians we spoke to who asked for anonymity say framing a complex demonstration primarily through the lens of war risks reducing an entire community to a single, and often misleading, narrative — one that can suggest brutality or blind support for violence, rather than the political and personal motivations driving many of those who showed up.

For many in the crowd, this was not simply about war. It was about what they see as the possibility — however uncertain — of change in the country they still call home.

The crowd quickly grew from hundreds into the thousands, spilling into nearby Bluff Park and Bixby Park, as demonstrators chanted, banged drums and carried signs reading “No kings,” “ICE out” and “Impeach the mad king.”

Participants said they were driven by a range of concerns, including immigration enforcement, the ongoing conflict involving Iran and broader civil rights issues.

“We’re going to send a message to Trump that we don’t like what he’s doing. We hate what he’s doing. He’s ruining the country,” protester Ruth Chao told Long Beach Post News.

Others said recent immigration raids were a key reason they showed up, expressing concern about people being detained in their communities.

The demonstrations in Long Beach mirrored similar scenes across the country. In Washington, D.C., crowds marched past the Lincoln Memorial toward the National Mall, while in New York City, civil liberties advocates spoke out against the administration’s actions.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called Trump the nation’s “Bully in Chief” during a news conference, warning against what she described as efforts to discourage public protest.

“They want us all to be afraid,” she said, according to Long Beach Post News. “But they are wrong — dead wrong.”

The White House pushed back on the demonstrations. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed the rallies as being driven by “leftist funding networks” with little genuine public support, adding that coverage was amplified by the media rather than widespread backing.

Organizers, however, say the movement continues to grow. More than 3,100 events were registered across all 50 states, with projections that participation could reach into the millions, potentially making it one of the largest coordinated protest efforts in U.S. history.

They point to expanding turnout beyond major cities, with increased participation reported in suburban and rural areas, including traditionally conservative states.

The movement has also extended internationally. Demonstrations were reported across Europe, including in Paris, London and Rome, where protesters raised concerns about war, far-right politics and human rights.

Back in Long Beach, the energy remained steady throughout the afternoon, with marchers filling downtown streets and continuing chants as they moved through the city.

For many, the message was simple: show up, be counted and make their voices heard.

At 78, the lifelong Glendale resident said she could have stayed home. Instead, she joined hundreds of others at a “No Kings” protest aimed at President Donald Trump and his supporters.

“Oh, protesting Trump. All Republicans who support Trump,” Kent said matter-of-factly, when asked why she came out.

For Kent, activism is nothing new. She said she has spent much of her life speaking out, though not always as frequently in recent years. Still, she described this moment as different — and urgent.

“I’ve been protesting for a long time. Various places,” she said. “Not so much anymore, but yeah — this is essential.”

The demonstration in Glendale was part of a broader wave of coordinated protests that drew millions across the United States and Europe, according to organizers. For Kent, that scale is part of the point.

“When people come out in the millions, then even the corporate news media pays attention,” she said. “They mention it.”

But her focus, she said, is not just on the present — it’s on the future.

“My mind just jumps to the people who are young right now,” Kent said. “They’re growing up with this, and have their future like this, not knowing what it was like to have things look a bit hopeful like in the 1960s.”

Kent came of age during a period defined by mass protests, civil rights struggles and opposition to the Vietnam War. She said today’s political climate feels even more alarming.

“It just seems much, much worse,” she said. “We were horrified back then with the war in Vietnam and everything, but this Iran war — and everything the orange monster is doing — every day there’s a new horror in this nightmare.”

Despite the heat and her limited mobility, Kent remained on the sidewalk, surrounded by younger demonstrators holding signs and chanting. She said their presence — and their anger — is understandable.

“The younger generation is very angry at what is going on,” she said. “And they should be.”

Kent acknowledged that others have taken even greater risks in protest, pointing to actress and activist Jane Fonda.

“She puts me to shame,” Kent said with a small laugh. “She’s out there getting arrested. I’ve never done that. She’s got more guts than I have.”

Still, Kent’s presence — standing for hours with a cane under the sun — reflected what she described as a simple but necessary act: showing up.

For those who feel their voice or vote does not matter, she said, participation is critical.

As the protest continued around her, Kent stayed in place, one of many but also a reminder of the generations that have marched before — and why, she believes, people must keep doing it.

In Glendale, protesters lined sidewalks along Glendale Avenue and Broadway, waving signs, chanting and speaking with passersby as temperatures climbed. Participants ranged from young families to older residents, many standing for hours to make their voices heard.

The demonstrations are part of a broader grassroots movement that has drawn millions in recent months. Organizers say turnout has steadily grown, with participation reaching into the millions nationwide during previous rounds of protests.

Among those speaking out was the Rev. Julie Davis, who described her upbringing in a conservative evangelical household and said her political awakening came later in life.

“I wasn’t prepared at school, home or church for any of this,” Davis said. “It took a long time to root in me.”

Addressing the crowd, she framed the protest as both a political and moral stand.

“When you come for our city, love and defiance grow,” Davis said. “When you come for our democracy, love and defiance grow. Every time you try to push us down, we will stand up and push back.”

Others echoed similar sentiments, emphasizing civic responsibility and solidarity.

“We’ve got to stand up for what’s right,” said Heather who was there with her grand daughter 6 month old Ellie, who traveled from nearby Burbank. “A lot of people don’t have that chance, so we are very fortunate.”

For Tracy Sosa, a LAUSD teacher, the protest was also about education policy. She said recent federal actions have had direct consequences in classrooms.

“It’s affecting special education programs. It’s affecting the money that we get. It’s affecting how we’re able to do our jobs,” Sosa said. “It’s affecting teachers, but mostly it’s affecting students.”

She added that government priorities should be redirected. “Money isn’t where it should be. It should be with kids in a classroom and protecting their rights,” she said.

While organizers describe the demonstrations as a reflection of widespread public concern, the White House has dismissed the movement. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson characterized the protests as driven by “leftist funding networks” and lacking broad support.

Still, for many in Glendale, the turnout itself was a source of reassurance.

“There are lots of seniors here who came on their own,” one attendee said. “People out in the sun, even if they have trouble with mobility — that says something.”

A woman who brought her 93-year-old grandmother said, the gatherings serve as a reminder that they are not alone.

“I think it’s important that we don’t just sit at home and do nothing,” another protester said. “It’s nice to be around like-minded people.”

As the crowd slowly thinned into the afternoon, many lingered — continuing conversations, holding signs and signaling what they say is an ongoing commitment to speak out.

