Letters to the Editor: Neither wildfires nor ICE can take Los Angeles’ joy for good

To the editor: I can only imagine the ongoing pain of those who lost a home in Los Angeles’ fires or contact with a loved one to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. As deputy managing editor Shelby Grad writes, there can be no escape from that grief (“The aftershocks of L.A.’s summer of ICE keep coming, even as some of us move on,” Aug. 2).

But I want to share that a scenario of resilience, unity and, above all, pure, unbridled joy spread across the outdoor plaza at downtown L.A.’s Music Center on Aug. 1 for the organization’s free disco night. As City Hall towered across the street and a sparkling mirror ball spun, a couple thousand of us — all ages, shapes, sizes and ethnicities — pumped and gyrated to ‘70s favorites including “YMCA,” a song embraced by the LGTBQ+ community that President Trump so oddly seems to like, and Gloria Gaynor’s victorious “I Will Survive.”

No one has been able to deport all the joy from our beloved city. No person or thing ever will.

Zan Dubin, Santa Monica

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To the editor: It hasn’t been an easy year for Los Angeles. Yet sitting at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, the temperature perfect, no biting insects to bother me, the Hollywood sign peeking through, surrounded by people of every race and walk of life gathered to watch a performance of a musical about the most radically loving figure, led by an otherworldly talented, multiracial, largely queer cast, reminded me why we so often say “only in L.A.” and why my hometown is the greatest city on Earth (“Why ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at the Hollywood Bowl is ‘the musical theater version of the Avengers,’” July 29).

Alexis Rodriguez, North Hollywood