False Flags

The LA protests are just human

As I’ve followed the Los Angeles demonstrations, one voice has been missing: those of the actual protestors. 

The White House has called them illegals, foreigners, aliens and instigators; others label them everything from anti-fascist freedom fighters to a national security threat. What almost no one has done is allow the LA protesters to speak in their own words.

I’ve now watched endless footage of cars burning, of protestors taking over highways, of lines pushing back and forth and it all builds a narrative of chaos and which “side” benefits from the message this is all sending.

But what about their actual message?

I’ve scoured the mainstream and social media as well as Youtube looking for people on the streets speaking in their own voice. I’ve pulled together the interviews I could find and a surprising theme emerged: the protests are not just about immigration. They are also an outcry about American society, how ICE and its compatriots have impinged on people’s daily lives.

Channel 5, the gonzo-style show hosted by YouTuber Andrew Callaghan, sent a balaclava-donned correspondent to the streets to talk to the protesters. 

“They’re terrorizing U.S. citizens,” one man said of law enforcement’s deployment of tear gas to disperse the protests. The clear emphasis on how this affects people in general — not just immigrants — surprised me.

Another protester, a black woman named Alex Walls from Louisiana, told CNN that the deportations were “disturbing” to children. “You’re separating people from their kids, families, and whatnot,” she said. “Ya’ll got kids don’t understand what’s going on, seeing this going on. It’s very disturbing.”

Others said explicitly that their motive was to impede the deportations, like Ron Gochez, who also told CNN: “ For every single minute that we were here resisting against the Border Patrol, that was time that they were not out deporting people in our community.” 

There’s no question the protests are about ICE roundups and deportations. But not one interview I’ve found is from a person who said that they were in America illegally. (Which is kind of self-evident: why would such a person risk deportation by attending a protest anyway?)

The more interviews I watched, the more I began to realize that people are just as upset by the imposition of the national security state into daily life as they are about people being deported. 

“I don’t know why we’re living in a police state,” a young man complained. “Everyone’s affected by this.”

“ You go after the criminals, man, the real criminals; not the innocent, hard working people, man,” another man said. “No criminals at Home Depot,” he added, referring to ICE visits to round up of brown people looking for work.

“ The fact that there’s still missing kids, kids being sex trafficked, human trafficking, but yet they'll give the same energy to these immigrants,” a young woman complained.

These are all Americans!

President Trump in his first month in office issued an executive order labeling illegal immigration an “invasion,” thus national security-izing the issue. Trump has condemned the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles as “migrant riots,” with White House officials saying the presence of Mexican flags shows the demonstrations are by foreigners illegally in the United States. 

There’s just one problem: it’s bullshit, as the interviews demonstrate. One of the Mexican flag wavers was interviewed by The New York Times and said that she was both an American and happy to be one.

“I am a very proud American,” said 36 year old Elizabeth Torres, who explained that her grandparents immigrated to the United States. “But I have to show support also for our Mexican brothers and sisters.”

The ethnic component of this spectacle is unmistakable in a city like Los Angeles where roughly half of its population are Hispanics. Speaking out is dismissed by their own government as the disloyal words of an “illegal.” Is it any surprise that people are pissed off?

Try to imagine the hysterical backlash against the Mexican flags happening to, say, the people who’ve protested with Ukrainian flags. It would never happen!

“They’re Hispanic,” a young woman said of the people being deported. “They’re all hispanic.”

Now the National Guard and the military have been added to the combustible mixture, all predicated on the supposed national security threat. While Trump and company scream “foreign invasion,” the opposition cry “fascism.”

Lost in all of this is what the protest is actually about.

— Edited by William M. Arkin