Sean Nolan is a graduate of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a candidate for the California Bar.
Los Angeles is a place more prone to paradox and contradiction than most. The international view of the second largest city in the US is usually equated with the glitz and glamor of Hollywood or the mythmaking seat of soft political power that has woven a golden narrative to justify US dominance on the world stage. In truth the city is so much more than Hollywood or the film industry. At almost four million strong, LA is a milieu of culture and language. Spread across the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area with north of 12 million people, the area represents a sprawl of refugees from around the world, drawn by the promise of a better or at least different life. These thoughts are ever present in my mind whenever I travel the city streets. And they were especially clear when I joined around 200,000 other protesters at the No Kings Protest on June 14.
Upon arriving in Grand Park at the foot of City Hall where the protest was held, I was immediately struck by the jubilant tenor that pervaded the city center. Groups of musicians playing guitars, drums, and brass instruments jamming protest songs while onlookers took photos, danced, and shouted along. Handmade signs of all sizes, fonts, colors, and creeds were wielded with glee across the streets. Many had dressed up in costumes. A duo dressed as the US founding fathers, wigs and all, as well as a suited individual with paper mache head in the likeness of Donald Trump. A massive balloon caricature of the President floated above the squall and there was not a whiff of violence in sight.
Everywhere people chanted political slogans, merrily seizing their right to peacefully assemble against the Trump administration, and more specifically, against the increasingly brazen and belligerent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the city. The city’s relationship with immigrants is complicated for more reasons than its reliance on their cheap labor. California was once a territory of Mexico and its location means that it is a prime destination for immigration from Asia and a hotbed for the passively approved exploitation of undocumented workers. On this day though, the city breathed as one.
On June 6, US ICE agents converged on the Garment District in Downtown Los Angeles to arrest suspected undocumented workers employed at an apparel manufacturer as part of the Trump administration’s broader immigration crackdown. A crowd soon gathered to document and denounce the ICE activity before hundreds of the protesters arrived at the Los Angeles Federal Building to express their anger with the raid. By the end of the night, federal agents had fired pepper spray balls into crowds of protesters and arrested union leader David Huerta for intentionally obstructing federal agents’ access to worksites suspected of harboring undocumented workers. Over a hundred people were arrested in what would soon become a weeklong outburst against the Trump administration.
More protests ignited the next day in the nearby city of Paramount, where upset members of the community feared a similar raid. Confrontations with police escalated as law enforcement fired tear gas into the crowds while protests broke out again in Downtown Los Angeles and in the nearby city of Compton. The Saturday unrest was an appetizer for the public rage that was to follow on Sunday June 8. Peaceful protests gave way to the rage of the voiceless as Waymo driverless taxi cars were set on fire, police were showered with street detritus, and the ensuing crackdown from law enforcement left people bloodied and injured from so-called “less than lethal” weapons, tear gas, and pepper spray balls. Groups of opportunists capitalized on the masses’ reclamation of public spaces, and minor instances of looting took place in Downtown Los Angeles and other surrounding areas.
It felt like weeks or years of developments were packed within a single week. US Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) press conference led by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. The California National Guard was federalized and sent in to quell the unrest in an unprecedented move from President Trump. California Governor Gavin Newsom condemned the executive actions and engaged the President in a media battle of words, even daring POTUS to arrest him. Marines were deployed to the city to further bolster the federal presence. All the while, protests continued until a curfew was enacted to tamp down on the potential for property damage after sundown. The city began to feel more and more like a powder keg waiting to explode as the date of a planned anti-Trump protest on June 14 grew closer.
Sierra Tothero, a Texas native but decade-long resident of Los Angeles, attended three of the June protests, including the one in Paramount on June 7. She described a small peaceful crowd that was forcibly moved by law enforcement before an unlawful assembly was declared and non-lethal force deployed. Tothero lambasted the police for using pepper spray balls on peaceful protesters that included a four year old child. She insisted that police participated in the lion’s share of agitation, pushing some protesters to the brink of frustration with the continued use of rubber bullets, pepper spray and flash bang grenades. The only concern for violence she expressed was a fear that law enforcement and the federal reinforcements would create a situation similar to the Kent State shootings in 1970, where four students protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War were killed by members of the National Guard and nine more wounded.
Tothero had attended the protests after growing angry with the mass deportations sweeping across the country. An actress and comedian, she described herself as passionate about social justice and politics, but not overly politically active. “I had so much anger building up watching the injustice of the mass deportation policy sweep across the country that I knew when things began to go down in Los Angeles I would do what I could to fight against it.”
Her sentiments were clearly present amongst the 200,000 who marched at the No Kings protest that seemed to be a climax for the recent unrest. The intense media scrutiny, ceaseless overnight patrols of police helicopters, and arrival of the National Guard and Marines suggested that a confrontation was coming before the Saturday protest. I had planned on attending the No Kings protest, and freely admit that I was uncertain as to what may occur at the demonstrations. The euphoria that filled the streets on June 14 immediately dismissed any reservations, while the display of solidarity and power from people of all races, cultures, and classes were a welcome panacea for the anxiety that had seemed to poison the LA air. Ultimately, the protests proved to be a potent reminder of the strength that can come with organization against unresponsive and uncaring governance.
On one hand, the protests were largely successful in that they were a peaceful and welcome foil to the military parade organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US Army, and coincidentally President Trump’s birthday. On the other hand, the aftermath left a sort of hangover and yet another pall of uncertainty. As the good feelings from the weekend have dissipated, we’ve been left with only more questions. The ICE raids and deportations have continued unabated. Legal citizens and immigrants alike continue to be racially profiled and harassed across the nation. Reports of cases of mistaken identity have surfaced and the executive branch has shown nothing but a single-minded focus to continue many of their most egregious policies, despite reports that the targeting of farm and hotel workers would cease.
In the face of the continued oppression against some of the most vulnerable members of our community, what does a week of protest really mean? When the levers of democracy are thoroughly controlled by forces bent on dismantling the civil liberties of the powerless, is justice even possible? The Democratic party remains in a wilderness of infighting and impotence and the current state of the country highlights their historical inability to protect minority interests on a Constitutional level. Where can the people turn when they have been disenfranchised and abandoned by a broken political process? In Los Angeles, they turn to a protest in a park amid vendors selling merchandised revolution and to a man waving a flag, standing proudly by the flames and twisted steel of the American Dream.
