By Daniel Nardini
When I talked to a friend I know in Los Angeles, a very different picture has emerged of what is going on there. My friend, named Bill, lives near Koreatown, a fairly well-known community in Los Angeles. He told me that everything was fine where he is. On that day, he simply sent packages at his nearest post office and talked to a number of friends and family, and not much else. He went to get lunch at a restaurant he knows, and he just took it easy for the rest of the day. Everything was quiet where he was, and the only thing he heard about the protests was on television. Strangely enough, the whole protest saga was taking place just five miles from where he lives. No, he saw no protesters and no U.S. immigration and no chaos and fighting anywhere near his home. In fact, Bill never saw anything of the protests from when they started.
I have to keep in mind that Bill had seen a lot of bad things that has happened to his city. Bill was born and raised in Los Angeles, and has lived his entire life in Los Angeles. He knows the city inside and out, and has seen a whole lot of terrible things happen to his Los Angeles. He had seen the 1992 riots which scared him and everyone he knew in his community. Bill had been through the Covid pandemic which hurt his business (he certainly did not appreciate the business restrictions put in by both the governor and mayor at the time). He had recently seen how the wild fires had choked the air in Los Angeles. Beyond that, this time period has been peaceful. Bill received phone calls from friends if he was all right because of the “chaos” happening around him. He said there was no chaos around him at all.
And that was the point—there was no chaos. There were no protests around him. There was most certainly no insurrection as U.S. President Donald Trump has alleged. We have to remember that Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States. This city exists in a state that has either the third or fourth economy in the world. This makes California a truly immense economic force in the United States. Yet for the Republicans and Trump, they hate and despise California for being a Democrat stronghold. Trump seems intent on trying to break California in any way he knows, and so he carried out massive immigration raids in Los Angeles. When protests and demonstrations occurred because of these immigration raids, he saw an opening to bring in the military to try to crush the Democrats, crush California, and crush the good people of Los Angeles. Trump manufactured this whole thing. Maybe the only thing to stop him will be what has largely stopped him already; the judiciary. Let us call it out for what this is—a power grab from a madman who wants to destroy the most economically powerful state in the union that has contributed so much to the nation’s economy regardless of what the politics are. Let us hope the judiciary will stop this madman.
All’s Quiet in Part of Los Angeles
By Daniel Nardini
I have to keep in mind that Bill had seen a lot of bad things that has happened to his city. Bill was born and raised in Los Angeles, and has lived his entire life in Los Angeles. He knows the city inside and out, and has seen a whole lot of terrible things happen to his Los Angeles. He had seen the 1992 riots which scared him and everyone he knew in his community. Bill had been through the Covid pandemic which hurt his business (he certainly did not appreciate the business restrictions put in by both the governor and mayor at the time). He had recently seen how the wild fires had choked the air in Los Angeles. Beyond that, this time period has been peaceful. Bill received phone calls from friends if he was all right because of the “chaos” happening around him. He said there was no chaos around him at all.
And that was the point—there was no chaos. There were no protests around him. There was most certainly no insurrection as U.S. President Donald Trump has alleged. We have to remember that Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States. This city exists in a state that has either the third or fourth economy in the world. This makes California a truly immense economic force in the United States. Yet for the Republicans and Trump, they hate and despise California for being a Democrat stronghold. Trump seems intent on trying to break California in any way he knows, and so he carried out massive immigration raids in Los Angeles. When protests and demonstrations occurred because of these immigration raids, he saw an opening to bring in the military to try to crush the Democrats, crush California, and crush the good people of Los Angeles. Trump manufactured this whole thing. Maybe the only thing to stop him will be what has largely stopped him already; the judiciary. Let us call it out for what this is—a power grab from a madman who wants to destroy the most economically powerful state in the union that has contributed so much to the nation’s economy regardless of what the politics are. Let us hope the judiciary will stop this madman.