But behind the professional detachedness of a veteran reporter lies a narrative that remained unwritten for forty years. With the release of his debut novel, Letters to Barbra, Chaderjian is finally turning the lens inward. He is stepping away from the 24-hour news cycle to confront a “thorny history” that stretches from the bomb-damaged streets of 1970s Beirut to the sun-drenched, lonely vineyards of Fresno, California.

A lifeline in the rubble

The story begins in Lebanon. During the height of the Lebanese Civil War, a young Armenian boy named Adam Terzian—Chaderjian’s fictional proxy—found himself trapped in the literal and metaphorical basements of history. As mortars fell and the world outside disintegrated into sectarian violence, Adam sought a connection to a world that was stable, beautiful, and vibrant.

He found it in the voice of a Hollywood icon. Adam began writing fan letters to Barbra Streisand.

“Streisand was more than a celebrity,” Chaderjian explains. “She was a symbol of strength. For a kid who felt powerless against the tides of war, she represented a world where your voice, your talent, and your identity mattered.”

This intersection of trauma and pop culture serves as the heartbeat of the novel. As Chaderjian’s family eventually fled the violence for the United States, the “outsider” status followed him. In Central California, the bombs were gone, but they were replaced by the quiet, heavy expectations of the Armenian-American community and the isolating struggle of a refugee trying to decode a new culture.

A cinematic approach to memory

Chaderjian’s background in cinema—he is a graduate of the prestigious USC Cinema-TV Production program—is evident in the novel’s structure. Letters to Barbra does not follow a traditional, linear path. Instead, it moves like a digital timeline, jumping between decades and continents in short, punchy chapters. It is a style that mirrors the way we process trauma and memory in the 21st century—fragmented, intense, and non-sequential.

Kirkus Reviews praised this innovative approach, noting:

“An engaging, fragmentary tale about longing and memory... capturing the nuances of the protagonist’s ambitions and emotions... the structure and themes keep the book feeling exciting and relevant.”

This “fragmentary” style is a deliberate artistic choice. It reflects the life of a journalist—someone who sees the world in clips, soundbites, and “packages.” But more deeply, it reflects the experience of the Diaspora: a life lived in pieces, scattered across the globe, forever trying to assemble a coherent whole from the wreckage of the past.

The reporter’s reckoning

The transition from objective reporter to vulnerable author was a profound shift for Chaderjian. In the newsroom, the “I” is usually forbidden. The focus is on the facts: the “who, what, where, and why.” In fiction, the focus shifts to the “how it felt.”

Chaderjian’s reporting has taken him to the world’s biggest stages. He contributed to the storytelling of titans like David Muir at ABC News and provided a global perspective on international conflicts while reporting from Doha for Al Jazeera. But none of those assignments were as daunting as looking into his own mirror.

“In the newsroom, you are trained to be a witness,” Chaderjian notes. “But in this book, I had to be the subject. I had to go back to those basements in Beirut and those lonely hallways in Fresno. It’s a different kind of bravery to report on your own soul.”

A legacy for the Diaspora

For the Armenian community, Chaderjian has been a vital link for decades. In Letters to Barbra, he tackles the weight of that heritage directly. He explores “generational trauma” and how it manifests in the modern lives of those who survived it. The book asks a difficult, universal question: How do you build a future when you are constantly tethered to a tragic past?

The answer, Chaderjian suggests, lies in the act of storytelling itself. “Writing is not just expression,” he says. “It is healing. By putting these memories on paper, you take the power back from the trauma.”

Today, Chaderjian continues to report on the front lines of the Los Angeles media market. But with this book, he has added a new title to his resume: a voice for the displaced and a chronicler of the human spirit’s refusal to be broken.

The letters have finally been sent. And the world is finally reading them.

For many, this moment is deeply personal, shaped by decades of loss, displacement and resilience.

For Narbe Mansourian, a California teacher, coach and father, the news unfolding thousands of miles away feels close to home.

“I felt so many simultaneous emotions — relief, anger, sadness, bittersweet,” he said. “And then … what’s next?”

Recent strikes and the reported killing of top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have sparked a range of reactions around the world, from celebration to concern, particularly among those with ties to Iran.

For Narbe, those reactions are rooted in lived experience.

Born in Paris to Armenian parents, he returned to Iran as a child during a turbulent period following the Iranian Revolution and during the Iran-Iraq War.

His father, who opposed the regime, was arrested and imprisoned.

“I was about six and a half,” Narbe said. “I have vivid memories of standing in line for hours just to see him for 10 minutes behind glass.”

His father was later executed.

That loss would alter the course of his life.

After years of war and instability, his family fled Iran. By the time he was 12, he had lived on three continents, a journey shaped by survival rather than choice.

Today, as Iran faces another moment of upheaval, Narbe says the emotional response is layered and often misunderstood.

“You can feel happiness and sadness at the same time,” he said. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

That complexity reflects Iran’s modern history, marked by cycles of unrest, repression and resistance. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, waves of protests, including the Green Movement and the Mahsa Amini protests, have been met with crackdowns that have left thousands dead, imprisoned or exiled.

Despite renewed demonstrations and calls for change, including chants supporting exiled opposition figure Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former shah, meaningful regime change remains uncertain.

For those watching from abroad, that uncertainty is compounded by concern for those still living in Iran.

“We’re sitting here from a place of comfort,” Narbe said. “The real damage is happening to the people there.”

That perspective is shaped not only by what he lost, but by what he has built since.

We first met Narbe years ago in his classroom, where he spoke about his life, his father and the experiences that led him to teaching. Today, he says those experiences inform how he shows up for his students and his own children.

“I’m a walking testament that this happened,” he said. “And that it’s still happening.”

The absence of his father, he said, made him determined to be present in his own children’s lives.

“I wanted to make sure I was always there, very hands-on,” he said. “So they wouldn’t feel that loss.”

For Narbe and many like him this moment is not just about politics.

It is about memory. About family. And about the hope that whatever comes next for Iran does not come at the cost of more lives.

The event, which began in 2023, is a collaboration between the YMCA and ethnic groups across the region. Organizers say it has grown steadily each year, drawing larger and more diverse crowds.

This year, six cultural groups took part in the celebration, showcasing performances, food and art that reflect the area’s rich cultural makeup. Attendees also had the opportunity to explore arts and crafts and sample cuisine from a variety of traditions.

“We’re excited to bring the community together,” said Edith Fuentes, a board member and co-chair of the event. “You see the diversity of the attendees. We’ll have 800 to 1,000 this year. They come and go. They come and go. We have arts and crafts and different food from different ethnic groups.”

