Updated Aug. 5, 2026 at 12:45 p.m.
Hundreds of residents crowd the cramped sidewalk of West 8th Street, outside the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles every Saturday morning.
They gather to collect free food from “Groceries for our Neighbors,” a collaborative food distribution project between the church and Urban Partners L.A. to provide low-income, unhoused and senior community members with free access to essential weekly groceries.
For over 32 years, Urban Partners has distributed free food at the Koreatown church, averaging more than 30,000 pounds each Saturday. But as Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have become more common, the church volunteers are forced to find new ways to protect the people in line.
Members of the congregation spend a few hours standing at the end of the block, on either side of the church, to watch for suspicious vehicles and individuals who might pose a threat to those in line.
“If it gives us 30 seconds’ worth of notice, that’s enough time to announce what’s happening to the line, and let people either scatter or enter the church and have sanctuary,” Urban Partners L.A. board member Joshua “Jolly” Hollamon said.
Many residents are afraid to stand outside in line for food distributions, Hollamon said.
Prior to the Trump administration’s unpredictable pattern of immigration raids, people would line up at 9 p.m. on Friday night outside the church so they could be first in line when the doors opened at 6 a.m., Hollamon said.
“They used to line up right outside the church and all the way down around the corner to another block,” Jolly Hollamon said, who is also national co-organizer for Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East.
Despite the political climate, volunteers maintain a welcoming setting.
As patrons enter the church, familiar faces greet them with smiles and hugs, as volunteers spend their Saturdays passing out groceries.
One patron has waited in line almost every week since 2020. According to organizers, the need for the program was at an all-time high during the pandemic.
People leave the church with overflowing carts of fresh produce, dairy, grain and canned goods, provided through the LA Regional Food Bank and other local partners. Some volunteers recount how their own families relied on the program for weekly groceries, inspiring them to give back.
“I think if we had stopped the distribution program due to the ICE raids, it would have been worse for our community and the folks who depend on the food distribution programs,” Lay Minister Antoinette Hollamon said, who is also Jolly Hollamon’s partner.
Church officials put out a call to the First Unitarian community, asking whether anyone would be willing to volunteer on Saturdays for a weekly ICE patrol. Members of the activist church eagerly signed up to protect their community.
As immigration raids continue to disparage immigrant and low-income communities throughout the region, Jolly and others at the First Unitarian Church are committed to finding new ways to help.
Antoinette Hollamon explained that the church now makes sure its front gate is closed at all times, and that a volunteer stands guard and lets people into the church to ensure they do not let police or ICE in.
“We’ve had people living in our building, and we have done so much to push off ICE arrests,” Antoinette Hollamon said. “Part of that is to keep people safe inside of our building, as well as not answer to law enforcement trying to come inside.”
The church, on the advice of immigration lawyers, also posted numerous signs around the property prohibiting firearms on the premises and stating that it is private property to discourage law enforcement from entering.
Jolly Hollamon cautioned against making sweeping changes to the church’s programs that serve a largely non-English-speaking population.
“What they know is the schedule,” Jolly Hollamon said. “What they know is that this is where the food has been every Saturday for the last five years that they’ve lived here.”
Quiet justice
Koreatown is highly diverse and home to wards of bustling immigrant communities. This small enclave is a predominantly Latino community, with one of the highest concentrations of Koreans in the United States, according to Census Reporter.
For nearly 150 years, the First Unitarian Church of LA has woven civic activism into religious life. That work is not confined to protecting the congregation, but also showing up for them and creating community.
All of the programs were founded because someone wanted to find a way to give back to the community, Antoinette Hollamon said. “That is a sort of quiet justice.”
The congregation decided to become a lay-led church in 2017, Choir Director Nathan Fratzke said. First Unitarian Church of LA is run by committees of congregants.
As a lay-led church, all decisions within the congregation are community decisions. “The congregation decides what kind of work we’re doing and what’s really important to us,” Antoinette Hollamon said.
Unitarian Universalist churches do not subscribe to a specific faith. Instead, their church doors are open to people of all religious backgrounds who agree to their system of seven principles.
“We share a belief system centered on love,” Antoinette Hollamon said. “You can be Jewish, Muslim, Christian or an atheist. We just want people who are looking to do good work in the world.”
Maintain our joy
Originally from a small town in Iowa, Fratzke has been the church’s choir director for eight years and has been integral to what he calls “creating joy” in the congregation.
“In addition to all of the activism and the resistance, I think maintaining your joy and living as authentically as you can amidst all of the turmoil, all of the chaos, all of the oppression that exists, I think that is one of the most important things we can do during this time,” Fratzke said.
He recalled a time earlier this year when six people “were abducted right in front of the church building, in the span of a week,” and how the fear has really shaken the community.
“We are trying to build a space for marginalized people and make sure that this is a sanctuary and safe for them,” Fratzke said. “In the midst of all of the chaos, I think one of the things this administration does not want us to do is maintain our joy and maintain the things that we love to do. They wield fear through their own fear.”
Founded in 1877 by American abolitionist and suffragist Caroline Severance, the Koreatown congregation has built a legacy of challenging injustice, specifically immigration injustice. In the 1980s, the First Unitarian Church of LA became the first church in LA to publicly announce it would offer sanctuary to Central American refugees, according to a 1987 LA Times feature on the church.
“We’re a church with a rich history, and I think that if the government wanted to go after people, they could find us pretty easily and very quickly,” Antoinette Hollamon said. “So we decided to continue the work of being a sanctuary church.”
While the sanctuary is a product of a different era, the church continues to care for its congregants and the surrounding community.
The food distribution program was even motivated through activism.
During the 1992 L.A. unrest, a group of church members collaborated to address food insecurity, and that program has been maintained to this day.
Antoinette Hollamon hopes that over the next decade, the church can continue to serve as a community space, “where people trust us.”
“As our community grows and changes over the next decade,” they said, “we want to be there, and we want to provide space, care and support for whatever the community needs.”
