June 11, 2025 • 42 mins
This week, Diosa and Mala discuss the recent ICE raids in Los Angeles, provide on-the-ground coverage and offer tips on how to support impacted families and community members. They also provide analysis on the phenomenon of Latinos in law enforcement, Latinos For Trump, and "Do it the right way" rhetoric.
Can’t Join A Protest? Other ways you can help:
- Donate to Detained Immigrant Fund
- Distribute “Know Your Rights” Cards to your neighbors, elders, family members. Find them here in Spanish. Find them here in English.
- Join A Rapid Response Network In Your Area (For LA) Call 888-624-4752 to report ICE activity.
- Immigrants Rights Orgs You can support: CHIRLA, Carecen, Órale Long Beach, NDLON.
- Connect with your friends, family, and community members.
Articles cited in this episode:
LA Times: "What really happened outside the Paramount Home Depot? The reality on the ground vs. the rhetoric"
LA Times: National Guard arrives in Los Angeles as fallout from immigration raids continues
LA Times: Multiple immigration sweeps reported across L.A., with a tense standoff downtown
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/locatora_productions
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can you hear that there's a protest walking past my window?
We are recording this emergency episode of locot Our Radio,
and the Ice Out of La rally has just marched
by my window and it is loud, it is boisterous.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm Theosa and I'm Mala. By now you've probably heard
that ice raids have taken place all over Los Angeles,
and LA, being the city we know in love with
the people that make La the amazing place that it is,
have of course fought back. I have, of course organized,
mobilized and are out in the streets. And this all
(00:52):
started on Friday, and Friday is our recording day, our workday.
We're in the studio, We're in Hollywood, and all of
this was happening, and we had no idea. We were
in our little work bubble. And I was after we
recorded in Hollywood. I kind of was running my little errands,
(01:14):
making my way through different parts of LA until I
got back to my home. And so I was in
Los Veli's, I was in Silver Lake until I eventually
made my way back to Southeast LA, which, if you
know anything, that takes sometimes during traffic, over an hour.
So I didn't get back home till like four thirty,
(01:35):
and since I was driving in in my car and
then working, of course with you, I was off my
phone most of the day. Get home, I'm checking back
into my digital life and like starting to see the news.
I'm starting to see the video clips. I'm starting to
see the first hand accounts of immigration enforcement in downtown
(01:56):
La in a in the garment district, which is a
working place where people were there's like factories and showrooms.
It's the fashion district, it's the garment district. It is
concentrated by Latino workers. And so it was a targeted
ice raid in a Latino working community.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, at the exact same time, like I found out
when you found out after I finished like work, I
was doing on campus on one of the stages, and
I'm filming.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So you know, we're both like our attention is elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
We're not online the second we get back online, as
was my experience, the second I opened up my Instagram account,
like at I don't know, like five pm, five oh five,
when I stepped out of the stage, I saw a
post by scar the actor who like blew up on
the Chillo's Try series online. He posted this video from
(03:00):
the Fashion district off of Olympic of literally a tank,
a tank, like a military tank driving down the street
with a bunch of armed officers riding on the tank
and there's like community members civilians following.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
They're shouting.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
What I'm learning is that it's an immigration sweep. It's
ice and in the video you hear pops and bangs
and then you see smoke and they were throwing like
tear gas and pepperball projectiles.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Is what we've learned.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
They've been using on civilians, on demonstrators, on protesters, on
just people who happen to be witnessing these raids and
these sweeps. So I saw that on Friday. Now we're
like sending posts to each other because we're both in shock,
like this has been going. What's happening, Like people are
being targeted, the communities coming out. Law enforcement is attacking
(04:00):
literally and instigating.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
We're learning and we're like trying.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
To figure out what's going on because it happened, like
we learned about it, so suddenly I feel.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
In some ways it was super sudden and scary, and
people showed up to work that day, you know. At
the same time, there the federal Administration and our president,
in particular, Donald Trump, has made it very clear that
LA was going to be a target for mass deportations.