The event is free and open to the public, making it accessible to families and individuals throughout the community.

Fuentes, who helped name the event, said the goal is to highlight what makes each person unique.

“Actually, I came up with the name of the event,” Fuentes said. “We call it Celebrate YOUniqueness because each and every one of us is unique. We wanted to recognize and celebrate our diversity.”

Organizers say they hope the event will continue to grow in the coming years as more groups and community members get involved.

The YMCA has been serving communities for more than a century — including here in Glendale, where it’s been a local hub since the 1920s.

Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film had built steady recognition throughout awards season before arriving at Hollywood’s biggest night. Earlier this year, Sinners won the Golden Globe for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, an award recognizing films that make a significant cultural impact while connecting with audiences in theaters.

During the Golden Globes acceptance speech, Coogler credited audiences for helping propel the film’s success.

“I just want to thank the audience for showing up,” Coogler said.

The film’s momentum carried into the Academy Awards, where Sinners secured multiple wins across categories, including a performance win for Michael B. Jordan. The film also made history behind the camera, with its cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw becoming the first woman of color to win in the category — a milestone moment that highlighted the film’s broader recognition across the industry.

In remarks following the win, the Arkapaw said she hoped the moment would inspire the next generation.

“A lot of little girls that look like me will sleep really well tonight because they’ll want to become cinematographers,” she said. “And I know that.”

The film’s journey through the awards season was fueled in part by its ensemble cast, which includes Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld and Omar Miller.

Miller spoke to The Inclusive Voices Project when the film was first released and said the filmmakers were deliberate about how the movie was presented to audiences.

“You saw the blueprint of the youth and the cultural diversity all over the film and all over the film’s marketing,” Miller said in an interview with The Inclusive Voices Project. “They understood that if people leave the theater with their chest up and their chin held high and proud about the movie, they will become ambassadors and create a groundswell of support.”

The story behind Sinners also draws from Coogler’s personal history. The director has said the film was partly inspired by stories he heard growing up about his uncle’s experiences in the American South — memories that helped shape the emotional core of the film.

Producer Sev Ohanian brings a similar perspective to the project. Ohanian was born to an Armenian family that fled Iran before immigrating to the United States, and many of the films he has produced explore themes of family, identity and connection.

Before producing Sinners, Ohanian worked on several projects that examined relationships and cultural identity, including Fruitvale Station, Searching and Missing. In earlier conversations with The Inclusive Voices Project, Ohanian said those themes often stem from his own experience growing up in an immigrant household exploring topics layers of disconnection between immigrant parents and Americanized kids

“It almost feels like these movies are not in some way — not to rectify things — but in some way to understand, said Ohanian.

The film’s success was celebrated not only in Hollywood but also among film communities watching the ceremony. In Glendale, members of the Armenian Film Society gathered to watch the awards together, including professional film editor Yvette Amirian.

“Of course, selfishly, we were all rooting for Sev, our friend,” Amirian said. “And I’m just very excited for them to have gotten to experience this, and I’m sure it’ll be the first of many, many to come.”

Actor and dancer Paul Karmiryan, who was also watching with the group, said the film’s achievements throughout the awards season were significant.

“Look, it’s hard to have 16 nominations. It’s hard to live up to that,” Karmiryan said. “But four wins is no joke.”

Despite not taking home the Best Picture award, Sinners’ record nominations and multiple wins marked a significant moment for the film and its creative team. Industry observers say the film’s success reflects growing recognition for stories that draw from diverse experiences and perspectives.

For many involved with the film, the night was ultimately about celebrating storytelling and the audiences who supported it throughout the year.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — As Hollywood gathers for the Academy Awards, Sinners arrives on Oscar night following a months-long awards season run that has combined strong critical recognition with commercial success at the box office.

Directed by Ryan Coogler, the film has emerged as one of the most visible releases of the year, earning honors across major awards ceremonies and critics groups while drawing audiences to theaters nationwide.

The film’s awards-season momentum accelerated earlier this year when Sinners won the Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award at the Golden Globe Awards, a category recognizing films that have made a significant cultural and commercial impact.

Accepting the award, Coogler pointed to the audience response as central to the film’s success.

“We made this film for audiences to experience together in theaters,” Coogler said during the Golden Globes acceptance speech. “To see people show up, bring their families and share this story with each other means everything to us.”

Beyond the Golden Globes, Sinners has collected a range of nominations and wins throughout the awards season. The film led nominations at the Critics Choice Awards, where it earned honors including recognition for its ensemble and screenplay. It also received awards and nominations from critics organizations including the Boston Society of Film Critics, San Diego Film Critics Society and other regional critics groups that often help shape the awards conversation.

The film also earned recognition at the Gotham Awards, where its ensemble cast was honored, and received numerous nominations from the Black Reel Awards, highlighting its performances and production achievements.

Together, those honors helped propel the film into the center of the awards-season conversation leading into the Academy Awards.

Produced through Proximity Media, the film features an ensemble cast that includes Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld and Omar Miller. Observers across the industry have noted the film’s ability to connect with audiences, both through its storytelling and the visibility of its cast and creative team.

Miller, speaking to The Inclusive Voices Project, said the filmmakers were intentional about how the film was introduced to audiences.

“I think you saw the blueprint of the youth and the cultural diversity all over the film and the film’s marketing,” Miller said in an interview with The Inclusive Voices Project. “You have Sev Ohanian, who is Armenian. You have Ryan Coogler, a Black man from Oakland, and his wife, who is a Black and Asian woman from Oakland. They understood that if you show people — my people — that this is a film they can go to the theater with their chest up and their chin held high and proud about, they will become ambassadors and create a groundswell of support.”

For Coogler, the story behind Sinners also draws from personal history. He said the film was partly inspired by stories he heard growing up about his uncle in the American South. Those memories helped shape the film’s emotional foundation, grounding its broader themes in lived experience.

Producer Sev Ohanian brings a similar perspective to the project. Born to an Armenian family that fled Iran before immigrating to the United States, Ohanian has often explored themes of identity, family and cultural disconnection in his work.

Ohanian’s filmmaking career began with short comedic videos he created while in high school using his father’s home video camera. The videos, which focused on humor drawn from immigrant family life, gained attention online and helped inspire his first independent projects.

One of his earliest films explored the cultural tension between immigrant parents and their Americanized children — a theme that would continue through his later work producing films such as Fruitvale Station, Searching and Missing.

In an earlier conversation with The Inclusive Voices Project, Ohanian said many of the stories he gravitates toward stem from trying to better understand the immigrant family experience.

