Tear Gas, Human Stampedes, and ICE Raids: 100 Hours in L.A.

Yahoo

5 hours ago

Have you ever been caught up in a human stampede? You'd remember it.
But let's back up to calmer times. Even social unrest has an internal clock. It is the eighth day of protests in downtown Los Angeles since Donald Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began grabbing immigrants from Home Depot parking lots and clothing factories in hopes of making America great again. I've been here for four days watching the uneasy coexistence of riot shields and men in mammoth pickup trucks with giant Mexican flags blasting Nipsey Hussle's 'Fuck Donald Trump' at unfathomable volumes.
If you watch Fox News or spend time on the rack of the Twitter Machine, you believe that the protests have ruined the 500 square miles that comprises Los Angeles. If you're here, you realize that the protests are limited to a four-block radius that you would have to circle eight times to get your FitBit to 10,000 steps. Nevertheless, right-wing media will dismiss you as a misinformation radical if you don't acknowledge that a half-dozen Waymos have been set afire and some awful people dropped stones on police cars — but this is not the Rodney King riots when 92 people lost their lives, the city shut down, and lost a $1 billion in revenue.
I have settled into a routine. In the morning, I go for a walk to see what happened the night before. My Hilton is about a mile from the Roybal Federal Building that houses both ICE and Homeland Security and where, according to Trump, civilization was ending in some kind of Sodom-meets-1980s Detroit, and that's why he took over the National Guard and called in the Marines to Los Angeles.
I start up Grand Avenue and look for the terror. I say hello to Atletico Madrid staffers in gauche and politically dubious 'Visit Rwanda' jerseys on the way to Starbucks. (On Sunday, 80,000 fans at the Rose Bowl will watch them get hammered 4-0 by Paris St. Germain). A tip of my BC Lions cap to the Broad museum docents who usually tell your tween to step back from the Warhol and now form the most quixotic security perimeter. Hello to Kat, a raven-haired parks worker/singer who I met the night before at the Redwood Bar and Grill who had exactly 13 dollars for the calamari and ice water combo, taking her leftovers home in a napkin. Now, she is rollerblading toward me at maximum velocity at the theoretically bustling corner of Main & Fifth Avenue. She smiles and shouts, 'Don't forget my band is playing at the farmer's market Sunday!'
I do not feel the need to update my will or write goodbye notes to my son and wife. I walk on. I am now four blocks from the protest epicenter and there is no evidence of its existence. Sadly, there is actual evidence of alcohol abuse, drug addiction, and homelessness as I pass five or six people in need of help, some wandering into traffic, some picking through trash cans, and some passed out in a way that leaves me wondering if they are dead or alive.
I arrive at 300 North Los Angeles Street, the physical address of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, and I see the regulars who have been expressing their regulated anger at the Three Horsepeople of the Apocalypse — Trump, the permanently furious Stephen Miller, and Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, American Girl's stepmom gone to plastic — who ordered ICE to kick it into a higher gear and begin picking up abuelas while maintaining they just want to take psychotic criminals off the street.
There are two major gathering points. The front of the building provides an outstanding visual backdrop with impassive riot-shield-clad National Guard troopers guarding the entrance. This is the location where in a different generation a hippie would tie a daisy onto a riot stick to make a human connection. Alas, it never happens because you'd end up handcuffed and tear gassed.
On the back side of the property — Alameda Avenue — is the second pressure point. This is where ICE and Homeland Security haul ass into the underground garage with unknown passengers destined for known, terrible outcomes.
The protests are located close to some of downtown L.A.'s limited charms. A couple of blocks away there's the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. The museum's warehouse wall is covered with Barbara Kruger's 30-by-190-foot untitled work that everyone calls 'Questions.' In giant white letters on a blood-red background Kruger asks the right questions:
'Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who is free to choose? Who does the time? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?'
Inside, Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova has a residency of sorts with Police State, an in-person performance art piece where she spends eight hours a day in a jail cell similar to the one Putin sent her to and where she sewed garments as her prison job. As ICE is now raiding actual garment factories, it is a prophetic example of art cosplaying with real life.
I want to check about getting a stand-by ticket, but the doors are locked. I pull up the museum's website on my phone and get the following message:
Due to evolving conditions in downtown Los Angeles and the proximity of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA to ongoing demonstrations and military activity near the Los Angeles Federal Detention Facility, the museum has made the decision to adjust its operating hours and event schedule out of concern for the safety of staff and visitors … this performance will be postponed to a later date.
Police State has been canceled because of a police state.
QUICK STORY. ON FRIDAY NIGHT, I POP INTO the Redwood Bar & Grill, a legendary downtown dive bar, ostensibly to check in on downtown businesses being economically crushed by protest-related closures and curfew. I'm not saying I was starved for material related to anarchy in L.A., but it's hard to write about an American melodrama without the melodrama. So, my eyes widen with excitement when I see the bartender. He wears an Iron Maiden T-shirt and a face clotted with bruises and maybe a broken nose. A regular asks him what happened. The bartender offers a half-smile and speaks in a stage whisper.
