Protesters March, Police Surround, and the Cycle Resets: Dispatch From L.A.
As hundreds gathered to oppose ICE raids, a familiar pattern played out: peace by day, flash-bangs by night.
"They start shooting, I'm taking off," said Arley Washington, a protester I met on the bus, when he spotted the phalanx of police officers sealing off the corner of Los Angeles and Temple Streets. Protesters who wanted to block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters had to walk around.
Washington, who was downtown on an errand and figured the protesters could use some support, passed teenagers waving homemade posters reading, "Tearing Apart FAMILIES is EVIL" and "ICE out of LA," vendors selling Mexican flags from a pull cart, a half-naked man taking a bath in a fire hydrant, and walls of fresh graffiti riffing on some version of "FUCK TRUMP."
On the other side of the 101, Washington spotted another line of cops and planned an escape route for when they rushed the crowd. "I got shot with a rubber bullet back in 2020 at the [Black Lives Matter] protests," he said, lifting his shirt to show a small dent in his gut. "The police, they were lined up and they were shooting far, like two city blocks; he hit me from that far."
Law enforcement, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the California National Guard, were a lot closer than that on Monday—a few hundred lined every entry and exit point of Los Angeles Street from the freeway and Temple Street, forming a sort of box canyon for the 800 or so people who came to protest the ICE raids that happened in L.A. last Friday. The players were who you might call the daytime crew, each squad doing what they nearly always do at the protest du jour: cops standing stock still, saying nothing, and staring into the distance, while protesters chanted, waved flags, and reminded one another to stay chill.
The crowd was chill, which absolutely no one who wants to claim L.A. is "a city of criminals," as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said, is going to believe. They have cause not to believe it, based on what nearly always happens at protests when the night crew rolls in: looting and busting in cop car windows, not motivated by protecting immigrant rights but rather by any opportunity to engage in mayhem.
If that's the loop we're stuck in—inroads made during the day eradicated before sunup the next—the peaceful protesters will stay at it anyway. They won't say it's OK for DHS to pull people from their cars, to pull them from their jobs—another reason Washington came down on Monday.
"I'm Native American, and what's happening seems more racial, not just because you're illegal," he said. "I worked at a beach club over the weekend, like rich, very fancy. And the workers, some of them were illegal and they were asking the manager, what would you do if ICE came? They said, it's a private business, they could furnish a letter stating ICE is not allowed to enter the premises, and basically told the ones that are illegal, there are basements; to basically hide."
Washington found a place in the shade to watch as the show played out: students reminding everyone to stay peaceful; a smiling grandma leaning on her walker; skater boys; scooter boys; people waving Mexican flags, American flags, an Israeli flag; a car with a smashed-in grill rolling slowly down the street with its radio blaring, "Fuck the police"; a young Latina offering bottles of cold water ("It's the least I can do"); an anti-fascist (his sweatshirt said so) handing out energy bars; people covering their faces in bandanas, in a luchador mask, in ski masks; boomers holding signs with overcomplicated messages; and 200 or so people shouting directly at the National Guard soldiers on the steps of DHS, none saying or doing anything in return. It was clear they didn't need to respond. Nothing was getting out of hand; there were no altercations whatsoever.
And yet…
"I look too Mexican, I'm out," said Washington, just before a message passed through the crowd that police were going to declare the gathering an unlawful assembly, meaning anyone who didn't disperse could be arrested. Within 10 minutes, 80 percent of the people had bailed.
"Run!" people shouted. Most did, from the dozens of cops who began pressing into the remaining crowd, shooting off flash-bang grenades. The newly arrived night crew protesters did the opposite. They got right in the cops' faces, shouting what they always shout: "Kill yourself" and "All cops are bastards," and, in one case, a disheveled man keening, "I will never forgive you!" over and over.
The rest of us ran—you want to avoid rubber bullets, which a young man doubled over by a light pole did not manage to do. I asked him where he was hit.
"In the nuts," he squeaked and doubled back over.
Ten minutes later, the day crew had been replaced by the night crew, who had apparently been staging themselves on Temple Street. They came in homemade riot gear while shouting that this is what they'd come for, they took out their cameras and changed the picture as the rubber bullets began to fly.