“We write about things we know,” Ohanian said. “As children of immigrant parents, we’re always trying to understand that relationship — where our parents came from and how those experiences shape who we are.”

Ohanian later teamed with Coogler and Zinzi Coogler to launch the production company Proximity Media. The company has produced a number of high-profile projects including Judas and the Black Messiah, Creed III and several major studio productions.

The themes that appear throughout Ohanian’s filmography — identity, belonging and family — also resonate in Sinners, which has drawn strong audience support throughout its theatrical run.

Industry analysts say the film’s box office performance, along with its recognition across awards ceremonies, reflects a broader shift in how audiences respond to films that center diverse stories and perspectives.

As the Academy Awards ceremony begins, Sinners arrives after months of recognition from critics groups and major awards organizations. Whether it adds Oscars to its growing list of honors remains to be seen, but the film’s journey through the season has already made it one of the year’s most widely discussed releases.

Soft-spoken. A little shy. More comfortable with a soccer ball at his feet than a microphone in his face.

But this summer, he’ll board a plane to Spain, one of just 22 players selected out of 150 to train overseas, carrying not just his cleats, but the hopes of his family and a growing list of supporters helping him get there.

“My name is Josiah,” he said quietly when asked to introduce himself.

He started playing soccer at 4 after watching a documentary about Cristiano Ronaldo.

“I heard about it on like TV … um, about Ronaldo,” Josiah said.

At first, it was just something fun to try. But at the beginning of 2025, something shifted and he decided to take the sport seriously.

That decision meant sacrifice.

He stopped playing for other teams. Gave up school soccer. Gave up afternoons at the park.

While his friends “get to hang out, like go to the park and play … play video games, ride their bike,” Josiah trains.

Is it worth it?

“Oh yes,” he said. “Because soccer is fun, you can get paid off of it.”

There have been setbacks. A leg injury once left him questioning everything. And when the opportunity to move up to EA2 first came, doubt crept in.

“I really didn’t think I could make it,” he said. “I had to cry for like two days … and then I decided to try it out.”

That resilience caught the attention of his coach, Leo Segundo, who has coached Josiah for less than a year.

“One of the characters that I like about Josiah is that he’s very fast. Very fast, very quick, and he’s very coachable,” Segundo said. “That’s something where I can really work with him and he can become better than what he is.”

Through Empire Club’s connection with Euro Academy in Spain, coaches from overseas host clinics and select a handful of players to train abroad. This year, two players from Segundo’s team were chosen.

“If you get looked at there … it’s like a dream come true,” Segundo said. “Europe is where the good soccer is.”

For Josiah, being selected is exciting — and heavy.

“It feels like fun, really fun … to bring back the trophies,” he said.

But at 11, he understands the pressure.

“I just have to take the pressure in and deal with it … put it in the game. To play harder.”

His father, Josiah Bruny Sr., has approached the journey differently than most parents. A longtime advocate for ownership and intellectual property through his foundation, Music Changing Lives, he has applied those same principles to his son’s athletic path, teaching him about goals, discipline and long-term vision.

“My ultimate hope is that parents learn to listen to their children,” Bruny Sr. said. “Whatever they tell me they want to try … we just did it.”

He said the journey is bigger than sports.

“You have to be a good human first,” he said. “And then you have to have the responsibility of being that athlete and the star.”

Now, as Josiah prepares for two weeks of training in Spain, there’s another reality: international travel, training fees and related expenses add up.

Family members and community supporters have launched fundraising efforts to help cover the costs of the trip. Donations are helping ensure that talent and hard work, not financial barriers, determine whether he steps onto that field overseas.

For an 11-year-old who still dreams of “a big house … a dog … and a backyard pool,” the moment feels surreal.

When he told his friends he was going to Spain, their reaction was simple.

“They said, ‘How did I do that so fast?’” he said, smiling.

His answer?

“Thanks to my dad.”

And in a few months, thanks to a community rallying behind him, Josiah Bruny Jr. will take his next step, not just playing for steak, as he jokes, but playing for something much bigger.

It is subtle, unmistakable and, for those who have lived under interrogation rooms and blindfolds, almost physical. The noise lands somewhere in the nervous system before it reaches the brain.

For Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, that ending was never accidental.

“The film began with sound,” Panahi said during a master class at the Armenian Film Society. “You hear this sound in the first 15 minutes of the film and then you don’t hear it for more than an hour until the very ending. And it had to be such a sound that when you hear it at the end, you recognize it and say, ‘Oh, he has come.’”

Panahi’s latest film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Palme d’Or, has since been nominated for two Academy Awards. But as he travels alone to promote it, navigating single-entry visas and the uncertainty in Iran, he speaks less about accolades and more about responsibility.

“I actually believe this film is a very good document of what has happened in Iran,” he said. “It testifies to the fact that the violence did not come from the people. The violence was injected into society by the state.”

During a masterclass held at the Armenian Film Society Headquarters in Glendale, he talked about how the film was made in secret. Though his formal bans on filmmaking and travel were lifted, Iran’s permit system requires scripts to be submitted for approval — and revised until they are no longer the filmmaker’s own.

“I knew that as soon as I gave that script, there is no way they’re going to give it a permit,” he said. “So I decided to continue working in the underground style.”

The production was stripped to its essentials: five or six crew members in total. They shot in deserts and enclosed spaces first, hiding cameras inside a van before attempting open city scenes. At one point, plainclothes agents raided the set. Equipment was hidden. Team members were questioned. The project paused for a month.

Altogether, the film was shot in 25 sessions.

But it is one scene — a 13-minute unbroken shot — that anchors the film’s moral center.

In it, the interrogator — blindfolded, tied to a tree — is finally visible. For much of the film, he has existed off-screen, confined inside a van, described by others. In this scene, the camera does not cut away. It does not rescue the audience with reaction shots. It stays.

“If I were to be visually just,” Panahi said, “he had to be present and the other characters had to be absent.”

The choice was deliberate. A medium shot. An open frame. No camera movement to follow the others as they enter and exit. The interrogator remains the focus.

“If I were a political filmmaker, I would have destroyed that interrogator from the beginning and, in the end, I wouldn’t have returned to him,” Panahi said. “But I consider him a human being too, and I allow him to speak.”

The scene took two nights to complete — 10 takes the first night, four or five the second. The actor, blindfolded and bound, had to sustain a performance for 13 minutes. Two or three seconds of weakness would have ruined the take. When they didn’t get the shot the first night, he wondered why.

Panahi eventually realized the problem was not technical.

