TAKE ACTION:
GIVE: Donate to CLUE’s Immigrant Bond Fund to keep families together and get as many people out of ICE detention as possible.
LEARN: Tune into Concentration Camps and the Machinery of Repression: Lessons for Saving Democracy on June 11
SHOW UP: Attend a No Kings event near you on Saturday, June 14
The media lampooned Kamala Harris for telling us that Trump would turn the military on Americans.
Well, here we are.
Trump’s imposing martial law on parts of my city, kidnapping people, and breaking up families so he can distract you from his efforts to take healthcare and food away from 15 million people to give his billionaire friends a tax cut.
There’s no insurrection. Our governor, mayor, and local law enforcement didn’t ask for the national guard.
What you see on your screens is - for now - on a few mere blocks in DTLA.
In many places, it’s business as usual, especially here in the Westside. But I fear it may not be that way much longer.
Just on Saturday, I attended my cousin’s eighth grade graduation from an LAUSD school. We had Angelenos for all walks of life there. Other than my immense pride in my cousin being one of only three students speakers out of 800 kids, everything else was totally normal.
Here we are three days later. LAUSD schools are making massive adjustments to protect their students and families. They’re even deploying campus police to create safe zones, trying to protect my neighbors from a tyrannical Trump regime.
Potent fear of ICE raids turning some neighborhoods into ghost towns.
To see what is actually happening on the ground, follow former CNN reporter Jessica Yellin on News Not Noise, as well as respected reporters like Jacob Soboroff who have covered these issues extensively.
Why LA? Though what’s happening is in many ways a distraction, it has real-world consequences and an even deeper back story.
Stephen Miller, a Santa Monica native, made his hatred of Latinos and diversity writ large known when he was still in high school.
Now he’s exacting his revenge on the state that gave nothing but opportunity to him.
The blame for this moment lies squarely with Trump. Had he not escalated, none of this would be happening.
And yes, it’s insulting to see January 6 insurrectionists demanding peaceful protests. But we’re not fighting in a level playing field.
While we don’t have control over others’ actions, we do control how we respond.
Having worked in the immigration advocacy space for over half a decade and in the political space much longer, I know this: a lot of what we’re doing isn’t working.
Let’s just say that I’m really tired of some people explaining away - instead of condemning - vandalism and violence committed in our name. It’s another parallel with protests re: Gaza and BLM.
If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Anyone vandalizing downtown, burning cars, proactively attacking law enforcement, and looting stores doesn’t care about immigrant communities.
Those hijacking this cause deserve every ounce of accountability. We have an 8pm curfew in DTLA now because of their looting and destruction.
The “burn it all down” crowd hurts every causes it claims to stand for and I’m really tired of some on the center-left defending it.
Eric Ward’s op-ed on Israel and Palestine I shared last week is just as applicable here. People keep wanting to burn down everything who never spent a damn day building.
Just because something might emotionally be justifiable doesn’t mean it’s okay to do it. Infantilizing others =/= empathy. Humanize them with expectations of agency.
For example, LAPD failed to protect my aunt from being killed by her estranged husband. Though one could argue that my family and I would be justified for vandalizing LAPD property, we never did.
Nonviolent activism in this country has been painfully met with dogs, beatings, hoses, and even death, all from the state. Yet nonviolence proved to be among the most successful North Star in social change movements in this country.
From the Civil Rights movement to marriage equality, lifesaving wins came from efforts demonstrating demands to be a part of the American project, not apart from it. The narratives invited others to join and to change their minds.
So let’s get to work. Reduce the harm, but with a vision for something better - and in a way that invites people in to make change happen.
Support CLUE’s Immigrant Bond Fund to get people out of ICE detention. Learn about resisting authoritarian regimes from my friend Ami Fields-Meyer. Show up at No Kings events (perhaps with your American flags?).
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