(04:32):
He does not he is not in agreement with our
sanctuary laws, and technically speaking, LAPD is not supposed to
help ice and border patrol. We've seen videos where that's
not necessarily the case. All that to say that there
were immigrant rights organizations that I think have been preparing
(04:54):
for this, and one of the reasons I believe that
that's true is because while the raids were happening at
in the garment district, there were also immigrant rights activists
on site standing on a bed of a truck using
megaphones to speak to the workers who were being detained,
who were inside of the store, and reminding them of
(05:15):
their constitutional rights, instructing them not to sign anything, not
to say anything. I felt like it just felt so
heavy that day. Everyone. It felt like in the community
and in the community being like the people we share
space with, right, like everyone like kind of texting each
other or checking in like what's going on, Like are
you okay? How are you feeling? Because this is LA
(05:39):
is just so special, right the immigrant community make LA
the beautiful place that it is. And I don't mean
because of the labor that they give. That's not what
I mean. It's the culture that they bring with them,
the way that they have made La the place that
it is beyond any labor. I know that people like
to reduce Latino immigrants to the labor and that that's
why they should be seen as valuable, But no, because
(06:02):
they're humans and they have every right to be in
this country and every right to be in a city
like Los Angeles, and so it's definitely been really heartbreaking
to see all of this play out the way that
it has the last couple of days.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Oh yeah, And what we're learning is they're straight up
snatching people off the street and people are being taken
I mean, people are being kidnapped with no warning. You know,
we'll get into this later because we're kind of going chronologically,
but what I learned today and what we continue to learn,
is that they're popping up at very unexpected and vulnerable
(06:39):
moments where families are together, like high school graduations and schools.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So it's very insidious, it's.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Very vicious and really targeting people at home and at
work and part of their daily routines. And so it's
like very sneaky. And so then so back to Friday.
Right now, back to Friday, I'm downtown. All this stuff
(07:06):
is going on downtown. People are being motivated to head
to the Federal Building and head to the Metro Detention Center.
So I'm seeing this and I'm walking my dog, and
I'm like, you know what, let me head over there
and see what's going on. And we got to cover
this on the show, so let me go down and
(07:28):
see what's happening and document and do some filming and
get a feel for what's about to happen and what's
already going on. So I walk over there, mind you,
completely unprepared. I have my dog with me, bop bos famously,
and I'm wearing like platform leopard print shunk glass and like,
(07:50):
I don't remember if I was wearing a bra that day,
but I'm like not prepared.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I literally texted Mala because she says, I'm walking over
and I was like, did you change your shoes? That
was literally the first thing I thought of, because I
knew what you were wearing that day.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I was like, if you know, you never know and
say if you need to run, are you wearing sneakers
or are you wearing your little platforms? And you were
wearing your little platform.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Little platforms, because it was very like I had just
you know, I was on the bus home when I
saw news.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Get home.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I have to walk the dog and okay, one thing
leads to the next. I'm already out here, let me go,
So I.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Head over there.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
There was a smallish crowd, you know, less than one
hundred in front of the Federal Building.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Signs.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I said, of LA, don't separate families. There's Mexican flags,
Palestinian flags, and things are calm. There's cars honking as
they drive by, honking in solidarity. And I noticed that
across the street from the Federal Building, all up and
down Aliso for several blocks, the highway patrol is blocking
(08:55):
all of the freeway entrances on both sides, as they
tend to do when people gather and demonstrate, presumably to
stop them from taking the protest onto the freeway, and
also because when the highway patrol blocks freeway entrances in
a major artery of the city at rush hour, basically
it also causes a lot of chaos and confusion and disruption.
(09:19):
So things were not in the street, but the law
enforcement preemptively blocked all of those entrances and exits. So
then I walk around from the detention center from the
federal building around the corner to the detention center on Alameda,
A crowd is gathering. There's probably there a couple hundred
people right away.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
There's smoke.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I see smoke, and I'm not there for very long
because an older woman passes by me and says, get
your baby out of here. They have tear gas. I
see the tear gas and she's like telling me to
get out of there. I'm leaving, you know, and I'm
not prepared for this, and my poor dog cannot consent
to being guess, you know, poor guy. So I notice
(10:04):
also the LAPD blocking Alameda across all lanes, like a
block away from Munion Station, major transportation center of the city.