“I realized I’m the problem,” he said. “Because I really didn’t know the character of the interrogator well.”

He called a friend, journalist and former political prisoner Mehdi Mahmoudian, who had spent nine and a half years in prison. Mahmoudian coached the actor, explaining how interrogators speak, how they pause, how they shift tone from minute to minute.

“The shot came together the second night,” Panahi said.

Two weeks ago, Mahmoudian was arrested again.

Panahi describes himself not as brave, but as a filmmaker who made a choice.

“I have always said that we only have two types of filmmakers in the world,” he said. “Ninety-five percent look out to see what the audience wants and then make that film. The other five percent say, ‘I will make my own film, and now it is on the audience to chase me.’”

He does not reject either category. But he is clear about where he stands.

“I consider myself a socially engaged filmmaker,” he said. “I make my films with a humanist outlook.”

That distinction matters. In a moment when anger and grief feel overwhelming — particularly after what he described as a recent “horrific massacre” in Iran — Panahi resists vengeance as narrative fuel.

“If I want to make a film about what happens today, I don’t know what topic I will pick,” he said. “Because anger, mourning and vengeance have overcome us to the point that we are not free from them yet to see clearly.”

Instead, he raises a question: What happens to the cycle of violence? Does it continue, or does someone interrupt it?

The ambiguity of the ending reflects that tension. When the sound returns, the audience must decide: Did the interrogator come back? Was he moved? Is redemption possible?

“You continue thinking about it after leaving the movie theater,” Panahi said. “Did what they do affect him? No matter how you look at it, you might get to the conclusion that even he could have been moved a bit. And you become hopeful of the future without violence.”

As an Iranian, watching the film is not an abstract exercise. It is the cold interrogation rooms. It is the blindfold pressed too tightly against the skin. It is the sound you cannot forget.

Panahi knows that sound intimately. During his own interrogations, he said, he was blindfolded and made to face a wall while answering questions from someone behind him.

“Your sense of hearing goes into overdrive,” he said. “Sound becomes the most important element.”

In “It Was Just an Accident,” sound becomes conscience.

Panahi has served prison time. He has faced 20-year bans on filmmaking, writing, travel and interviews. When those restrictions first came down, he turned inward, making films such as “This Is Not a Film” and “Taxi,” works that transformed confinement into form.

“When that happens, you become your own issue,” he said. “You return to yourself.”

But with this film, he steps back behind the camera and outward again — toward society, toward the prisoners he left behind.

“The day I was freed from prison and I looked behind me and saw those very tall walls, I thought, ‘I am out, and my friends are still inside,’” he said. “That’s when I felt a burden on my shoulders.”

The film is his attempt to lift it.

He plans to return to Iran after the Oscars. During the campaign, he said he learned of an additional one-year prison sentence and a two-year travel ban awaiting him.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), and U.S. Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, held a bicameral public forum to receive testimony on the violent tactics and disproportionate use of force by agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Rahman says she has struggled to process the violent encounter and her detention at Whipple. After spending time with other detainees, she says she is now committed to speaking out.

No officials from the Department of Homeland Security appeared at Tuesday’s forum on Capitol Hill.

Organizers said at least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, with eight additional deaths reported so far in 2026, figures that immigrant advocates say reflect a sharp escalation in enforcement and detention practices nationwide under the administration of Donald Trump.

The vigil was organized by ÓRALE (Organizing Rooted in Abolition, Liberation and Empowerment) alongside the Long Beach Justice Fund Coalition, Filipino Migrant Center, United for Economic Justice, United Cambodian Community, Long Beach Tenants Union, clergy leaders and community organizations.

Among the faith leaders present was the Rev. Dr. Antonio Gallardo, rector of St. Luke’s / San Lucas Episcopal Church in Long Beach, who described the fear that spread through immigrant congregations after Trump returned to power.

“Earlier last year when President Trump took power and spoke openly about what they were going to do, there was fear among all the congregants who would be affected,” Gallardo said. “We were surprised that they continued to come.”

Gallardo said the church responded by creating safety protocols to protect worshippers.

“We educated ourselves and learned there was a way to protect people while they were on campus,” he said. “We established gate monitors, trained people on how to interact with ICE, and created a protocol. They use walkie-talkies. We lock the gates during services. People feel protected — and our attendance has gone up.”

In an interview during the vigil, Gallardo framed immigration enforcement as a moral crisis.

“They are trying to instill fear so we stop acting. But in our faith, we commit to respecting the dignity of every human being. Right now, that dignity is being violated.”

Gallardo, himself an immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, said the escalation in deaths under ICE custody should alarm the public. In 2025, more people died in ICE custody than in any single year in the past two decades. “Think about that,” said Gallardo. “That’s cruelty.” He cited the recent release of a detained child, Liam, noting the family was reportedly sent 1,500 miles away.

“What’s the point?” Gallardo said. “It’s to make people fearful.”

Speakers emphasized that public pressure can still produce results, pointing to recent protests in Minneapolis that prompted officials to announce a pullback of certain ICE operations.

“The power is in us,” Gallardo said. “We need to keep protesting, resisting and finding ways to act.”

Organizers also stressed that participation does not require marching in the streets.

“Some people say, ‘I’m too old to protest,’ or ‘I feel unsafe,’” Gallardo said. “There are many ways to help — prayer, donating to bond funds, calling elected officials, countering misinformation, protecting those who are protesting. We need everyone.”

For many immigrants, speaking out represents a break from long-instilled survival instincts. He recalled a moment of personal reckoning.

“When President Trump took power, I thought for a second, ‘If I speak up, they could take my citizenship,’” he said. “Then I decided I’m not going to live in fear.”

Community members echoed concerns about the long-term consequences of inaction.

Janet, a Long Beach resident holding a handmade sign, said her message was simple.

“I didn’t vote for him. I don’t agree,” she said.

Ruth, another resident, said the stakes extend far beyond the present.

“What’s happening now is going to shape future generations,” she said. “If we don’t clean this up now, they’re going to have a harder time in 10 or 20 years.”

Representatives from the Filipino Migrant Center called for recognition of all lives lost.

“We want to honor everyday people who have died in ICE custody and those still enduring subhuman detention,” said Romeo, a community organizer. “My hope is that we experience healing through collective action.”

ÓRALE organizers said the vigil was intentionally slow and reflective, naming individuals often missing from public discourse, including Keith Porter, a Los Angeles resident whose death they said has been as publicized as others.

“These names need to be remembered,” said Denisse, an ÓRALE community organizer. “We want people to feel empowered to organize together and understand there are many ways to do that.”

