Tag: Culture

The President is Lying to You About the L.A. “Warzone”

Examining Trump’s chaotic escalation in his response to the immigration protests sweeping Los Angeles.

Mario Tama / Getty Images – Protestors wave flags in response to a series of immigration raids in Los Angeles. The rising tensions occurred after the Trump administration called in the National Guard and Marines against the wishes of city leaders.

The Big Con

It was Thursday of last week when ICE leaders, White House Chief of Staff Steven Miller and Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, sternly ordered ICE agents to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day.

This mindless and short-sighted quota — demanding ICE agents arrest over a million people each year — forced agents into a desperate scramble, prioritizing numbers over justice just to hang on to their morally bankrupt jobs.

The easiest possible targets, of course, were not the violent criminals that the Trump administration loved to shine a spotlight on (you’d think, as their rallying cry for justifying civil rights violations, that they would at least get that part right).

Instead, ICE wasted no time seeking to detain those simply trying to live in tranquility: laborers seeking an honest day’s work at Home Depot, migrants walking out of their scheduled courthouse hearings in good faith, fourth-graders on their way to school, and street vendors working tirelessly to provide for their communities.

On Friday, at least 45 individuals in LA’s downtown Fashion District were detained without warrants, many of whom were longtime Angelenos who’ve been part of this city longer than I have been alive.

ICE agents, donned in masks and abducting Angelenos off the street in nondescript vehicles, have decisively eroded any inkling of security and public trust in less than a day.

In Los Angeles, a city predominantly Latino in name and population, ICE indubitably knew they would pour salt on old systemic wounds. As children of immigrants, many Angelenos understand the need to fight for their parents and grandparents’ sacrifices, to fight for the opportunity that America once promised many moons ago.

But the Trump administration was gleefully counting on just that: the inevitable ignition of grief, outrage, and, ultimately, resistance.

The trap was set.

@thelittlezumi / Instagram – The Saturday protests in Downtown LA against the dehumanizing ICE raids were deemed “peaceful” by LAPD.

While ICE Divides, Angelenos Rise

In downtown LA’s Civic Center, hundreds gathered in protest: marching, chanting, sign-waving, and filming with the occasional slight at riot-clad officers.

It was sufficiently tame, with even the Los Angeles Police Department taking the remarkable step of issuing a public statement that the protests were “peaceful” and “concluded without incident.”

But when ICE agents descended upon the Home Depot in Paramount a day after their downtown raid, the Trump Administration found the smoking gun they were looking for.

It was just another Saturday morning at the Home Depot in a working-class, Latinx hub of L.A. But that morning, border patrol agents were spotted across the street. Word quickly spread on social media. Passersby honked their horns.

Soon, the protestors arrived, and shouts and flash bangs ensued. Average ordinary folks found themselves face to face against militarized police and federal agents with a seemingly unlimited supply of tactical gear, choking in tears as they endured hours of tear gas.

The hands of the protestors were inevitably forced, their fates as the perfect scapegoats sealed. The clashes provided for dramatic TV footage, in a small area around the Alonda Boulevard store.

Allison Dinner / Shutterstock – Sheriff’s deputies in front of a burned car in Paramount, California, on Saturday.

Barricades were soon erected, pepper spray and tear gas were thrown with reckless abandon, and burning cars were seen amid the chaos.

The seeds of resistance have been sown, which played right into the Trump administration’s preemptive plans.

The President is Lying to You

The media narrative swiftly capitalized on the images of dissent.

Photos of dumpster fires and vandalized Waymo robotaxis were splashed across feeds, portraying the LA protests as a feverous riot, a city thrown into complete anarchy.

But as the L.A. Times pointed out, they were relatively small protests in very specific locations where ICE agents conducted raids; most of LA continued with its usual ho-hum: celebrating Pride Month and going to weekend brunch.

LAPD reassured the public that the situation was under control. It was, after all, not nearly as chaotic as when the Dodgers won the MLB World Series or when the Lakers won the NBA Finals.

