What’s Really Happening in Los Angeles vs. What You’re Hearing Online

Sonali Kolhatkar: It started in San Diego in early June, when a restaurant was struck by an ICE raid. It moved into Los Angeles a week later, when on June 6, ICE went into a Home Depot parking lot in Paramount and to an outlet in the Garment District. That same day, David Huerta, the President of SEIU-USWW, was coming to the defense of one of the immigrants and was very roughly shoved to the ground. His head was smashed against the sidewalk. First, he was hospitalized, and then arrested. David Huerta is a beloved labor leader. There was a huge rally on Monday, June 9, the day that he was arraigned in downtown Los Angeles. 

On Saturday, there was a No Kings rally that attracted about 30,000 people. That was the official count. And that was part of the 2,200 plus actions happening around the country that were organized and set up to coincide with Trump’s military parade.

Alvarez: In your sense, was the National Guard and the Marines sent in because things were so unruly on the ground? Or did those additional troops instigate the upsurge in violence? 

Kolhatkar: It’s very much a manufactured crisis. It started with the ICE raids. In Los Angeles, our communities are so deeply intertwined. Most of us don’t know or care who among us is undocumented or not. The one common struggle we have is the violence of poverty, but the problem of immigrant violence in cities is as real as rampant voter fraud in elections. So Trump started the problem, and then when people refused to take it lying down, that was the opening he was waiting for to get the National Guard involved. 

There is a ton of graffiti in downtown L.A., almost all of it on federal buildings. There were some cars burned — the cars were Waymos, AI-powered cars. And it should be noted that these cars are basically gathering surveillance and sharing it with police. I’ve been on the streets of L.A.and I did not for a second feel threatened by anyone other than armed cops. 

Trump is trying to see how far he can push. L.A. is a test case. And he doesn’t know the can of worms that he has opened in L.A., because people aren’t backing down. 

Javier Cabral: What’s up man, my name is Javier Cabral, I’m the editor in chief for L.A. TACO.

Alvarez: Folks listening, if you haven’t already, you need to follow L.A. TACO on Instagram. You’ve been posting videos from the ground. I wanted to ask what the past week has looked like for you reporting on these stories. 

Cabral: These are the darkest days that I’ve lived in L.A. It’s enough to make everything stop. If you know anyone who is an immigrant and lives in L.A., especially if they’re a Latino person, definitely check in on them. What we’re seeing is unprecedented, and how L.A. TACO has been responding is also unprecedented. There came a point where we were getting dozens of tips about all these ICE raids happening and everyone was scared. So I decided that we needed to go on a social media-first approach. It’s all hands on deck. 

Alvarez: Can you say more about the raids themselves? Who’s getting taken? 

Cabral: Undocumented street vendors, undocumented workers of any kind. Even if you’ve been working here for 30 years, and you own a home, even if you are a functioning member of American society who pays your taxes, but just hasn’t had their legal processing. Because, as some of us know, it takes a long time. The way that these federal agencies are abducting people is very violent, very traumatic. 

There was a video that we shared in the Walmart parking lot in Pico Rivera here in L.A. I interviewed the daughter of a tortilla delivery driver who worked for Mission Foods. He was delivering his tortillas in a dolly. And straight up, ICE abducted them, left the dolly full of tortillas out in the sun, his car there with the doors open. Imagine if people were getting vaporized by the federal government, that’s what it feels like right now. 

I’m trying to look for therapy myself, because it’s just a constant barrage of violence, guns, physical violence in real life. It’s hard to look away. Everyone is just so upset at a very deep level, because they’re coming here, and they’re destroying families and destroying lives.

If you’re watching from afar, definitely support independent media, support L.A. TACO, LA Public Press, CALÓ News.

Michael Nigro: Hi, I’m Michael Nigro, I’m a Brooklyn, New York based photojournalist. I’ve been covering stories in the United States and around the world for roughly 15 years.

Alvarez: I want to read from an NPR piece from earlier this week. David Folkenflik writes, ​“On Monday, the Los Angeles Press Club and the investigative reporting site Status Coup filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department in federal court, alleging that officers at the demonstrations were routinely violating journalists’ rights … An Australian television correspondent was shot by a law enforcement officer with a rubber bullet. … A veteran Los Angeles Times reporter, by his account, says he was shoved by a Los Angeles Police Department officer after reminding him that journalists were exempt under state law from the city’s recently imposed curfew.” Those are just some of the stories coming out of L.A. The one that this article starts with is what happened to Michael. Walk us through it.

Nigro: As a photojournalist, not often do I ever want to be part of the story. However, in the case of the First Amendment, I think it’s important to step up.

I arrived in L.A. on Monday the 9^th, so I missed the first day, but when I arrived, I had already talked to a number of colleagues, many of whom had already been shot with rubber bullets or 40mm sponge grenades or pepper balls.

I was geared up with a very good helmet, a gas mask with protective eyewear and a flak jacket, all with ​“PRESS” front and back, side and side of my helmet. And that did not deter them. Early Monday evening, I was over on this bridge right across from the detention center, all by myself, trying to get a wide shot. I just heard this, ​“Bing, bing, bing,” and they shot right at my head. Didn’t hit me, but it was close, so I moved away.

I need to be very clear here, what I witnessed is primarily a peaceful protest. It never got violent until the police started firing munitions at protesters. At this moment, there was no curfew, so they were just exercising their First Amendment rights. It was not an insurrection. I covered January 6. I know exactly what that looks like. They were not storming buildings. They were not smearing feces on the wall. They were not hitting police with hockey clubs.

We were walking through Koreatown at one point, and they decided to target one protester and shot him with a bunch of pepper balls. I went over to try to document that, and there was a ​“ding” that took me in the side of the helmet. Every officer with a less-lethal munition weapon is supposed to be trained not to aim for the head, not to aim for the neck. These are called ​“less lethal,” but they’re not non-lethal.

I feel they’re trying to have a chilling effect on the press. The press that I know out there are tenacious. They are not going to stop. The public has a right to know what is happening. In New York, we had to fight tooth and nail to get inside these courtrooms. When the law doesn’t matter anymore, it is up to the press to say ​“Public, this is what’s happening.”

Alvarez: As journalists, we’re in this war over reality, and so much of what the Trump administration is doing depends on blasting a warped version of reality, like L.A. What do you most want people to know about what you are seeing in this country, from L.A. to the courtrooms in New York?

Nigro: It’s those two different narratives that you have coming from a propaganda-based White House that has taken what happened on January 6, and lifted it up and plopped it right into L.A. [But] no matter how much they’re going to try to suppress us, there’s more of us out there trying to show what’s really happening, and that the city wasn’t burning down. What I witnessed there was communities coming together, and what happens so very rarely with journalists nowadays is that I had people thanking me, saying, ​“Thank you for coming out here and showing that we’re fighting for our communities.”

This episode of the Working People Podcast was published on June 23.