Organizers of the annual Leimert Park Juneteenth Festival in South Los Angeles have announced they are canceling the celebration until next year, citing costs and safety concerns.
The announcement was posted on the festival’s website on Monday, with organisers saying they had been unable to raise enough funds to safely hold a large-scale celebration.
“Since assuming full responsibility for the festival’s production and logistics in 2020, we have all witnessed incredible growth, including attendance of over 50,000 people last year and 800,000 views of the livestream on Amazon Prime,” the statement read. “However, increased permitting costs, logistical expenses and required safety measures have exceeded our current budget.”
A poster on the festival’s Instagram account said costs like insurance, city permits and security had increased from last year.
Alfredo Tregano, producer and executive director of the festival, confirmed to The Times that organizers were told they needed to move the live entertainment stage out of the area as a safety precaution. He said they considered moving the stage to Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, but that would have taken time to negotiate an agreement with the landowner and would have simply increased the size of the event.
The festival simply outgrew its event space, Tregano said.
The cancellation of the event came two weeks before thousands were scheduled to gather at Leimert Park to celebrate Black history, culture and Juneteenth, a U.S. holiday that falls on June 19 and marks the end of slavery in Galveston, Texas, in 1865 when enslaved Black people were given emancipation.
In the past, the free block party event, which was started by Texas native Jonathan Leonard after moving to Los Angeles in 1949, long before Juneteenth became an official holiday in 2021, has included stage performances, food trucks and Black-owned businesses selling goods such as jewelry and clothing.
Organizers said in a statement that the event’s vendor marketplace generated more than $1 million in sales.
“It is one of the largest Black community events in Los Angeles, second only to Taste of Soul,” the statement read. “The festival is a labor of love driven by a deep commitment to our community and culture.”
But the event’s size has also raised safety concerns. Last year, organizers were forced to end it early after reports of gunfire caused dozens of people to panic and flee just before the Grammy-winning R&B singer was set to perform. Police said at the time they found no evidence of a shooting. Authorities also responded to reports of a fight and robbery at a nearby McDonald’s, where a small crowd tried to pry open the cash register, much of which was filmed on cellphones and posted to social media.
Tregano stressed that this year’s organizers faced the expense of extensive fencing and sufficient security personnel to manage crowd sizes. Preparing the site would have required about a week of road closures, he said. Organizers were unsure whether they could put on a festival that was safe as well as a positive experience for attendees, he said.
“When I say ‘due to safety concerns,’ I mean it from that perspective,” he said. “It’s not that people are unsafe or that there’s an imminent threat.”
Torregano said the decision to cancel was also based on the impact such a large event would have on nearby residents, and he hopes to have the issue resolved by next year.
“Our commitment to providing a high-quality, safe festival experience requires this difficult decision,” organizers said in a statement. “We refuse to compromise the integrity and spirit of Juneteenth by giving our community something less than what they deserve.”
Tregano said that although the event has been postponed until next year, he hopes people will gather informally at Leimert Park to celebrate the holiday.