LA on ICE

Greetings from L.A. – that burning, trash heap of a city invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals! A dangerous, hellscape of paid insurrectionists intent on ripping away the fabric of our country!!

The place that I call home.

Well, guess what TACO —

WE LOVE L.A.!!!!

And thanks to you, now more people than ever, in NOT ONLY the country BUT THE WORLD, love it.

That’s because this week everyone saw us trying to save democracy by exercising our constitutional right to protest.

And if the worst you can say about protestors in a city of about 12.5 million is that there were no fatalities and comparatively little violence or vandalism (Note: The worst of the latter being a couple of self-driving Waymo cars being set on fire, something I myself contemplated doing in frustration long before any protest) we’re doing pretty well.

Especially because it’s not every day you see your home experience a real invasion. The kind where the federal government sends in masked, unidentified and armed federal agents to infiltrate your neighborhood and arbitrarily grab your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, acquaintances and fellow citizens off the street, throw them into vans and, for no discernible reason they will articulate, attempt to disappear them into custody, perhaps never to be heard from again.

It’s like some crazy old rich 79-year-old Floridian-transplanted-from-New York’s birthday wish in a pretend game where he’d get to be president of the United States for the next four years and do anything he wants.

Oh….

I know. It’s not funny. But it could be because this should all just be some massive American punk move from a gaggle of overprivileged man-boys and mean girls with too much money and time and privilege on their hands.

Oh…

Since Homeland Security’s “invasion” of Southern California earlier in the week, the only real and true invasion going on in any of the many neighborhoods I know includes secret ICE agents joined by 2000 members of the National Guard and 700 fighting-ready U.S. Marines with military weapons, all guarding the federal building downtown and patrolling a few key blocks nearby for no reason other than they were ordered to by a rogue federal government commandeered by a rogue president.

Which is to say nothing of the hundreds of L.A. police and sheriff officers shooting rubber bullets and tear gas bombs downtown on Saturday (6/14), as millions in other cities nationwide symbolically joined us in the No Kings Protest against the democracy-breaking Trump policies.

But let’s back up a little.

Earlier this week, our current, ahem, POTUS took power over the National Guard from the governor of a state (Note: In this case, California but coming soon to a state near you) for the first time in more than 60 years, a power grab now being fought by California in appeals court and soon likely the U.S. Supreme Court. A couple days later he topped it off with commanding U.S. (Note: OUR) military troops, the kind trained NOT to keep the peace but to instead be efficient killing machines in places as far off as Fallujah, Kandahar and soon likely…well, you get the idea…into our city to pick off anyone who couldn’t pass for a white Afrikaner farmer. (Note: Let’s just say even I could in a pinch).

Meanwhile, here in L.A. hundreds of non-white children and adults are being pulled off the streets from Home Depots, schools, supermarkets, playgrounds and farmlands. This week the local news was rife with six and eight year olds crying and screaming as a parent was literally dragged away from them as their older teenage sibling, barely managing to hold it together, tried to comfort them. Then there was the story of the late twenties Black military vet shoved to his knees by one of these uniformed baboons and put in a chokehold because he had the temerity to walk up the steps of the Veteran Administration building downtown to check on his benefits (Note: This was midday and there was no reason NOT to enter the V.A. that day). Though the one seared into my brain is that of the ICE agents with kerchiefs around their mouths chasing down a Mexican farm worker from the Central Valley through a strawberry patch he was employed to work in.

Of course, all this was nothing compared to what happened to the senior United States Senator from my home state of California, Alex Padilla, when he dared to pose a question to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, aka ICE Barbie and renowned dog killer, Kristi Noem. Cosplaying her version of chief immigration enforcer – she, of the petrified plastic surgery face accentuated by plentiful hair extensions and full pageant-style makeup, was telling a series of mistruths that culminated with this ominous threat to anyone thinking of protesting anything she or her agents choose to do in southern California.

“We are NOT going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

At which point OUR senator, the one who was democratically elected, along with our governor and our mayor by me and millions of other Californians, proclaimed from the back of the room as he approached:

“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary. Because the fact of the matter is …”

At which point he was grabbed by a bunch of agents, dragged out of the room, tackled onto the ground and physically held down by several men on the floor who grabbed his wrists behind his back and handcuffed him in full, proud view of the cameras. And no, I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. If you haven’t already, you can view it here.