So as I'm leaving, people are arriving and people are
running towards the crowd to I see people with coolers. Definitely,
people are going to help. There are people with food,
(10:25):
giving out boxes, a little Caesars and feeding people. Definitely
in the coolers, I'm sure there was water and milk,
and because they know that in moments like this, when
the community comes out to protest a grave injustice, they
respond with suppression and violence.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
They being the police state.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So I see that the people are mobilizing, and they're prepared,
and they're masked up, and I think folks were ready
for a bad night, but not because they were planning
to create a bad night as protesters, but because they
knew that law enforcement was going to give them a
really bad time, and they did. It's gotten very aggressive,
(11:06):
very violent over this past weekend.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Don't go anywhere, locomotives.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
our episode.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
On Saturday, Border Patrol agents were spotted across the street
from a home depot, gathering like around nine am. And quickly,
I like on the neighborhood apps that I'm on, I
started seeing because Paramount is local to very extremely local
to me, I started seeing like ices at the home
depot in Paramount. I saw different surrounding cities that ice
(11:40):
was being spotted, and some of them were really hard
to verify, I will say, but the one in Paramount
was actually true. There were Border Patrol agents across the street.
They actually hadn't rated the home depot. As we know,
there are day laborers. They gather at Home Depot looking
for work at multiple both locations across the country. This
(12:01):
is just a place where folks look for work. And
Home Depot was never actually raided, but just the presence
of border patrol caused a lot of anxiety and it
caused people to mobilize and get to Paramount in droves,
whether that be residents of Paramount or the surrounding community.
(12:21):
And things quickly escalated, as we know, and I think
because of the way things escalated, that is one of
the reasons that our President Trump deployed nearly two thousand
National guardsmen to Los Angeles, and it's actually one of
the first time since nineteen sixty five that a president
has deployed the state's National Guard without the request from
(12:45):
the state's governor, our governor being Gavin Newsom, who swiftly
was like, that's not necessary, do not do that. Mayor
Bass said the same thing. We know already from experience
that agents of the state always escalate protests and it
always leads to violence. And so this is I think
another example from trickling from Paramount to Compton and then
(13:09):
to back to the heart of LA.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And this coverage is everywhere. So the good thing about
the amount of recording that goes on at demonstrations because
everybody has their phone out right, and what we have
is everyone from La Times, La Taco, Ktla Telemundo, and
then everyone with an Instagram account documenting what's going on.
(13:37):
So you're seeing the demonstration and the state violence from
all angles. And it's just very clear and very obvious
that ICE and our local law enforcement are instigating by
attacking first unarmed people, unarmed civilian in some case, this
(14:00):
is just people witnessing what's going on.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, And I was reading a report in the La
Times by two journalists who were at and I'll link
this report in the show notes, but there I was
reading an account by both of them who were on
the ground in Paramount, and there were protesters that were
simply there. Sure it was loud, but there was no
physical violence. Sure people were chanting, Sure people were making noise,
(14:27):
but there was no actual physical violence against said police
officers or Border patrol agents. And yet there was still
tear gas being used. And so a protester said, like,
you can't handle noise, We're not doing anything. You can't
even handle the sound of protests, like you know, this
is not the protester but me saying like, well, how
(14:47):
fragile are you? You can't even handle people chanting that
you have to use tear gas against civilians.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, it's just so clearly it's a eight sanctioned attack US,
like using military and armed forces.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I do want to add something, and I don't want
to dive too into this, but I do want to
add that this past Saturday, while there was protests happening
in the city of La surrounding municipalities surrounding cities, there
was also a really big run in Inglewood and I
participated in it, and it was the Nike After Dark Tour.
(15:29):
It was billed as like this women's race. But while
I'm driving to Inglewood with my group of friends who
were all running together, we start to get notifications that
there is immigration and customs enforcement in Inglewood, and so
it felt very dystopian that there was city resources event
(15:53):
organizers police making the streets like safe for runners, you know,
to run on the street, while at the same time,
in another pocket of Englewood, people were being detained by ice,
And so I would be remiss not to bring that
up because it felt very dystopian. It felt very uncomfortable.
