Buzzkill Bass: LA Mayor Cancels Longest-Running Independence Day Parade in San Fernando Valley

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has cancelled the longest-running Independence Day parade in the San Fernando Valley, after organizers say the city withdrew support and left them facing at least $20,000 in traffic control and street closure costs, the New York Post reported.

Bass, a progressive Democrat with a radical activist past, is facing a tough re-election challenge from Spencer Pratt, who together with 6,837 other Angelinos lost his family home in the Palisades fires in 2025. This decision won’t help her cause. 

Why, when America is celebrating its Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, is Bass cancelling one of the regions most iconic Independence Day parades?

The Post reports:

“The mayor’s office jerked us around for so long,” said Lydia Grant, president of the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council. “It’s devastating. We’ve been doing this parade for over 50 years.”

The event, hosted annually by the Sunland-Tujunga-Shadow Hills Rotary Club and the Neighborhood Council, is the centerpiece of the community’s Independence Day celebration.

The parade was set to draw marching bands, equestrian groups, vintage cars, local organizations, elected officials and homemade floats.

Grant said she was especially surprised because Mayor Bass told the group her office would help with the event, as the office had done for decades.

“I was very shocked because the mayor herself said to contact her staff to get it done,” Grant said. “Then they started ignoring us. This has never happened before.”

According to Grant, organizers were initially told costs would be around $15,000, but the final estimate exceeded $20,000.

She said the delays left organizers with no realistic opportunity to fundraise or secure sponsors before the July 4 event.

Mayor Karen Bass, whose radical anti-America past is well-known, has a documented history of left-wing activism in the 1970s, centered on her involvement with the Venceremos Brigade. Founded in 1969 by members of Students for a Democratic Society in coordination with the Cuban government, Venceremos Brigade organized trips for Americans to Cuba. Participants did agricultural or construction work in solidarity with Fidel Castro’s revolution. and Venceremos Brigade has been identified as a Marxist-Leninist front tied to Castro’s intelligence apparatus.

Bass visited Cuba eight times in the 1970s. She worked on house construction, and described seeing Castro speak. She characterized herself as a leader/organizer for the Southern California contingent.

So, of course Bass would double-down and cancel a pro-America event on America’s 250th Independence Day celebration.

“All the ICE protests that they paid money for, now they don’t have money,” Lydia Grant said. “They’re investing money into protests and activism instead of something that would bring our community together.”

Grant told The Post that for generations of local families, the parade has been more than just a holiday event.

Now, thanks to Buzzkill Bass, that wonderful patriotic community event is only a memory. Time for new leadership Angelinos.