Here’s the thing about our Senator Padilla. He’s a graduate of MIT and an engineer, an L.A. native who was put through school by two Mexican immigrant parents – a Dad who worked as a short order cook and a mother who cleaned houses. A guy who trained as an engineer and could have made a ton of money doing that but instead chose to enter politics in the 1990s because he wanted to give voice to a community of people who didn’t have the education and power to speak for themselves to the powers that be. A guy who’s soft-spoken, hard-working and extremely well-liked by his Senate colleagues. Someone who would never think of killing their 14 month old puppy instead of taking the time to train it properly, or ever consider being the public face of a modern-day version of Hitler’s Brownshirts.

If I sound a bit worked up over this it’s because:

I am. And –

2. While Sen. Padilla was being ICE-handled by Cruella’s goons on Thursday, I was five blocks away sitting in a large room at the L.A. Criminal Court House waiting to be called in for jury duty.

I can’t say I was shocked when the news alerts about all this popped up in my phone but nevertheless I was taken aback. That is until another potential juror, a thirtyish woman from Thailand, nervously approached me and tentatively asked if I’d ever been on a jury before. She was smart, had a cell phone, was conversive in the language but underneath it all looked terrified. It was as if she felt like if she made one wrong move or gave one wrong answer some masked man out of the corner would emerge out of the shadows and take her away.

I chalked it up to me just being dramatic (Note: Or as my shrink has said more than once, “inclined to piece things together in order to tell a story.”). But when we were upstairs, sitting on benches outside the courtroom door to which we’d been assigned, and she requested to sit by me so I could “help guide her” through it, I wasn’t so sure.

Turns out I was right…and then some.

Somehow being right this time didn’t feel this good

Once inside the courtroom, I looked around at about 40 or so of my fellow potential jurors, well more than half of whom were of Mexican, Black, Asian or some other non-white ethnicity – truly an L.A. melting pot — and heard us all verbally answer the judge’s questions about our jobs, previous experience with law enforcement, and prior jury service. What quickly became abundantly clear to me – storyteller or not – was that the demeanor of every single non-white person ranged from cautious and concerned to absolutely intimidated and frightened. People stumbled over their words, told stories of police harassment and witnessing violent crime, and expressed outright concern over what constituted a right or wrong answer or whether they’d said too much or too little.

As for the answers from the majority of us white folks, and the manner in which we gave them, well let’s just say I wish there was a new term for, um, Caucasian privilege, (Note: Did I make one up?) since everything about the term is so profoundly embarrassing and enraging to me.

As it should be to anyone who cares about democracy in 2025 and beyond. #Resist.

Oh, and P.S. – After I confidently said to the defense attorney I’d have no trouble at all with the concept of reasonable doubt in the case potentially before us, one where a woman of color was being tried for a crime against the state, I was immediately dismissed by the city’s prosecuting attorney from jury duty.

Make of that what you will. But also know that this very kind of Caucasian privilege is what too many of my “kind” in Washington are fighting to preserve.

Randy Newman – “I Love LA”

09.25.22

by notesfromachair

The Others

There is a 305 feet tall monument in New York Harbor that was built as a symbol to welcome all immigrants into the United States.

It is called the Statue of Liberty and was a gift from France to the U.S. in the late 1800s to honor American values and the end of slavery (Note: Ahem) after the Civil War.

The idea for this gift came from a conversation between Edouard Laboulaye, a politician, law professor and president of the French Anti-Slavery Society, and the sculptor Frederic Bartholdi.

I’ve thought a lot about the Statue in recent weeks as the United States continues to have a centuries old debate about immigration.

Among the questions raised in this debate are statements like:

–How many do we have to take?

– What about US, or the U.S.?

– We feel bad for “those people” but right now we don’t have enough American jobs for real Americans.

And my favorite:

– Why must we dilute American culture, religion and skin color with THEM, to the point where our very own AMERICAN culture, religion and skin color, gets watered down and rendered unrecognizable?

There is no point getting into the details of any one of those questions, and many more, over immigration to a country whose very existence was built on a nation full of immigrants from an oppressive society traveling to a new country where everyone from anywhere would theoretically be free to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That the U.S. has not always lived up to its mission statement is not in debate. But that this was always a fact of its intention is undeniable if you subscribe to historical facts, or any facts at all.

This week I watched the superb three-part PBS documentary The U.S. and The Holocaust by filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein.

It’s a riveting six hours of overtly watchable, if maddening, history that sadly feels all too contemporary.

This is not only because it gives us a painstaking account of the rise and, not necessarily guaranteed at the time, fall of the Nazi Party.

Rather it is due to the fact that with the myriad of interviews with people who were there, combined with historical footage, governmental documents, and accounts from some of those serving the White House during those years, it explains the reluctance of the U.S. to open its doors fully to Jews desperate to escape (nee migrate) here, at the time.