I was running with a couple of women who are immigrants,
(16:17):
who are undocumented as well, and who were kind of like,
do I sit this out. I've been training for months,
you know, this is really important to me, but also
my anxiety, but also I want to be in community,
and so they were holding like all these truths at
the same time. And so I did see like a
lot of I saw a lot of Mexican flags, Guatemalan
(16:40):
flags throughout the run, like either supporters that were like
holding them. I saw a lot of fuck ice signs,
and I myself was wearing something which is.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Not really me.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I don't really do that during runs, but it just
felt like a very tiny thing to do to just
show like, I'm aware that this is happening right now
and this is fucked up, and I just wanted to
share that briefly because running has been such a beautiful
thing for me, and this was the first race where
it felt really fucking weird that there were so many
(17:15):
resources being used to keep us safe while at the
same time, like LA and the surrounding community like was
in shambles and people were afraid and families are being
torn apart, and so yeah, I just want to share
that because I know that I'm not the only runner
who was feeling that this past weekend, and the violence
continued into to Sunday and into to Monday present day
(17:38):
when we're recording, don't go anywhere, look amotives.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
I'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
We're back with more. We hope you didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I think something important is that the resources and the power,
the evil behind what's going on is so they're gonna
go at it.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
They're here for a month. I don't think.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
One event or the other is going to stop or
deter them from what they're after, which is snatching people up.
And so I sort of feel that because there's been
some like I saw some I think misplaced criticism of
like the Nike after Dark run on TikTok, because we're
now we're like scrolling and looking at what's going on
(18:34):
because we want to be we want to be up
to date now with what's happening, and the most up
to date news is honestly just is coming from social
media because it's regular people who are there on the
ground witnessing, posting in real time. If we can't wait
to for the La Times to put something out or
you know, for the five o'clock news to know what's
going on. Like we're online and so part of being online.
(18:56):
I saw some like criticism of the Nike After Dark run,
and I'm like, this is not where our energy needs
to be right now. They are relentless and very powerful.
This is military force. Like, let's be realistic about where
we need to be angry.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I saw some of those two and it definitely feels
like a distraction. And I get it. A lot of
us are so angry and we're stressed. And I will say, like,
for someone like me, right that like made like a
little sign. I'm fucking realistic. My little sign is not
going to change the world, but I think what it
can do is make you know, other runners feel like
they're safe here. What I challenge us to say is okay,
(19:34):
and then what you're gonna do your sign? You're gonna
show your like active protests at this event, whatever event
it may be. What are you going to do next?
How are you gonna mobilize your own little circle? And
so I want to challenge us to challenge us as
a community to like, instead of being very nitpicky about
what we are or aren't doing, like challenge each other
(19:54):
to do more and whatever that more looks like for
each person, which I think is something you and I
have been do discussing internally. Is like some of us
can't actually be out at a protest. If you're not
out at a protest, what else are you doing? And
I think that that's something we have to remember that
not everyone can actually be at a protest.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I think that there's a lot of ways to help
right now. It's first and foremost imperative to check in
with your community and your family and your friends to
see how you can help personally one on one with needs, Like,
for example, if you know someone who needs the right
(20:36):
to work because of their status, can you offer that
to them? This is something that we've heard of as
an immediate need actually.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Or even going to the grocery store, running errands, picking
up children from school. I think that if you are
a citizen, like that is one way to leverage and
help people live their daily lives in this immediate way
where like, yeah, kids have kids who are going to
school or maybe daycare, right, but there are tangible ways
(21:09):
that you can help either your neighbor, a community member,
your own family, your own friends. Approachests are important, but
there's also other ways that we can be helpful.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, there's a need to prevent ice from getting their
hands on community members first and foremost. The protest is
a response once community members have been snatched up and
detained and kidnapped. That's when people are mobilizing on the
street level. But how can we prevent it with what
(21:43):
resources we have? I think that's a question. And can
you hear that there's a protest walking past my window?