However, that didn’t stop Trump from revving the propaganda machine and distorting the truth.

An Administration’s War on Truth

Trump’s post on Truth Social called on administration officials to “take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion.”

Despite the wishes of Governor Newsom, Mayor Karen Bass, and other local leaders, President Trump doubled down, deploying over 2,100 National Guard (and, as of Wednesday, 700 Marines), branding protestors as paid insurrectionists and foreign agitators.

He seized on social media posts, like claims of “Soros-funded bricks,” to inflate the protests into a looming domestic crisis. Members of the Trump administration described isolated scenes of conflict as an “insurrection” over and over and over and over again.

Just a week ago, L.A. was at peace. Now the Marines and National Guard are parading the streets, in an unnecessary show of force, and causing real and irreparable damage to the city.

The addition of 700 Marines is itself can only be described as federal antagonization. But that is not surprising from a man whose entire presidency is built on divisive rhetoric and escalating racial tensions.

And the question has always been: why?

Ronald Schemidt / Getty Images – A demonstrator holds an upside-down U.S. flag as California National Guard members stand guard outside the Federal Building.

Why didn’t President Trump use the same show of force against the Capitol Attack 4 years ago?

Why use the U.S. Marines, an institution built to defend democracy, as political pawns to oppress the constitutional right of peaceful assembly?

Why has President Trump bypassed the approval of a state governor, a breach of federal oversight that hasn’t happened in a state for 60 years? (Which, by the way, was during the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.)

Maybe it’s just a measly coincidence that President Donald Trump orchestrated this planned fracture right after he was seeking to block California from receiving certain federal funding.

If I were a gambling man, I would bet the house and the farm that:

For Trump, it was never really about the money; it’s all about seizing power and forcing California, along with every one of his political enemies, to fall in line.

Language of the Unheard

Spin the truth as you may, but there is no denying that the protests in LA have not warranted the Marines and the National Guard to be called in a state of nonemergency.

Sure, some protestors took things a little “too far.” But what is considered too far when people’s families are being ripped apart, when loved ones don’t come home, when you see parents and neighbors taken off the street by masked men in nondescript vans, without you ever knowing if and when you’ll see them again.

Sure, people tagged buildings. You can paint over them.

Sure, people blocked roads for a few hours; they got pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed for their trouble.

Sure, Waymo driverless cars were burned down. But maybe you didn’t know that because local law enforcement can easily access Waymo footage, these Waymos are essentially a full 360-degree surveillance system rolling up to spy on protestors.

If you could hear the cries of people being detained, banging and screaming against the thinly opened windows of detention centers, if you could see nonviolent protestors being cruelly run over, if you saw a local union leader being beaten and detained, wouldn’t you see why Angelenos were provoked?

If you took a moment to look beyond the headlines, you’d realize the impossible choices human beings are forced to make in unimaginable circumstances.

Democracy Dies in the Darkness

In the coming days, the national media is going to call L.A. a warzone. But the truth is, the folks protesting over the past week were worried about their friends, their neighbors, and their community.

In any protest, there will always be a select few who will throw rocks, take advantage of the chaos, and loot, and it’ll proceed to take over the entire media narrative.

But just know that LA is afraid right now because their peers were kidnapped at work. Because masked men kidnapped the elotero who brought joy on the weekends.

Because of the deafening silence of our neighbors who never came home.

True progress can be a painful and unforgiving process. And yet, when ICE terrorizes L.A. by zeroing in on our children, our parents, and our livelihoods, Los Angeles responds in kind, in crowds, in true solidarity, in loud, defiant chants. It’s the language of the unheard, born of the sacrifice of countless immigrants who are cruelly dehumanized for trying to live fairly on stolen land.

The President can rewrite the narrative all he wants. His constant need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Oppression is the mask of fear. What he fears most isn’t chaos: it’s a people, un pueblo, uniting beyond his reach.

. . .

