Who's telling the truth? Searching for a shared reality amid L.A. protests
The notion of a shared, definitive reality remained elusive Monday in Los Angeles, as anti-ICE protests roiled the city for a fourth day.
Had the city descended into lawless pandemonium, as Fox News proclaimed?
Or were there pockets of havoc amid largely peaceful protests — with both concentrated in a relatively narrow geographic area, while workaday business continued as usual on a warm spring weekend across the rest of our sprawling metropolis?
After spending the day in and around downtown's Civic Center, where sign-carrying demonstrators overflowed from Gloria Molina Grand Park east to various, newly graffitied federal buildings, I would argue that the latter description hews far closer to the truth.
But after more than a decade as a reporter, I would be the first to admit that objectivity is in the eye of the beholder. And even then, it's largely a mirage.
A few collected facts
A handful of city workers began their morning outside the towering Art Deco edifice of Los Angeles City Hall, assessing the damage from Sunday night's protests. Graffiti, with one ubiquitous expletive preceding the word 'ICE' in about a dozen places, marred the granite exterior, with roughly a dozen broken windows on the south and west sides of the building.
Chaos flared in other parts of downtown Los Angeles over the weekend, leaving sidewalks littered with shattered glass, and scattered buildings boarded up in anticipation of more trouble. At least 74 people were arrested across the region on suspicion of vandalism, looting, violence and more across the region, authorities said. The detritus visible Monday morning was ugly, but not dissimilar from what I saw after covering dozens of downtown protests over the years, particularly during the first Trump administration.
By noon Monday, thousands of union members, immigrant rights activists and supporters filled the grassy knoll overlooking City Hall at a boisterous —but peaceful — rally demanding the release of SEIU California President David Huerta, who was arrested and injured during Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids last week.
At one point, the crowd danced and sang along to 'La Bamba,' with an emcee declaring, 'I want to hear the loudest 'Bamba' ever heard in this damn town,' over a loudspeaker. Huerta was released hours later.
'I think folks are choosing to amplify images of chaos instead of images of love and solidarity and community building,' Assemblymember Isaac Bryan said Monday afternoon, standing with a gaggle of clergy outside the federal court building where Huerta was being arraigned. 'I was out in the streets yesterday, and what I saw was street vendors serving protesters who were dancing, with calls for freedom and to be safe in their own communities.'
Further military escalation
By late afternoon, the federal government announced that it would be sending 700 Marines to Los Angeles — another staggering and historic escalation, amid a series of staggering and historic escalations.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom also said Monday afternoon that the Trump administration would be sending an additional 2,000 National Guard troops to the region, a move that Newsom characterized as 'reckless' and 'pointless.'
'This isn't about public safety. It's about stroking a dangerous President's ego,' Newsom said.
The mayor's version of events
Addressing the public on Monday evening from the city's emergency operations center, Mayor Karen Bass spoke to the raw panic that the surprise raids were fueling in a region where hundreds of thousands of people live without legal authorization and mixed-status families are common.
'I can't emphasize enough the level of fear and terror that is in Angelenos right now, not knowing if tomorrow or tonight, it might be where they live. It might be their workplace. Should you send your kids to school? Should you go to work?' Bass said, referring to the raids.
The mayor also took aim at the dueling visions of reality at play, saying she had read a troubling description of Los Angeles as a place 'invaded and occupied by illegal aliens,' where 'violent insurrectionist mobs were swarming and attacking our federal agents.
'I don't know if anybody has seen that happen, but I've not seen that happen,' Bass declared.
'Obviously there has been violence, and the violence is unacceptable,' the mayor continued. But so were the descriptions of the 'migrant invasion' and 'migrant riots' in the city, she suggested, and the supposition that order would be restored if those same migrants were expelled.
'How is this a description? This is a despicable description of our city,' Bass said. 'Our city needs to come together now and not accept this, and not allow us to be divided.'
A poem to start your Tuesday
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Today's great photo is from Friends of Big Bear Valley in Big Bear Lake where Gizmo, the second eaglet of a family of eagles monitored by a 24-hour webcam, flew from its nest this weekend.
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