We are recording this emergency episode of Look at our Radio,
and the ice out of La Rally has just marched
by my window, and it is loud, it is boisterous.
(22:05):
I think it's a lot of the same people who
were at Laplacital Vera, which is where I left the demonstration,
and they're out here and they're heading to Pershing Square.
I think it's going to be loud tonight. I think
it's gonna be a long night. There's a lot of
law enforcement, highway patrol ice for army looking motherfuckers out there,
(22:29):
you know, like they are out there and they were
set up this morning, like as of this afternoon, it
was like two pm. Maybe the LAPD headquarters completely barricaded
officers and their vehicles on the sidewalk lined up in
front of the LAPD station. I hope things calm down,
but everything we're seeing as of today. Also during today's
(22:53):
rally at Grand Park, the demonstration stopped for a moment, channing, channing,
you know, free David wuerta ice oid of LA, all
the usual other protest chants that we hear. And there's
a woman walking around showing us a news article on
her phone that the Marines.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Have been deployed to LA, so stay safe.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
And we already know national Guard has been two thousand
National Guard have been deployed to Los Angeles as well,
So LA is heavily militarized right now.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
As a Monday evening. According to LA Times, this is
a direct quote. In light of increased threats against federal
officers and federal buildings, five hundred active duty US Marines
from Camp Peddleton will be deployed to Los Angeles to
help protect federal agents and buildings. Not civilians, not protesters,
(23:46):
but the fucking buildings and the federal agents. Mind you,
if you've been on social media, if you've been watching
the news. How many of those ICE agents LAPD are Latinos?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
A lot of them.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
A lot of them, a lot of them. And we've
known this, we've talked about this on the podcast before. Yes,
so many members of our Latino community are so vocal,
so critical of Oh, this influencer isn't posting, Why isn't
this influencer speaking, or they don't like they don't like
the way you talk, or whatever, hyper critical horizontally within
(24:29):
the community, to peers to people they don't even know. Meanwhile,
how many of them have family members? How many of
us in our communities as Latinos, as Southern California Latinos
have family members who are active duty ICE, LAPD, sheriffs,
so on and so forth. A lot Are you doing
the work at your kitchen table? Are you doing the
(24:50):
work in your own family? Are you doing the work
when you have an agent of state violence at Christmas
and at Thanksgiving? You know, like, come on, this is
I want to focus our attention. And we get so
picky with each other and what like we're not we're
really not in solidarity like that, And it's because so
many members of our community do have actually these direct
(25:14):
ties to these oppressive agencies. So how can they be
in solidarity? How can we be in solidarity? Loyalties are
extremely split. And this is not oh usc UCLA, no, no,
no, no no. This is state violence and the citizenry and
not citizenry, just the community, just the people, human beings, just.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Living, working, you know. So I don't know how we're
going to overcome this. I believe that we can.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
But you're right, A lot of a lot of the
oppressive agents of the state out here, to your guys
and people, are Latinos.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah, I mean, and I think it just to drive
home this conversation, right, it's like, in the same breath
of Latinos that are like agents of the state, you
also have the groups of Latinos their trumpers or not,
but that buy into this rhetoric of quote doing it
the right way. Oh, Maya Wilito did it the right way.
(26:08):
Maya Walita did it the right way. Why do people
wait so long to get their papers? Why do they
wait so long as if it's this really easy cheap process, Right,
there was a time where maybe it was easier to
apply for residency. We know that during the Amnesty Act.
(26:29):
We know that during the Brasseto program there were some pathways.
We know that it was at one point easier to
petition to bring your family over. Yes, those things are true,
but the policies that were in place then are not
the policies that are in place now and have not
been in place for decades actually, So I also want
(26:49):
us to squash that when we hear that in our
families of oh, well, our grandpa did it the right way,
because so many of us are born here by chance.