Donate to MutualAid LA: https://mutualaidla.org/

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Support the Immigrant Bond Fund: Cluejustice.org/bond

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We Cannot Remain Silent About George Floyd

Examining the historic protests in America over police brutality and racially charged violence.

@LGNWVRPHTO / Instagram – The death of George Floyd, a son, a brother, a father, and a friend, has galvanized a global activist movement against racial injustice and police brutality.

“Please, I can’t breathe.”

Those final, fateful words of George Floyd have echoed across the schisms of a divided America for the past two weeks.

On May 25, Minneapolis Police officers arrested George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, after a store clerk dialed 911, accusing him of buying cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. In seventeen minutes after the first squad car arrived at the scene, Mr. Floyd was unconscious beneath three police officers, with no discernable pulse.

For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, a white police officer named Derek Chauvin dug his knee on Floyd’s neck until the life drained from his body. Implausibly, Chauvin persisted to kneel on George Floyd’s neck for a full minute after paramedics arrived, despite Floyd remaining unresponsive.

Even after mercifully calling out to his late mother and repeating, “I can’t breathe,” George Floyd lost his life. His story an unfinished canvas destined to never be fully realized with elaborative strokes of color and definition.

Of Their Own Accord

@AYY.BEE / Instagram – A portrait of George Floyd from Adrian Brandon’s #StolenSeries. For every year of life lived, a minute of graphite and ink is applied to the portrait (i.e., 46 years lived = 46 minutes of color).

As you may know, this appalling turn of events compelled the nation into a state of caustic self-reckoning; however, let this be clear:

We are not only stunned by the brutal and tragic murder of George Floyd…

We are not only shocked by the undeniable evidence of systematic racism and excessive use of force that were virtually documented before our very eyes…

We are incensed because we heard those familiar, haunting words before.

And yet here we are, caught in an ever-perpetuating cycle of racially charged violence and police brutality.

Another Black person dying at the hands of the police, pleading, “I can’t breathe.”

Therefore, with the looming specter of systemic racial injustice taking center stage once again, let it be known:

We cannot stay silent on George Floyd.

Language of the Unheard

In a campaign for racial justice both years and decades in the making, the man murdered by Minneapolis Police immediately became a national symbol of the need for police accountability.

In other words, the heinous murder of George Floyd has galvanized millions of people to give voice to the grief and anger wrought by corrupted systems of racial injustice and white supremacy onto countless generations of Black Americans.

Demonstrations and protests unprecedented in scale have erupted throughout all fifty US states and even internationally, thereby establishing one of the largest multicultural activist movements in world history.

Video / Twitter – Thousands turn out for peaceful demonstrations in support of #BlackLivesMatter across Los Angeles.

Notably, the George Floyd protests have unfolded into a historical multicultural movement that has mobilized a significant population of non-blacks who have not spoken out before.

People from all races and all walks of life are educating themselves online, signing petitions, and attending protests where they get to listen to first-hand stories of the oppressed who experience racism on a daily basis.

Young and old, black and white, family and friends, Batman and Joker; an entire legion of Americans are beginning to realize that after so many promises to reform the system have come and gone, enough is enough.

Video / Twitter – The George Floyd protests have mobilized the masses to call for law enforcement reform, even drawing the ire of the Dark Knight himself.

From Bad to Worse

Image in "We Cannot Remain Silent About George Floyd" post

Image / Joseph Ngabo – Tensions are discernibly high as the relatively peaceful Los Angeles protestors confront the abrupt escalation manufactured in part by law enforcement.

American society is unfortunately founded on an unforgiving racial hierarchy; in accordance, police departments are called upon to enforce a system of laws that are designed to reinforce and preserve economic and racial inequality.

Therefore, despite efforts to reassure the sanctity and safety of peaceful assembly, to oppose the status quo inevitably means incurring the wrath of those who are asked to protect it.

In the midst of the mass protests that began in Minneapolis and have swelled to dozens of American cities, there have been hundreds of arrests, curfews declared, and National Guard troops summoned.