As the film puts it, this was principally due to:

a. A repressively strict immigration quota system and, more importantly,

b. A nationwide resistance to allowing our country to become overrun with others who would threaten the religious, economic and social balance in the U.S.

In simpler terms, this means Jews who would be needy, Jews who would take American jobs and, mostly, Jews that were branded as inferior and responsible for the economic troubles real Germans, nee Europeans, were forced to endure during the 1930s.

It wasn’t until several decades later when America had already won the war; six million Jews, not to mention many millions of others, had been killed; and the country had fully recovered from the Depression it was still reeling from in the 1930s, that US immigration quotas were lifted.

Yet all the while most of the top decision makers in the U.S. government knew of the grave danger and mass murders the Jews in Europe were enduring all through the 1930s.

Also, as the filmmakers inform us, public sentiment AGAINST welcoming any more European Jewish immigrants was well over 70% during most of that time.

This included a large and very rabid Nativist, Anti-Semitic movement dominating a significant section of public and private institutions in the U.S. being spearheaded by people like much adored, wholly American aviation hero Charles Lindbergh.

Well, what do you do when so many in a country don’t want to open its doors for outsiders from another country and culture to come inside?

How about when those citizens, already hurting from their own economic woes, claim there is no room for THEM?

These questions plague us to this day. To wit:

What can you say when people whose lives are in danger, people who have no physical resemblance to the majority of US, literally arrive here (Note: We are more connected these days and have better transportation) by the tens of thousands?

Do you tighten the borders, raise the quotas and build a theoretical and/or literal wall to keep them out? (Note: Also known as buying them bus or plane tickets to simply get them out of your sight and away from your town).

Or do you take history into account, visit New York Harbor (note: physically or virtually) and consider who you are as a nation and how you can learn from your past mistakes?

Here is some information about our very own Lady Liberty that might shed some light on things, as she is wont to do anyway.

Mr. Laboulaye, who as mentioned had the idea for Her in the first place, was a staunch abolitionist and supporter of the Union Army during the Civil War. In other words, he was rabidly against slavery, especially the kind that helped build the United States.

So when that particular form of servitude was officially outlawed here (Note: Ahem, again) he decided it could be significant to have a proper symbol of freedom greeting all newcomers on their arrival to these shores of freedom.

It would be the first visual they saw upon arrival, an encouraging beacon lighting the road to a new life in the offing.

That sculpture, Lady Liberty, actually depicts the Roman Liberty goddess, Libertas. She holds a torch high above her head in her right hand and in her left is a tablet on which the Roman numerals for American Independence Day, July 4, 1776, is inscribed.

Fundraising efforts included visiting the torch for 50 cents as the platform was being built (1876, Philadelphia)

But the pedestal on which she stands, which would become part of the statue we know, took more than a decade plus to finance and build in the U.S. separately through donations spearheaded by a member of the media, a newspaper publisher (Note: Imagine that!) named Joseph Pulitzer.

It accounts for half the height of what is now one of the most iconic monuments in the world and bears a plaque of the poem The New Colossus, written by 19^th century poet Emma Lazarus.

Not coincidentally, Ms. Lazarus was a Sephardic Jew from an immigrant family of Portuguese descent, as well as an activist on behalf of Jewish immigrants. (Note: Imagine that, again!).

And though her poem was not written specifically for the Statue her words have, over the years, become synonymous with its intent.

Among the most famous is this section:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This is not to say that it takes someone Jewish inside the U.S. or a foreigner from outside the country (Note: In France, no less!) to show and tell us what democracy and American values are all about.

However, it has always been of interest to me that it took Czech born film director Milos Forman to make so many great films chronicling America, including the quintessential American counterculture musical, Hair; the fictional story of E.L. Doctorow’s America in Ragtime; an unlikely depiction and ultimate condemnation of American censorship in The People vs. Larry Flynt; and a celebration of oddball American creativity in the Andy Kaufman biopic, Man in the Moon.

It has also not escaped me that the very, very New York Jewish immigrant, Irving Berlin, wrote one of most popular anthems the U.S. conservative movement has ever wrapped its arms around, God Bless America.

All this is to say that every once in a while, and perhaps more often than that, it’s nice to be reminded who we really are, or strive to be, by some of the OTHERS who, rightly or wrongly, admired US.

And to welcome them into the fold and learn from them the lessons we were all supposed to have known in the first place.

Aretha Franklin – “God Bless America”

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: immigration

LA on ICE

The Others