‘Enough is enough.' Why Los Angeles is still protesting, despite fear.

Washington Post

a day ago

LOS ANGELES — Some came because they have friends or family without papers. Others after they saw footage of the National Guard on their city's streets. And still more have packed into parks and plazas, protesting with hopes that their collective presence will send a loud message: We're not going to tolerate this.
The demonstrations, largely organized by activist groups and labor unions, that have unfolded in Los Angeles and its suburbs since Friday have collectively drawn thousands of people outraged by a federal immigration crackdown sowing fear across the region.
The protests have not been especially large by past standards of this metropolis, but they have played out under an intense national spotlight as President Donald Trump fixated on isolated episodes of violence between the crowds and police. Trump has called those in attendance 'insurrectionists,' 'looters,' 'troublemakers' and 'criminals.'
And Trump has only escalated his confrontation with the city in the past 48 hours, ordering thousands of Guard troops and hundreds of active-duty Marines to deploy despite local officials' insistence that the situation was under control.
Though Trump has portrayed a lawless Los Angeles — and nights have seen more direct clashes than days — the vast majority of protesters have been peaceful and determined. In interviews with The Washington Post, many demonstrators said they felt it was a crucial time to speak out. Here are some of their stories.
Marquise Bailey lives downtown, just blocks from the federal courthouse where police clashed with protesters late Monday. After several days of being surrounded by sounds of those gathered and the officers responding — of hearing the chants, sirens and helicopters circling — he felt compelled to join for the first time. His husband pushed him in his wheelchair to the fringe of the crowd. Bailey held a Mexican flag in honor of his Afro-Latino roots.
'It's the same thing to me as Black Lives Matter,' the mural artist explained. 'We all are equals regardless of what color we are. And everybody needs support.'
It was a chaotic scene. Young people were spray-painting the wall of a building behind him. One lobbed a water bottle at the sheriff's deputies guarding the building.
'I've been seeing police officers with tear gas. They've been out with rubber bullets, breaking up peaceful protesting,' Bailey said. But there was another side, too: 'I've seen a lot of graffiti, tagging while we're trying to get the video. Everyone is mad, people are upset and they want their voices heard. They're throwing things in the crowd, which is why we're moving around trying to keep it as safe as possible. It's like a back-and-forth provocation.'
He condemned Trump's deploying Marines to the protests and the administration's efforts to deport immigrants with legal status. 'He's doing anything to get us in an uproar.'
Loud bangs sounded as police fired nonlethal munitions nearby, and Bailey started to wheel back with his husband. Protesters threw a firework nearby, and he retreated a bit more. Once the bangs stopped, he moved closer again.
'Downtown is getting hit the hardest,' he said, 'but it's for a cause.'
As he walked his Chihuahua near his downtown L.A. apartment after his third day of protesting, Mike Nakagawa considered the state of America.
'Military people brought in against civilians — I never would have believed it,' he said. And he's uncertain where it will lead: 'We're all kind of in uncharted territory.'
Nakagawa had never joined a demonstration before on behalf of immigrants. But the divisions in the country reminded him of the schisms during the Vietnam War, and as a Japanese American — son of a naturalized citizen and U.S. Army veteran who volunteered for the front line during the Korean War — he felt compelled 'to show up to support the rights of people to assemble.'
'That's how change was made, whether it was Vietnam, civil rights or in my ancestry, the incarceration in World War II of Japanese America,' he said.
The president's deployment of Marines, who are not trained to handle protests like these, particularly troubles him. 'The politicization of the military like this is something I just, I don't think anybody imagined,' he said. He's also worried that troops might be ordered to shoot at demonstrators and wonders if they would later defend that by saying they were just following orders.
'I can't imagine the legal issue involved,' Nakagawa said. 'I won't profess to know them all, but it seems pretty clear to me that this is kind of over the line. … I'm trying to absorb the idea that it's happening and candidly, how it can be allowed.'
Then there's the cost of the military response, which a Pentagon official on Tuesday pegged at $134 million for 60 days of operations. 'You talk about waste, fraud, and abuse — I can't imagine this is saving any money.'
What the president blasts as an insurrection, Nakagawa sees as an exercise in democracy. 'That's what people are out here for. That's what America itself was founded upon,' he said. 'We're not Russia. We are not Tiananmen Square.'