Ironically, the very same public demonstrations aimed at protesting unrelenting police violence have faced daunting bouts of police brutality themselves, making an already heartbreaking situation even worse.

A fever of social media regrettably documents officers beating unarmed protestors, ramming squad cars into demonstrators, indiscriminately using pepper spray on bystanders, and causing life-threatening injuries with “less lethal” bean-bag rounds.

City officials attempted to justify the abrupt escalation perpetuated by law enforcement by asserting that the officers were merely responding to suspected cases of looting which has become prevalent amidst some rioting. However, even law enforcement leadership understood that the use of excessive force is “never acceptable,” and police departments have made sure to discipline officers for any misconduct.

Nonetheless, we still have a President who is not shy in invoking a loaded, racist threat by tweeting, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

In the face of coping with a President whose very existence is composed of rhetoric that is deliberately divisive, as well as grappling with the wrenching uncertainty of the prevalent COVID-19 pandemic, a long road ahead is certainly assured for the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Rose that Grew From Concrete

In the haze of civil unrest, the political and social ramifications of the George Floyd protests are beginning to emerge from allegorical obscurity.

A myriad of countries and states such as New York, Florida, and California are passing legislation restricting police use of force (e.g., banning the usage of neck restraints). In addition, many city officials are embracing proposed budget cuts to their respective police departments.

Remarkably, Minneapolis city council officials pledged to defund and dismantle the city’s police department. As a result, a new model of public safety will soon be implemented to keep communities safe following the wake of the police killing of George Floyd.

Although it remains to be seen how such a novel approach to public safety and emergency response would function, there appears to be a consensus that the role of police would ultimately be diminished. For instance, these plans may permit social workers, mental health providers, and other community members to potentially handle many of the nonviolent situations that police currently deal with.

Back on Capitol Hill, Democrats have unveiled a sweeping police reform bill targeting police misconduct and racial bias, a measure that figures to be the most expansive intervention into policing in recent memory. Senate Republicans are now also working on legislation to address police reform, a reconciliation that would have been unheard of merely a few weeks ago.

Even ‘Cops,’ a TV show that has remained on the air for a whopping 33 seasons, has been canceled for its glorification of police officers.

As for the George Floyd case itself, the public outcry has caused all four officers to be charged to the fullest extent of the law, setting forth a powerful precedent for police accountability.

Black Lives Matter, a campaign that has long endeavored to establish a world free of anti-Blackness by highlighting the depth of injustice and unaccountability that American society harbors toward people of color, is absolutely generating an indispensable statement.

Make no mistake, Black Lives Matter has fundamentally transformed from a hashtag-powered rallying cry to a national mantra that cannot nor will not be ignored in every facet of modern American life.

For all the pain and loss incurred, the wake of George Floyd’s death has cultivated a powerful catalyst that can pave the way for meaningful, expansive change.

Tip of the Spear

Graphic / Campaign Zero – A visual presentation of a list of policy solutions that aims to reduce the frequency and severity of police violence in our communities.

For the aforementioned ‘meaningful, expansive change’ to materialize, the George Floyd protests have concentrated their efforts into bringing about systemic transformation. A transformation that will hold law enforcement accountable for the violence they inflict, a transformation that will eradicate a racist system that breeds corruption, and a call for radical, sustainable solutions that affirm the prosperity of Black lives.

It is time to rethink qualified immunity. The legal doctrine of qualified immunity protects police officers from civil lawsuits (i.e., provides immunity from having to go through the costs of trial) by shielding officers from liability for all actions taken on the job except for those that violate ‘clearly established’ law.

Permitting police to freely perform their duties without fear of being held accountable has enabled a culture of violence and abuse responsible for the deaths of victims like George Floyd.

To illustrate, a database from Mapping Police Violence detailed a whopping 99% of police killings from 2013-2019 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime, grossly showcasing the existing disparity in police accountability.

Thusly, an antiquated get-out-of-jail-free card for murdering people of color makes a mockery of the criminal justice system and it will NOT stand.