Advocates are also urging the Long Beach City Council to strengthen the Long Beach Values Act, a policy first adopted in 2017.

Maribel, associate director of ÓRALE, outlined three demands: prohibiting the use of local resources or use of public spaces for ICE activity, banning surveillance technologies such as license plate readers and facial recognition, and establishing a private right of action allowing families to sue if the policy is violated.

“We’ve always experienced ICE persecution — families have been separated for decades,” Maribel said. “We need to be bold and demand our elected officials step up now.”

As candles burned and names were read aloud, organizers said the vigil was both a memorial and a message.

“We are instruments of light,” Gallardo said. “This government wants us to live in darkness — and we’re not supposed to do that.”

For decades, many immigrant and ethnic communities in the United States have lived under an unspoken assumption: that loyalty, assimilation, and proximity to power and whiteness offers protection.

History shows otherwise.

The backlash following a video by Dr. Mehmet Oz alleging Armenian-linked health care fraud has revealed a deeper and more destabilizing reality — not simply about Armenians, but about how quickly the category of the “model minority or “good minority” can collapse.

This is not a story about outrage. It is a story about expectation — and what happens when it fails.

What Is the “Good Minority”?

Sociologists use the term “good minority” or “model minority” to describe communities that are publicly framed as evidence that the American system works. These groups are often associated with entrepreneurship, military or civic service, political loyalty, and cultural conformity.

But embedded in that praise is a condition: belonging is provisional.

The “good minority” is not defined by identity alone, but by usefulness — whether a community reinforces dominant narratives in a given moment. When that usefulness shifts, so can perception.

Armenian Americans and Alignment

Armenian Americans occupy a particularly complex space in the U.S. racial hierarchy. Many identify as white. Many are socially conservative. Many supported President Donald Trump and his campaign promise of law-and-order governance.

For years, that alignment created a sense — spoken or unspoken — that Armenians were outside the scope of racialized suspicion that has historically applied to other immigrant communities.

The recent backlash including the Dr. Oz video has disrupted that belief.

In a matter of minutes, Armenian language, geography, and storefronts — once markers of assimilation — were suddenly interpreted as signs of otherness — and became visual shorthand for criminality — not through indictments or charges, but through implication. Identity markers stood in for evidence.

For many Armenian Americans, the shock was not just the accusation — it was the realization that alignment did not equal insulation.

Proximity to Power is Not Protection

U.S. history suggests this experience is not unique.

Japanese Americans were widely viewed as industrious and assimilated before World War II — until they were incarcerated en masse under Executive Order 9066.

Muslim Americans were celebrated as professionals and civic contributors before 9/11 — until surveillance programs treated identity as risk.

Eastern European immigrants once embraced as anti-communist allies became targets during McCarthyism.

In each case, communities believed they had “done everything right.”

In each case, the rules changed. Alignment did not translate into insulation.

Historians note that scapegoating does not require opposition. It requires expediency.

Proximity to Whiteness — and Its Limits

What is often overlooked in these moments is the role of proximity to whiteness — a status that has never been fixed, universal, or permanent.

Armenians are indigenous to the South Caucasus, a region at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Because of this geography, Armenians are often described as “Caucasian.” In the United States, however, Caucasian is not a geographic term. German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach coined the term in the late 1700s, mistakenly theorizing that people from the Caucasus represented the “ideal” human type. His classification had little basis in biology and was later discredited, but became a legal and social proxy for white.

That distinction matters.

In the early 20th century, U.S. naturalization laws limited citizenship to “free white persons,” forcing many immigrant groups to litigate their racial classification. Armenians were among those groups. Federal court decisions regarding Armenians were inconsistent, reflecting broader uncertainty about who qualified as white. Courts cited religion, perceived cultural similarity, and prevailing social attitudes — not geography — in making their determinations.

Even after Armenians were broadly classified as white for legal purposes, social perception often diverged from legal status. Armenians were frequently racialized as foreign, Eastern, Middle Eastern, or suspect — particularly during periods of geopolitical conflict involving the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, or the Soviet Union.

Sociologists emphasize that whiteness in the United States has always operated as a conditional status. Communities may be included when they are perceived as assimilated and excluded when they become useful as symbols of otherness.

In practice, whiteness in America has functioned as a gatekeeping mechanism — one that expands and contracts in response to power.

Loyalty Is Not a Shield

Proximity to whiteness can offer temporary insulation: access, credibility, and a sense of security. But history shows that insulation erodes quickly when identity becomes useful as a narrative shortcut for broader social problems.

One of the most uncomfortable truths revealed by these moments is that political loyalty does not mean protection, in some cases, it delays recognition that targeting has begun.

Civil rights historians note that scapegoating does not require opposition. It requires expediency.

In those moments, markers once associated with assimilation — language, neighborhood concentration, cultural visibility — are reinterpreted as evidence of foreignness or risk.

The “good minority” myth persists because it offers comfort. It suggests safety can be earned.

History suggests safety is conditional.

When Communities Are Used to Prove a Point

For Armenian Americans, the rupture has been especially jarring because it challenges long-held assumptions about belonging. Many believed that identification as white, political loyalty, and civic participation offered stability.

What this moment reveals is not betrayal, but structure.

Belonging in the United States has never been permanent. It has always carried conditions — some visible, many unspoken.

A community that was once invisible becomes hyper-visible — but only in the context of suspicion.

Fraud exists. Crime exists. Those facts are not in dispute.

What changes is who becomes the face of the problem.

Once that happens, distinction disappears. Individuals blur into groups. Evidence gives way to association.

The Cost of Misrecognition

For Armenian Americans, this moment has forced an uncomfortable reckoning — not only with external perception, but with internal narratives about race, belonging, and protection.

For other communities watching, the lesson is familiar.

The same framework has been applied again and again:

• Identify a real issue

• Attach it to an identity

• Frame the community as an exception that failed

• Move on when the political moment passes

Each time, the damage remains.

A Pattern Larger Than One Community

The collapse of the “good minority” is not a moral failure or a political miscalculation. It is a recurring feature of U.S. history.

Again and again, communities positioned as aligned or assimilated discover that proximity to power and proximity to whiteness are not guarantees. They are temporary arrangements — subject to withdrawal when fear, politics, or expediency demand a different narrative.

For the Inclusive Voices Project, documenting this pattern is not about assigning blame. It is about recognizing how quickly identity can be reinterpreted — and how often communities are left unprepared for the moment when belonging proves conditional.

History suggests that the most dangerous part of that collapse is not the targeting itself, but the surprise.