'You know all the crazy demonstrations?' He speaks in a conspiratorial stage whisper. 'Well, Tuesday I got really drunk and fell on my face. Nothing to do with the protests.'
THE FIRST VIOLENCE I SEE SEEMS UNREAL, like I am participating in some virtual reality protest cosplay, stage-crafted on the world's largest sound stage. (This is a view that most assuredly would get me a 'fuck off' from the protestors with rubber-bullet welts.)
On Wednesday, a few hundred protesters march to City Hall, a majestic 32-story white beast built in the 1920s. It is almost magic hour and the surrendering sun gives the protesters a golden, toasted aura. (Many of them are actually toasted, so much weed!) On the walk over from the federal building, a leader with megaphones leads the protesters in chants of 'peaceful protest, peaceful protest.' The man gives his followers a warning, 'There are a few asshole agitators trying to ruin this, don't let them.'
And it's true. There are a few, scattered black-masked dudes on e-bikes talking into cell-phones before popping wheelies and riding down the abandoned boulevards. They do not seem like George Soros-funded antifa ninjas, and the crowd mostly ignores them.
The LAPD eventually orders everyone to disperse from the City Hall steps, and most of the protesters retreat into the adjacent Gloria Molina Grand Park. The hardcore do not. The park slopes upward and I watch from a higher vantage point as two separate squadrons of riot squads move in a pincer movement on the few resisters while a dozen police horses, some wearing Plexiglass blinkers, press forward in a frontal assault. Flash-bang grenades and the bleakly named 'less lethal' rubber bullets target the stragglers. It is hideous overkill and, inevitably, a protester gets knocked to the ground with a sickening thud.
The top floor of City Hall features a ballroom and a balcony. Well-connected gawkers watch the melee and the sunset simultaneously. But as tear gas begins to waft and riot sticks are swung, the gawkers head back inside.
And I think of a story I read as a kid about picnic-packing tourists watching the First Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War from the safety of their carriages. The sightseers had to flee when things got turned apocalyptic and fled home riding over the dead bodies of their fellow Americans.
CONVENIENTLY, THE LONG-SCHEDULED NO KINGS PROTEST nationwide protest rallies coincided with the second weeks of ICE protests in L.A. It's another perfect day and tens of thousands gather for the platonic ideal of a demonstration; there are mariachi bands singing in Spanish and then switching to English when they shout 'Fuck ICE.' I can't speak for the rest of the country's demonstrations, but this has a visceral 'it fucking matters' feel with a plurality of the crowd made up of Mexican American Angelinos, from five-year-olds to abuelas walking with canes, all with stories of family members, some documented, some not, terrorized and living in fear in a city that would disintegrate if they were all deported. Despite the darkness of the situation, hilarity reigns, and the signs are creative: Two Mexican American twentysomethings wave signs reading, 'Please Don't Take Away Our Big Booty Latinas.' Nearby, a young woman wears a Dodgers cap and a T-shirt reading, 'This is terrible. Keep going.'
The protest has its own sanitation workers, slipping by on skateboards with garbage picks and trash bags. Of course, there are some complaints; the sound system sucks when the rally starts, so God only knows what the speakers in front of City Hall were saying to the growing masses.
'The sound was so much better for Bernie, but he had Neil Young,' says a guy named Steve. 'But you couldn't even bring water in.'
He along with two friends is outfitted in purple and gold T-shirts reading 'Justice for Janitors,' the union led by David Huerta, who was manhandled and arrested while peacefully protesting ICE arrests outside the Roybal Federal Building, a few blocks away. I ask Steve where he cleans, and he laughs.
'Oh, I'm not a janitor. I just went to David's office to show support, and they gave them to me.'
The rally ends at 2 p.m. and I duck into my downtown hotel for some respite, a quick check-in with the rest of our dystopian world, and then some sunblock.
And I weep. I woke up this morning to the news that Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband had been assassinated in their home by a man impersonating a policeman. I met Melissa for coffee in St. Paul last October when I was reporting a Tim Walz profile. I'd fucked up my shoulder and was a bit addled and in excruciating pain. She had been patient, kind, and funny.
Hortman and Walz had pushed through a series of social advancements including paid family leave, health care, protection of abortion rights, and free breakfast and lunches for all students. She believed in spending political capital to make lives better rather than hoarding it for future campaigns.
Eventually, our conversation turned to Gov. Walz's decision to call out the national guard when peaceful protests of the strangulation death of George Floyd turned violent.
'In the first 48 hours, there were a lot of peaceful protests, and then it appeared that a lot of people were coming in from out of town,' Hortman told me. 'And for a lot of different reasons, different people took advantage of that moment to create chaos to benefit themselves, whether it's organized crime, whether it's people who benefit from chaos, but it escalated extremely rapidly.' I asked her who benefitted from the chaos in Minneapolis, and she shrugged her shoulders and offered a sad sphinx-like smile.