Stephanie Urias is the daughter of a father from Guatemala and mother from Mexico. Both are legal U.S. residents. And yet Urias, who works as a health-care supervisor, has never felt so much fear.
'It's like the Hunger Games: Our people are being hunted down,' she said. 'This is no way of living at this point, being scared to go out your own house.'
Her heritage, their history, was what brought her to downtown Los Angeles on Monday, where she joined a protest outside of the federal courthouse. 'It's important to speak up for them because they can't vote,' she said, carrying a sign that declared: 'I'm coming for everything my family crossed for.'
Urias heard about Trump deploying Marines to the protests, a decision she opposes. She questions why Trump didn't send troops in to quell the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
'They attacked police officers,' she said of the people who stormed the building. 'Here we are, we're [protesting] peacefully, but yet they're sending the Marines, the National Guard, the cops, everybody. Why didn't they do that for January 6?'
She and friend Susana Rivera had backed a block away from the crowd after police issued a dispersal order. Plumes of white smoke rose toward the sky. Some people were lobbing water bottles and shooting off fireworks.
The women stood on a street corner, wary but reluctant to leave.
'It's part of our constitutional rights,' Rivera said.
'This is what America should be like,' DeMille Halliburton thought, standing in Grand Park with friends and surveying the crowd of strangers around him, brought together by their opposition to the immigration raids taking place across Los Angeles.
'It was powerful to see people young and old, of all different races and ethnicities,' he said. 'It was a powerful statement, and I hope that comes across. The false narrative is that these are people who are only out there to loot and cause destruction.'
The rally, organized by the Service Employees International Union, reflected the city itself — a place home to astonishing diversity, where many are furious with what they view as the federal government's incursion into L.A.'s immigrant communities. Halliburton felt compelled to show up Monday morning, when he'd normally be starting his workweek at an entertainment insurance firm, because of what he'd heard and seen over the weekend, including images of National Guard forces deploying to downtown.
'Enough is enough,' said Halliburton, who moved to Los Angeles from New York nearly 30 years ago. 'What else can we do other than go out and let people see that we're not standing for it?'
He has grown increasingly dismayed by the rhetoric from Trump administration officials; to him, they seem more interested in fanning the flames than dousing them. 'It's a powder keg, and he's lighting the match,' Halliburton said of the president.
The presence of federal forces made him nervous, but he purposefully chose to attend an event organized by SEIU, one of the state's most prominent labor unions, because he knew it wouldn't be co-opted by radical groups seeking violent confrontation with authorities.
And the show of solidarity that greeted him was heartening. 'It's Black and Brown people who are being targeted,' he said. 'But I'm happy to see it's not just Black and Brown people protesting. It's everyone.'
L.A. police in riot gear were lined up in front of their downtown headquarters. Graffiti denouncing them, the president and Immigration and Customs Enforcement covered nearby buildings. Protesters walked by carrying Mexican flags. Jennifer Roecklein stood silently across the street with a friend, taking in the scene.
She had come to join Monday's demonstration because of how the ICE raids have impacted her community, she said, hitting close to home with her partner, who is Mexican and comes from an immigrant family.
'I want to make sure that everyone feels safe and secure, and they don't need to worry every day about if they're going to be detained or they're going to lose a family member or someone they love,' she said.
Roecklein works in operations, lives in Los Angeles County and has protested before on immigration issues, but Monday was her first day since the raids began late last week. 'It's really startling to see the presence, the force that is here, and the gear that the LAPD and others are in,' she admitted.
The message she took from their stance? 'You want to be safe? Okay, well we're going to make you feel less safe,' she said. 'This is like the city has been taken ahold of by police.'
She called Trump's deployment of Marines 'a gross overstatement' and 'a violation.'
'I know that there is a fierce force that's fighting every action he takes, but it is scary the lengths that he is willing to go,' she said. Yet the military's arrival won't keep her away. As a White person, she feels a duty to show up: 'I'm a privileged person. I need to be here. I need to take up the space for those that can't and don't feel safe doing so.'