The Los Angeles Protests Are an Act of Self-Defense

Angelenos
mobilized this weekend, after ICE descended on their city and over several days
began making very public arrests. Last week, people arriving at their mandatory
ICE check-ins at a federal building were instead quickly locked up in a makeshift detention center,
where as many as 200 people were being held in basement rooms. (“No food. No
water. Locked in holding rooms for over 12 to 24 hours,” said
Democratic Representative Jimmy Gomez, who represents parts of Los Angeles.) Dozens
of people were arrested at a Home Depot on Friday by masked
agents in tactical gear. Multiple federal agencies assisted ICE. One witness described unidentified agents
descending on food vendors nearby: “They were just grabbing people. They don’t
ask questions. They didn’t know if any of us were in any kind of immigration
process.” Another witness said that he was in his car when ICE agents stopped traffic,
“in all their military gear.” People in the traffic jam could see ICE putting
people into vans. “We weren’t there to protest,” the man told KCAL-TV, but when people got out
of their cars and began to record with their phones, they were teargassed. As
ICE agents raided a business in the Fashion District, footage of some community members
challenging them indicates, LAPD was apparently stationed outside. And as the
news of the raids spread, and more people came out to witness and protest, LAPD
was there to push back, to control, to demobilize.

For
Bass, it seemed, the problem was not that the LAPD was violently policing those
protesting ICE raids; the problem was Trump’s calling in the National Guard to do
the same thing. By this logic, the ICE raids, conducted with the support of myriad
federal agencies, are a terrifying abuse of power that police should not
collaborate in—but it’s fine for police to collaborate by keeping protestors and
witnesses away. The upside-down thinking goes even further: It’s wrong for the
National Guard to put down protests against the will of the governor and city
officials, but it’s fine for state and local law enforcement to do it, so long
as state and local officials want them to. The line of reasoning is maddening,
seemingly designed to scramble and demobilize support for the people of Los
Angeles. Accept the terms of the debate, and you end up in a bizarre argument about
how much violence from which armed agents of the law is acceptable.

Those
with the clearest view are the ones bearing the brunt of such attacks. Whether
it’s the sheriffs, police, or Border Patrol, “it was brutal violence,” said
Ron Gochez, a community organizer, who was part of the protests. “What they
didn’t think was going to happen was that the people would resist.” Over eight hours on Saturday, he said, after
a battle with Border Patrol—“and it was a battle, because there were
people throwing back tear gas, people throwing anything that they could to
defend themselves and to defend the workers that were being surrounded”—the
Border Patrol retreated. “And the hundreds of workers that were in the
factories around them were able to escape,” Gochez recounted. “They were able to go to their cars
and go home. That was only thanks to the resistance that allowed them to go
home that night.” If any community was going to fight back without apology, it was
this one.