I decided to make a final trip to the federal building, and on the walk over I mull over Hortman's words in the context of L.A. I remember a Latin phrase that an Italian American politician told me he used to cut through the haze of realpolitik: Cui bono? (Who benefits?) Well, definitely Trump is distracting his supporters from his falling out with Elon Musk, disastrous foreign policies, and ever-changing tariff strategy by rounding up immigrants who his base is already inclined to despise. (Unless, the deported is a friend. Then it is an outrage.) And there's Fox News, keyboard warriors, and AM radio shitheads who hawk trash supplements between segments painting all illegal immigrants as rapists or drug mules. And yes, there are lefty radicals who ruin it for everyone with the idea that problems can only be solved by burning it all down.
I'm processing all of this, but mostly I just want to sit down. I ease myself onto the cement back at my favorite spot about 30 feet from the federal underground garage.
It's not quite 4 p.m., but the place already has a valedictory vibe; everyone is exhausted after six hours in the unforgiving sun, the point has been made, and now it's Sunday-afternoon-coming downtime. A Mexican American man in a cowboy hat softly sings the classic mariachi song 'Hermoso Carino.' He finishes singing and I ask him what the song means. 'It's about a love that knows no limits,' he tells me. The cowboy reaches into a paper bag he's carrying and hands me a pan dulce, a sugar-dusted pastry.
'Take care of yourself.'
I'm about two bites in when a girl, no more than 14, walks over to me after having an urgent conversation in Spanish with a friend.
'You're going to want to move. The police are moving in on both sides. If you stay here you're gonna get arrested.'
I think she is pranking an old gringo for a moment, but then sirens blare and a dozen police cars and SUVs screech into position. I run a block east to Alameda and Aliso just before a couple of dozen LAPD officers with shields and sticks block off the street. I double back about 50 feet and try to see what is happening when a cop shouts at me, 'Get the fuck back.'
I stand on the corner in the broiling sun with a few other confused protesters. A man I'd seen before stands by a blue cooler. I ask him if he has any water left.
'No, but there's a lot of ice in there, just rub it on your face and neck.'
I reach in and pull out a chunk of ice about the size of a baseball. Another cop shouts.
'Hey!'
I don't understand for a moment, and then I realize he thinks I might use the ice as a projectile. I drop it on the ground and it melts away.
Whether by design or coincidence, the police have blocked off the streets to a point where you can't really see what is happening more than a hundred feet away. I make my way up to Arcadia and Los Angeles, about a block and a half away from the front of the federal building. I watch a brave or stupid man step into the faces of the riot police and film them up close.
And then it happens. The now familiar sound of disorienting flash-bang grenades and the 'pop-pop' sound of tear-gas canisters being launched. It's still unclear what precipitated the police moving in — later the LAPD will say bottles were being thrown at their people and a 4 p.m. dispersal order had been issued. No one I know heard the dispersal order.
One thing is clear. My eyes are burning as the tear gas cloud crosses the overpass above 101 to where I'm standing. I move back a block and pour water on my eyes. I text my wife that I'm OK, but my phone battery is about to die. Things go quiet, and I fish out a five-dollar bill and buy some vanilla paleta, a Mexican frozen treat somewhere between ice cream and gelato. I take a couple of bites and turn to tell the guy how good it is, but he has vanished.
It takes a few seconds to realize the police are moving onto the block, and police horses appear seemingly out of the ether. Everyone sprints down Main Street past the gorgeous mosaic windows of La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles — Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church — a two-century-old Spanish mission.
After a few minutes, I walk half a block back up Main Street past a few vendors. A woman is screaming at what appears to be her very frightened teenage daughter.
'Do not run. I am the only one who can protect you!' She picks up a small money box. 'We worked all day for this.' I pull out my phone to try and film the police up ahead, but the older woman's eyes flash and she throws her hands up to block her face. I say I'm sorry.
By now it's 5:30 and all I want to do is figure a way around the police lines and back to my hotel. I retreat to go forward and end up at the corner of Cesar Chavez and North Main. It seems calmer and tired protesters chatter in Spanish, their protest signs bent and folded after a day of marching. Then it happens again, but worse. Sirens blare and there's a seemingly endless line of motorized police and National Guard vehicles, including six or seven oversize black SUVs, each with eight heavily soldiers hanging on from the outside. No one knows which way to run, and it becomes a human stampede. People are screaming, and a mom tucks a small girl in a blue Hello Kitty T-shirt under her arm and looks for a safe place.
I freeze in place, still stupidly holding my cup of paleta. I then sprint across Chavez down Main Street toward the steps of the Metro Plaza Hotel. I'm in the middle of the street when, for the second time in an hour, a cop points his stick toward me.
'Get the fuck out of here.'
There's a few more minutes of chaos and flash-bangs going off.
Then it goes quiet.
Shaking, I begin the walk back to my hotel. And I wonder how people live with this fear every day of their lives. And then I wonder how a government can do this to their people. And I want to break something, anything.
I get back to my room and turn on the television. The president is in Washington, D.C., watching tanks and soldiers with rifles pass him by. The man who never served salutes and smiles. Yesterday, Trump made it explicit that this is just the beginning. He railed on Truth Social that deportation efforts would be ratcheted up in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
Why? If you have been paying attention you will not be surprised.
'These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.'
None of that is true, but the question of who benefits has been answered.
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