By the time it arrives, the frame has already shifted.

The video, filmed in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles and posted to official CMS social media accounts in late January, shows Oz standing outside buildings with Armenian-language signage, including an Armenian-owned bakery, while discussing alleged hospice and home health care fraud. In the video, Oz claims that roughly $3.5 billion in fraud has taken place in Los Angeles County and asserts—without presenting evidence in the recording—that “quite a bit of it” is run by Russian-Armenian criminal networks.

Within hours of the video’s release, Armenian American advocacy organizations, California state officials, and members of Congress condemned the remarks as racially charged, misleading, and dangerous. Both Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) filed formal civil rights complaints with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alleging that Oz’s conduct violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Allegations Made Without Evidence in Video

In the nearly four-minute video, Oz claims that a seven-fold increase in hospice providers in Los Angeles County could not have occurred “naturally” and repeatedly links the alleged fraud to “foreign influences,” specifically naming Russian-Armenian groups. He points to Armenian and Cyrillic lettering on storefronts as visual evidence of organized crime activity.

Oz did not identify specific individuals charged in the cases he referenced, nor did he provide documentation linking the businesses shown in the video to criminal activity. The Armenian bakery featured in the footage later reported a 30% drop in sales following the video’s circulation, according to Newsom’s office.

Oz and CMS did not respond to requests for comment regarding the civil rights complaints or to questions seeking substantiation for the claims made in the video.

Confirmed Fraud Oz’s Medical Record and Promotion of Unproven Products

Before entering public office, Dr. Mehmet Oz built national influence through The Dr. Oz Show, which aired for more than a decade and positioned Oz as a trusted medical authority for millions of viewers.

During that time, Oz repeatedly promoted supplements, weight-loss products, and alternative treatments that lacked scientific support, drawing criticism from medical experts and federal lawmakers. In 2014, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Oz after he endorsed so-called “miracle” weight-loss supplements that experts said were ineffective and potentially misleading. Medical researchers later found that many of the health claims made on his program were unsupported by credible evidence.

That same year, a group of physicians petitioned Columbia University, where Oz held a faculty appointment, accusing him of demonstrating “an egregious lack of integrity” by promoting treatments without adequate proof. While Columbia defended Oz’s academic freedom, the controversy cemented concerns within the medical community about his blending of entertainment, commerce, and health advice.

Public health experts again criticized Oz during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he promoted unproven treatments and amplified speculative claims at a time when medical authorities stressed evidence-based guidance. Regulators and medical organizations warned that such messaging risked undermining public trust in science and health institutions.

Critics now argue that this history is relevant to Oz’s current role overseeing Medicare and Medicaid — programs that rely on rigorous standards of evidence, neutrality, and public trust. They note that Oz’s Los Angeles video alleging Armenian-linked fraud follows a familiar pattern in which sweeping claims are presented publicly without detailed sourcing or documentation.

Confirmed Fraud — and Confirmed Enforcement

Health care fraud is a documented and ongoing problem nationwide, including in California. State and federal authorities have investigated and prosecuted hospice and home health fraud cases involving individuals of various ethnic backgrounds. According to Newsom’s office, California revoked more than 280 hospice licenses and imposed a statewide moratorium on new licenses beginning in 2022 due to fraud concerns—actions taken prior to Oz’s visit.

Law enforcement officials have confirmed that individuals involved in hospice fraud schemes in Los Angeles County have been arrested, charged, and convicted. However, state officials emphasized that investigations have focused on specific actors and organizations—not ethnic communities.

“Medical fraud is serious. No one is denying that,” said Los Angeles City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, who represents the Van Nuys area. “But you don’t investigate fraud by pointing cameras at bakeries and ethnic signage.”

Civil Rights Complaints Cite Risk of Harm

In its civil rights complaint, Newsom’s office argued that Oz’s remarks risk discouraging Armenian Americans from accessing Medicare and Medicaid services and could bias enforcement actions.

“Such racially charged and false public statements… risk chilling participation in those programs,” Newsom wrote, adding that the harm is compounded when the statements come from “the top decision-maker at CMS.”

ANCA’s complaint similarly alleges that Oz’s conduct constitutes national origin discrimination under Title VI, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs. Armenian Americans qualify as a protected class based on shared ancestry and national origin.

“This sort of ethnic scapegoating is as toxic as it is dangerous,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian, who accused Oz of staging a “theatric collective indictment of all Armenians.”

Historical Context Intensifies Reaction

The reaction to Oz’s remarks has been intensified by his personal history and longstanding geopolitical tensions. Oz is a dual U.S.-Turkish citizen and previously served in Turkey’s military. He has repeatedly declined to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide—the systematic killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923—despite its recognition by the U.S. Congress and President Biden.

Turkey continues to deny the genocide, a position that remains a source of deep trauma for Armenian communities worldwide.

“When a federal official with ties to the perpetrator nation of a genocide singles out Armenians as criminal, context matters,” said Glendale City Councilmember Elen Asatryan. “This is not tough enforcement. It is targeting.”

A Familiar Pattern in National Politics

Oz’s video also fits into a broader national pattern in which claims of fraud are paired with ethnic or immigrant scapegoating. In Minnesota, federal investigations into alleged fraud at daycare centers operated by Somali Americans led to sweeping immigration crackdowns and civil unrest, despite the fact that fraud cases involved specific individuals, not entire communities.

Civil rights advocates argue that such messaging creates an “us versus them” narrative—one that frames certain communities as inherently suspect while presenting enforcement actions as public protection.

“This is how othering works,” said Alex Galitsky, ANCA’s policy director. “You take a kernel of truth—yes, fraud exists—and inflate it into a narrative that implicates an entire people.”

Complicated Community Response

The controversy has also exposed internal divisions within the Armenian American community. Many Armenians have historically identified as white and have supported President Trump and his administration. Some social media users acknowledged that Armenian individuals have been involved in fraud schemes while still condemning Oz’s rhetoric.

“Investigate crimes, not communities,” wrote one commenter. “Fraud is committed by individuals, not bloodlines.”

Others warned that blind political loyalty can obscure how quickly proximity to whiteness dissolves when a group becomes politically convenient to target.

What Remains Undisputed

Several facts are not in dispute:

• Health care fraud exists and has been prosecuted in California.

• Individuals of Armenian descent have been charged in some fraud cases, as have individuals from many other ethnic groups.

• Dr. Oz did not present evidence linking the businesses shown in his video to criminal activity.

• Civil rights complaints have been formally filed and are under review.

• The video caused documented economic harm to at least one Armenian-owned business.

