Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Hi there, Friend! My name is Justin Michael Ellis-Brooks: I’m a combat veteran, and undergraduate student living in Los Angeles, CA. This Saturday, May 17th 2025, my friends and I are returning to MacArthur Park—not to perform, but to provide. Our mission is not to be seen; rather, to serve those who all too often go unseen.
The first Community Care Day lit an absolute fire in my spirit. My friends and I—thanks to complete grassroots donation support—managed to raise $1,200.00. Being a combat veteran currently utilizing my education benefits to pursue my undergraduate in Accounting, I was able to contribute approximately 30% of the donation effort. That money went toward my friends and I feeding over 200 community members in MacArthur Park back in March 2025. We would also provide 100 robust hygiene kits, and 100 resource kits—complete with Narcan spray and fentanyl test strips. The success of that day wasn’t coincidence—it served as a relevant reminder of what we can accomplish in the absence of institutional support. We organized, we created a plan, and we took care of the people.
This weekend we return—sharper, stronger, more determined and more intentional.
We are slated to provide over 500 hot meals to the community. Additionally, we have purchased and assembled over 200 robust hygiene kits, all complete with harm reduction tools like fentanyl test strips. We will be distributing a limited amount of narcan spray on site as well. We will have music, games, FREE haircuts (courtesy of Santa Monica College), and volunteers ready to meet the immediate hunger and hygiene insecurity plaguing communities like that of MacArthur Park. This is our direct answer to a system intent on punishing the poor who are victims of the poverty created by said system.
Beginning today and moving forward, we perform this work under a unified organizing banner: Umoja Now—a grassroots mutual aid initiative built to serve Los Angeles’ working-class, unhoused, and drug-affected communities, particularly Black and Chicano residents. Umoja Now represents the urgency of practiced unity. It’s a direct response to state abandonment and capitalist harm—and a commitment to meeting immediate needs with radical care, nourishment, harm reduction, and solidarity.
“Umoja Now” is more a brand centered in service—it is a promise and moral obligation to assist those in need, without waiting for governmental or otherwise inadequate institutional support.
These are not aspirational values—they are the backbone of who we are, why we do this work, and how we operate.
As Muhammad Ali said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” But this works is more than just a means of paying moral or ethical ‘rent’. It is a reclamation—a refusal; a declaration that we are NOT waiting on the government to do their job in caring for the people. We will build infrastructure using our (bountiful) community resources, and meet the needs of our neighbors as they arise.
That is what Umoja Now is all about, and that is what this Saturday in MacArthur Park is all about. I look forward to our journey together then, and moving forward as we build, educate, empower, and redefine community and survival under an oppressive system.
With love and light,
Justin M. Ellis-Brooks, Founder
Umoja Now
