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LA is Burning
Stick with me on this one.
Last May, in the year 2024 BT (Before Trump), my wife and I were in a very long and very slow line of people outside Huntington Place in downtown Detroit, waiting to enter the large convention center to attend the Detroit NAACP’s 69th Annual Freedom Fund Dinner where President Joe Biden was the featured speaker. Unlike other years when we had attended, this time there was a massive police presence standing between us and a large gathering of very loud and angry protesters.
The protesters were there because they vehemently opposed President Biden’s continuing support for Israel in the face of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who had been slaughtered by Israeli defense forces in response to a horrible attack by the terrorist group Hamas on innocent Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023 when approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed. To date, just for the record, 54,607 Palestinians have now been killed according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
I make note of that fact because I strongly support the cause of the Palestinian people, especially when it comes to the atrocity that continues to rage out of control in Gaza. That means I actually supported the cause of the protesters who were mad at us for going to hear President Biden.
It also means that, as much as I supported Biden, I have always felt that his position when it came to Gaza was flat out wrong. He was far too accommodating of Israel, no matter what they did, and to me, his unwillingness to take a much stronger stand in support of the Palestinians in Gaza was comparable to President Lyndon Johnson’s twisted support of the Vietnam War. It was the worst decision of his presidency, and it cost him.
But same as with Biden, many of those who relentlessly opposed the man refused to see that his misguided position on Vietnam was not the ONLY thing he ever did. He also passed two of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in history, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Still, to a degree, I could understand. Many of those protesting were themselves Palestinians or of Arab descent, and some of them had family members and friends who had either been killed or who were still suffering from the injustice. To them, this was beyond personal. To them, it didn’t matter what else Biden had done or, later, what Vice President Kamala Harris would have been able to do. The only thing that mattered was doing the right thing for the Palestinians in Gaza. And so, as was their right, they protested. Not just outside Huntington Place but around the country.
I remember later remarking to a friend of mine as we discussed the Gaza situation (this was after Biden had stepped down to make way for Kamala) that the anti-Biden anti-Kamala protesters were protesting because they could.
In other words, they still had the right to protest, and the laws of our nation protected the right to peaceful protest. But what many of them didn’t seem to understand, or want to understand, was that if Trump was elected then there was a good chance those rights would no longer mean a damned thing.
It was already clear this man had no interest in the law, especially when it came to protecting the rights of angry non-white people. It was obvious then that Trump was a White Nationalist intent only on following the laws he liked and bending or breaking the ones he didn’t. The insurrection of January 6 should have been all the proof we needed to figure that one out.
But now we have the protests in Los Angeles. Protests featuring hundreds of angry protesters who are demonstrating against Trump and his use of ICE to illegally round up and deport immigrants and unfortunate Americans alike. Trump couldn’t stomach that level of opposition, so he deployed thousands of soldiers to stomp out the protests.
From CNN:
“The protests began last Friday over ICE raids that detained dozens of people, including at their workplaces. On Tuesday morning, Mayor Bass said she hadn’t received any reports of further ICE raids happening that day – but local police and officials say they are being kept in the dark, and are not notified before raids occur. “We do not know where and when the next raids will be,” Bass said on Monday.”
And in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott already said on Tuesday that he plans to deploy members of the Texas National Guard to various locations throughout the state in anticipation of #NoKingsDay protesters.
Also on Tuesday, Trump warned that anybody who plans to visibly protest his little birthday parade on Saturday will face the consequences and “will face very heavy force.” Which, of course, is exactly what he is hoping for. Riots, chaos, and bloodshed in the streets are the sort of things that make him gleeful. Make him feel big and strong.
On Rachel Maddow’s show on Monday evening, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called out Trump’s antics not only as a “provocation’, but also as something potentially much more worrisome. Bass suggested Trump may be using his strongman tactics in Los Angeles as a test case for the sort of chaos on demand that he’d like to roll out nationwide.
That test needs to fail. Hard.
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I agree with all your points today, so there's really no need for me to comment, but I would like to emphasize that it's vital to keep Saturday's demonstrations peaceful. Trump will try to show that his "enemies" are violent, but it's important that liberals think of each other. If there are hooligans breaking windows in Seattle, we lose ground in Kansas City.
I agree with all your points today, so there's really no need for me to comment, but I would like to emphasize that it's vital to keep Saturday's demonstrations peaceful. Trump will try to show that his "enemies" are violent, but it's important that liberals think of each other. If there are hooligans breaking windows in Seattle, we lose ground in Kansas City.