What remains unresolved is whether Oz’s conduct violated federal civil rights law—and whether the broader strategy of ethnicized enforcement rhetoric will continue.

As investigations proceed, advocates say the case serves as a reminder of a lesson repeatedly borne out in American history: when communities accept collective blame narratives directed at “others,” the circle of suspicion rarely stays fixed.

For the Inclusive Voices Project, the story is not about denying crime—or defending it—but about insisting on accuracy, accountability, and the difference between enforcement and fear.

Because two things can be true at the same time. And ignoring either comes at a cost.

It asked them to hold more than one at once.

The inaugural event—created through a landmark partnership between the USC Institute of Armenian Studies, TEDx, and TEDxYerevan—marked the first TEDx program of its kind to center Little Armenia as both a local community and a global intellectual space. Organizers described the collaboration as a deliberate bridge between diaspora and homeland, signaling that Armenian stories, ideas, and innovation do not flow in one direction but move across borders, generations, and lived realities.

“This is about claiming space,” said Dr. Shushan Karapetian from the stage. “Not waiting to be invited into global conversations, but building platforms where our complexity, our multiplicity, and our voices are the starting point—not the exception.”

The inaugural event, recognized as the first Tedx license specifically dedicated to a diaspora community through a partnership with Tedx Yerevan, brought together scholars, artists, technologists, educators, and storytellers to explore what it means to live—and create—at the intersection of cultures, disciplines, and histories.

Hosted in Los Angeles, home to one of the largest Armenian diasporas in the world, the event positioned Little Armenia as a generative center of ideas—one in active dialogue with Yerevan and the wider global Armenian experience. The theme, Hybrid Identities, felt less like an academic framework and more like a lived truth echoed across every talk.

From the opening remarks, the message was clear: Tedx Littlle Armenia is “a space to explore how multiple identities can coexist within one person, and how those layers, when embraced, become a source of creativity, resilience, and innovation. It is a celebration of a dynamic community whose strength comes not from uniformity or homogeneity, but from diversity and heterogeneity” said Dr. Karapetian, Director of the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies.

The audience itself reflected that vision. Students sat beside civic leaders. Artists beside engineers. Immigrants beside those born into diaspora. What followed was a conversation about how we enter spaces, how we design futures, how we practice care, and how communities carry us forward when institutions do not.

Again and again, speakers returned to a shared truth: identity does not need permission to exist. It emerges when space is made for it.

Speaker Highlights

Ani Adjemian
Lecturer in Law at USC Gould School of Law

Talk focus: The Power of Greeting and Belonging

Adjemian opened the program by examining how something as simple as a greeting can shape identity, safety, and belonging. Drawing from neuroscience, anthropology, and personal history, she traced how a single word – barev – became a posture for how she moves through the world. Her talk argued that belonging often begins not with credentials or status, but with intention. How we enter a room, she suggested, can quietly alter the course of a life.

Ashot Arzumanyan
Partner at SmartGateVC

Talk focus: Exponential Growth and Finding Your Superpower

A venture capitalist working at the frontier of deep tech, Arzumanyan translated startup logic into a framework for personal growth. His central idea: we systematically underestimate exponential change, even as the world accelerates around us. Success, he argued, comes from identifying your unique strength and placing it ahead of an emerging wave. His takeaway was practical and introspective—growth is not optional, but direction is a choice.

Aroussiak Gabrielian
Founding Design Principal of Foreground Design Agency

Talk focus: Designing With, Not Against, Living Systems

Designer and scholar Gabrielian challenged the audience to rethink how humans relate to land, bodies, and mortality. Using rivers, soil, breath, and decay as design systems, she argued that modern design fails when it treats life as static. Her work reframed sustainability not as preservation, but as participation—asking how humans might ethically design for transformation, including our own eventual return to the earth.

Karen Khachikyan
Co-Founder and CEO of Robin the Robot

Talk focus: Kindness As a Practiced Skill

Khachikyian, founder of a healthcare robotics company, shared how building an emotionally intelligent robot forced him to confront his own assumptions about kindness. Watching a robot model attentive presence revealed how often humans default to distraction. His talk reframed kindness not as an inherent trait, but as a discipline—one that requires discomfort, patience, and practice.

Ludvig Ispiryan
Dancer, Choreographer, and Artist Director of The Grand Academy of Ballet

Talk focus: Performance

Midway through the program, the evening shifted from words to movement. A solo dance performance—rooted in Armenian folk traditions while shaped by contemporary form—translated the theme of hybrid identity into the body itself. Trained in both classical and modern disciplines, the dancers moved between restraint and release, control and vulnerability, embodying the tension many speakers had articulated in language. The performance required no translation. It offered a reminder that identity is not only spoken or theorized, but carried through muscle memory, breath, and motion across generations and geographies. In a room filled with thinkers and storytellers, the dance stood as its own argument: that some truths about belonging are felt long before they are named.

Marie Lue Papazian
Founding CEO of TUMO Center for Creative Technologies

Talk focus: Creating Conditions for Identity to Emerge

The founder of the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies reflected on education, motherhood, and diaspora. Papazian described identity not as inherited or imposed, but as something that emerges when young people are given freedom, choice, and space to connect ideas. TUMO, she argued, works because it creates conditions where new selves can form.

Armen Derkevorkian
Co-founder and President at Signal7

Talk focus: Refusing to Choose Between Disciplines

A scientist, violinist, and tech founder, Derkevorkian traced a life spent being asked to pick one identity over another. His talk rejected that premise entirely. Rather than dividing himself, he learned to let multiple disciplines inform one another. The result, he said, was not confusion—but leadership. Hybridity, in his telling, is not a liability. It is leverage.

Sev Ohanian
Screenwriter, Producer & Founder of Proximity Media

Talk focus: Community as Creative Infrastructure

Closing the evening, Ohanian reflected on risk, storytelling, and the myth of having “nothing.” Recounting his early filmmaking years within the Armenian community, he argued that what he once believed were limitations—lack of access, resources, representation—were in fact the foundation that made his work possible. His message resonated beyond filmmaking: when marginalized communities succeed, they do not rise alone. They lift belief itself.

A Space Claimed, Not Granted

TEDxLittle Armenia created its own platform.

In a media landscape that often flattens identity or treats diaspora as an afterthought, the event insisted on complexity. It centered voices that live between worlds and showed that hybridity is not something to resolve—but something to cultivate.

For The Inclusive Voices Project, the night offered a living example of its mission: when people are seen, when space is intentionally built, voices do not need to be amplified—they rise on their own.