46 Comments
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Micaela Rowe's avatar

Born and raised in this city. I went out yesterday despite being scared and the ones escalating the situation were not the protestors. I was offered free masks and water by multiple people, there were bacon wrapped hot dogs and ice cream for sale. Moms with kids, people with dogs, every car driving by was honking in support. All I can say to the administration is…good luck.

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Michael A's avatar

The mainstream media class has a historical aversion to the unwashed masses. Unless there’s a ratings “angle”, they’re loathe to breathe the same unrarefied air as us bozos.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

I get that they're mostly going to be focused on the carnage. But if you're going to have wall-to-wall coverage of a protest, shouldn't you ask a few people what it's even about??

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Carly's avatar

Absolutely!!!! Especially when the majority of protestors speak perfect English and can disprove the ridiculous narrative that everyone is an “illegal/paid protestor/cartel member.”

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

Literally every interview I could find the person spoke perfect english lol.

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Carly's avatar

It seems like broadcasting rational, heartfelt, and empathetic voices would be a disservice to this administration’s rhetoric—therefore, it is purposefully overlooked. Your article did a great job pointing this out without blatantly saying so. :) Well done!

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

Thanks!

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BeauregardIV's avatar

“I tasted tear gas, it tasted like fascism.” Epic

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Clif Brown's avatar

Good work, Ken.

Underlying the entire Trump agenda is bigotry with a flimsy cover of national security. MAGA really should be called MAWA - Make America White Again. As I may have mentioned previously, it has been a bit less than 100 years since the KKK marched openly in DC in full regalia of robes and hoods to keep identities hidden. ICE isn't the KKK, it is worse in that it is government directed and significantly the agents have their faces/heads covered to avoid identification. 100 years of progress?

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Dierk Groeneman's avatar

Wow these are some key missing pieces.

Everyone including me is commenting from ignorance.

(Just today I listened to someone ask in all seriousness: where are the illegals? Why aren't THEY out protesting?)

Anyway, thanks for delivering the rest of the story.

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Silvia Brandon Perez's avatar

Most of this country was indigenous and Mexican… They didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them! This is bullshit settler colonialism! This is quite simply about racism! El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.

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PK's avatar

Many if not most people in central America have significant indigenous ancestry. They were here first. Recently some Dakota people protested the ICE raids in Minneapolis, noting that this land is their land

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

Glad you found it helpful! What was missing, in your experience?

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Dierk Groeneman's avatar

You're the first person who bothered to talk to the protesters. In doing so, you uncovered credible reasons for their actions. Especially notable that their motives go beyond defense of undocumented workers and include general concerns about our descent into a police state.

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Dierk Groeneman's avatar

If it wasn't clear, I was faulting other coverage that omits these important factors.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

I know, was just curious !

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Lori's avatar

I mean if you don't talk to the protestors then any narrative is possible. Thanks for digging into it Ken. Still good memories of your Wisconsin protest interviews. Keep going.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

Thanks! I loved doing that. Genuinely really curious what people think because it’s always more subtle than you expect

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Kennyeffing's avatar

So right on. Total media failure. This is trump’s America. And the entire nation will be protesting this fearful hate-filled divisive tone that is 100% trump’s doing. Major media continue to cower; continue to miss the story.

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Bonnie's avatar

Media and Dems are puppets.I wonder if they know it.

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Kennyeffing's avatar

If you aren’t able to find fault on the political left and the political right, you aren’t thinking critically. We need to find groups to belong to other than political teams. We really do have it in our power to demand better from our leaders.

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Alvis Drawbury's avatar

[While Trump and company scream “foreign invasion,” the opposition cry “fascism.”] i don’t think these two are quite equivalent though— protestors are also “crying fascism” quite rightly. Historically fascism creeps in as the ruling capitalist class approaches the only remaining line item that may be squeezed to rescue profits; costs of labor itself. Oppressed labor is always the cheapest labor, laying a price floor against which all labor ultimately competes. When citizen wages and living costs produce unrest, the barons can either cough up for better wages, or drive the bottom down by threatening the security of already precarious labor. And if that won’t do the trick… well, shit gets real. I’d surmise US employers of prison labor will be maneuvering to get more bodies in prisons, among other foreign alternatives.

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Bill M's avatar

Thank you! The endless play-calling and handicapping of which side has the advantage is driving me nuts. I expect this from Trump and from the media (I've said for years that you can treat the media and Trump as enemies, or even as separate, they are completely intertwined and dependent on each other), but the Democrats are leaning into it as well. They don't want to let the voices of the actual people be heard, but this will be the Democrats' greatest nightmare: the start of a real power base that can resist Trump. Democrats are more scared of that than they are of Trump.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

pure horse race coverage, it's so annoying and empty

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Cécile Stelzer-Johnson's avatar

True. But unfortunately, that drives the ratings. "If it bleeds, it leads". Thanks for shining a light on the actual protestors!

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Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

The Uniparty is happy.

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Lori's avatar

imma have to try me some of that Channel 5 news

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Suzie Gilbert's avatar

This is a really wonderful piece. Thank you.

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Gary Milligan's avatar

The insanity, hypocrisy, anti-constitution, and elitist white supremacy continues. Of course, a balanced and fair "law and order" approach would focus not only on the poor-and-low-income criminal (immigration laws---give me a break) strata but on white-collar crime. Thus, for every iCE agent sent to round up immigrants (or those who simply look like immigrants,) there would be an equal number of ---what is it FTC (?) --- agents on Wall Street rounding up, hand cuffing, hauling off to detention centers illegal traders and market manipulators known to be breaking laws in blue suits where unenforced crimes occur every day. Just saying"...

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Getulio Gonzalez-Mulattieri's avatar

That's just great. The President creating a problem where none existed so that he can solve it in the sloppiest way imaginable to earn points with his dumbass base.

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Ben Riggleman's avatar

> While Trump and company scream “foreign invasion,” the opposition cry “fascism.”

What a clanging, hollow note to end this piece on. You can hate the Dems, you can roll your eyes at the "fascism" accusations, but Trump's actions in LA only give them credence! NOTHING in this piece says otherwise. The protestors themselves are calling this fascist. One of the first guys interviewed in Callaghan's vid calls it "Gestapo tactics." You're showing an ugly kind of inverse partisanship here.

And for what it's worth, I don't even necessarily agree with the protestors, or the Democrats. Trump *has* some kind of mandate for ICE raids. But he has probably broken the law here, if not in the raids themselves, then by deploying the military to LA under false pretenses, and I am very troubled by his escalating rhetoric, including his statement suggesting the governor should be arrested. It's looking bad. It's not crazy to gravitate to the "opposition" that is calling his actions "fascist." Even if that is mistaken.

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Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

What opposition? The Democrats aren’t an opposition party; they just play one on tv.

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Bonnie's avatar

For me, what most everyone said below seems true in one way or another!

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Bored's avatar

America seems to be in the early stages of its descent into nazism. But instead of scapegoating Jews it’s scapegoating migrants, specifically Mexicans. They’ve already started throwing them into concentration camps in foreign countries just like the nazis. I’m sure we’ll find out those camps are actually death camps eventually. I’ve never been more ashamed to be an American.

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