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posted OCT 11, 2025 11:18 PM
We encourage you to sign up for public comment at Tuesday’s city council meeting at Long Beach City Hall at 5PM, and / or attend any community protest demonstrations outside.
Long Beach City Hall 411 W Ocean Blvd, Long Beach, CA 90802
On Thurs Oct 9, The City of Long Beach issued us a cease and desist notice, threatening citation / arrest for our outdoor event scheduled Sat Oct 11 due to permitting issues. The notice stated several city departments had attempted to contact organizers multiple times, however this was only time the city ever reached out to us.
The initial notice was emailed to personal and private email addresses of several organizers and artists. These email addresses were not the contact point for the event, nor were they associated with the event or listed on the flier.
First, the city claimed we were not allowed to “solicit funds.” Our fliers and messages clearly mention the event was free. The only mention of fundraising on our site and fliers was clearly in reference to encouraging a suggested donation to an organization or group of choice, before the event.
StopICE immediately responded to the city, and after several discussions we decided move the event indoors by securing a nearby permitted venue at Toxic Toast Theater, which is just a mile away. This option was actually recommended to us by the city, both in phone call discussion and via email. The event was free, strictly alcohol and drug free per venue guidelines, and scheduled for 7pm.
On Saturday Oct 11, the City of Long Beach then contacted Toxic Toast Theater / Records stating that the event required an “inspection.” This created confusion as there were no city inspectors available on weekends. Keep in mind the city is already aware that this venue regularly hosts shows, all without incident. In fact there was just a show last weekend.
The city of Long Beach then drafted another cease and desist, this time for the venue. In this notice they also named Stopice.net Sherman Austin directly, threatening enforcement remedies unless the event was cancelled.
Obviously this came as shock to the venue, who has never experienced anything like this before from the city, until our event.
The City of Long Beach (or another agency pressuring the city *hint hint*) clearly worked overtime this week selectively targeting our event with the goal of shutting it down, even after we followed their recommendation to move the event to a permitted venue.
There were many events taking place throughout the city this weekend. Only one was closely followed, tracked and targeted.
It is highly unusual that the City of Long Beach would go far out of it’s way to selectively target a live music event, which is a typical occurrence on any day here in Long Beach, and target a known venue while there was absolutely NO threat or risk to public safety, nor were there any complaints indicating such would occur.
The fact that our event was closely followed, tracked and targeted in such a manner appears to be discriminatory and raises serious First Amendment issues.
We want to thank Toxic Toast Records for working with us to make their space available and supporting this event.
We will be organizing a new event here in LONG BEACH and will be announcing details shortly. Stay tuned.
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is intended for reporting purposes only in the interest of upholding transparency, and not intended to encourage or promote illegal activity of any kind.
This alert is marked as UNCONFIRMED. However it doesn't mean somebody didn't see something worth reporting.
UNCONFIRMED reports are intended to gather more information before being labeled CONFIRMED- which is why these comments exist as a crowd sourcing tool for
additional feedback.
UNCONFIRMED reports are intended to gather more information before being labeled CONFIRMED- which is why these comments exist as a crowd sourcing tool for
additional feedback.
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