On the other hand, a plethora of research has indicated how police practices and training also have to be re-evaluated to foster significant police reform.

For example, the Police Use of Force Project found that those police departments with policies that place clear restrictions on when and how officers use force had significantly fewer killings than those that did not have these restrictions in place. Furthermore, the study also found that officers in police departments with more restrictive policies in place are actually less likely to be assaulted, conveying how even law enforcement itself can benefit from police reform.

As Black Lives Matter activists call for the defunding of police, there is a common misconception surrounding what the concept actually entails. The concept to defund the police exists on a spectrum and does not necessarily mean to strip police funding and dissolve departments (although some activists are certainly calling for it).

Rather, defunding the police means to divest from the violent policing infrastructure (potentially resulting in fewer cops) and reinvesting those funds into strengthening Black and Brown communities.

In cities like Charlottesville and Los Angeles, police department funding accounts for an astronomical proportion of the city budget, which dwarves those for education, housing, and other vital services.

By cutting police spending, those reallocated funds will be put back into social services such as mental health, domestic violence, and homelessness as well as aid the funding of hospital equipment and youth initiatives. Ideally, such an initiative to invest in resource-deficient communities will effectively reduce crime on its own.

Do Not Go Gentle

What is truly astounding about the George Floyd protests is that there is no distinct leader powering the movement; there is just the implicit belief that everyone’s voice matters.

Yet, it does not mean that Black Lives Matter is a rudderless movement. On the contrary, with the power of social media as a digital playbook, the collective majority now possess the means to stand against systemic oppression in ways prior generations could not before.

In the age of social media, everyone has a platform where they can actively amplify their voices and let themselves be heard in the fight for justice and equality. Therefore, to remain silent is to deprive your social spheres of the opportunity to hold meaningful reflection and foster discussion about what police reform and Black Lives Matter means to them.

And we shouldn’t stay silent.

Not when we currently live in a country where Black lives are systematically targeted for demise.

Not when the color of your skin can get you killed just for jogging, buying groceries, being homeless, wearing a hoodie at night, enjoying ice cream in your own living room, and even sleeping in your own bed.

Not when thousands upon thousands of protestors are risking their lives and bodies for a chance at being heard in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

We must remember that the soul of America has always been in political revolution. To remain resilient in the face of deadly oppression is the reason why we call the United States our home.

Be that as it may, this country has its share of troubling failures. For that reason, we must also confront the still-present legacy of slavery in America: systemic racism.

To fight against such engrained systemic racism in American society will certainly involve more than just posting black squares on your Instagrams. Our collective voices must maintain a consistent story, a story that advocates for racial justice at every conceivable opportunity.

Some have chosen to donate time and money to Black organizations and businesses; some have decided to offer free healthcare to the protestors on the front lines; others have pledged to work pro-bono to represent those arrested.

Whatever you choose to do, just remember that there is no magic solution. Only education and action will enable a more fair and just America that we have never known in our lifetimes.

Just remember that we can never remain silent about George Floyd.

Progress can be a painful and unforgiving process. Still, a reckoning is long overdue.

To learn more about how you can support Black Lives Matter, visit: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co

National Bail Fund Network: https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/

Know Your Rights Camp: https://knowyourrightscamp.com/

Campaign Zero: https://www.joincampaignzero.org/

Police Brutality Spreadsheet

(Warning: Some videos and images contain scenes of graphic violence)

Say Their Names:

Ahmaud Arbery Sean Bell Rumain Brisbon Philando Castille William Chapman Keith Childress Jr. Stephon Clark John Crawford III Johnathan Ferrell George Floyd Ezell Ford Eric Garner Brendon Glenn Oscar Grant Freddie Gray Kimani Gray Akai Gurley Botham Jean Atatiana Jefferson Bettie Jones Trayvon Martin Kendrec Mcdade Natasha Mckenna Eric Reason Tamir Rice Tony Robinson Jr. Jonathan Sanders Walter Scott Alton Sterling Breonna Taylor