I think about that all the time. You know, my
father almost went to Brazil, he almost went to Venezuela,
he almost went to Australia, but by chance ended up
(27:10):
here in the US. I think about that for my
grandfather too. You know, he was going back and forth
from Chihuahua to Texas and ended up in Pasadena, You
know what I mean. And so so many of these
things are by chance. And depending on the decade your
family immigrated here, things may have been easier for them,
but that does not mean that they were not exposed
(27:32):
to discrimination, to racism, to xenophobia. Just because there was
some pathway of legal citizenship for them does not mean
that there was no struggle for them, and so I
think I want us to also remember that that just
because there was some quote legality for them, then that
does not mean that they were free from suffering. How
(27:54):
many of those same people were also like told to
not speak Spanish.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
It's like all kind in that way. And I think
that going back to like calling out the influencers or
calling out the people on social media for not doing
something the right way, like call out your deal that
says we did it the right way, So why can't they?
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, and there are so there's a plenty of Latino
Trump supporters out there who voted for this very thing.
They voted for this, This was the platform, this was
the promise, this is what they asked for. You know,
do the internal work. That's where you have the most impact,
and that's where it's most needed. We can't reach those
(28:38):
family members.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, I mean. And also, you know, just broadly speaking
or on a more national level, right, the co founder
of LATINUS for Trump, Ileana Garcia, is now criticizing Donald
Trump and calling these immigration enforcement actions unacceptable. I'm like,
is this not your king?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Is this not what you voted for?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
You Latino for Trump, Like Donald Trump has showed us
who he is, and not only him, but the people
that he has put in his cabinet and the people
that continue to vote for him. So to believe that
he was gonna do something differently, that's on you, because
he has shown us time and time again who he
(29:20):
is and what he believes and the policy that he
is gonna enforce in this country.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
These were his campaign promises. This is what he ran on,
this is what he said he would do. I don't
understand the cognitive dissonance of the surprise. It's so bizarre
and it's really cowardly. Also, don't have surprise now now
that you see the horror of what you wanted. This
is what you wanted, and it's horrible. You know, face what,
(29:46):
face it, face it. I think sometimes too, with the
pressure on the influencers, it's like, don't don't like as
a as a fan or a follower, And I am
a fan and a follower of plenty of people, like
I'm just as much of your.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
As any as anybody else, Right, you like, don't like.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Demand that Hajesu's nalgas who has posted by the way,
but I saw these like video edits of like basically
accusing Haysus naldav like hating the community and not caring
and being mindless and not talking about what's going on.
But it's like, if you're a fan of the content,
just be a fan of the content. You don't have
to validate your follow by like forcing artists to take
(30:36):
political stands, where like just just enjoy the content. You
don't have to like, oh, well, I'm going to make
myself feel better for consuming this content because now my
favorite influencer is posting about social unrest.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
But like it's so misplaced.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I also want to say that it's very important
for us to remember that not everybody who is being
targeted is from Mexico. And I'm not here to like
criticize protesters, but I see so many Mexican flags, and
it's like almost like attension seeking sometimes, like when we
make it such a blatant like this is like almost
(31:17):
like branding. And I'm sure plenty are from Mexico, but
not all of them are, and a lot are not,
a lot are not. And this is a bigger issue
than a particular nationality or ethnic group. Let's remember that
there are a lot of Haitian immigrants, that there are
a lot of Asian immigrants. There are immigrants from all
(31:37):
over the world who come to Los Angeles and work
in factories and who are being targeted, who live in
places like Compton, what have you, who could be downtown LA. Like,
it's important that we keep that in mind as well.
Now is are a lot of Latinos in general being targeted.
It does seem to be the case.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yes, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I agree.
The Mexican flags have been kind of synonymous with like
protests in LA, and I don't know if it's always helpful.
I see the energy and I respect it and I
get it, but I do agree it. The dominant narrative
(32:21):
right of who's in LA is that it's a Mexican community,
and that is true, but there are also other immigrants.
I do want to go back to what you said
about the influencers, just to further complicate it. Two things
that I feel is one unfollow unfollow. On the other hand,
I also see, like, yeah, there are Latinos who are
(32:42):
profiting off of the community because we allow them to,
because we follow them, we support them, we use their
affiliate links, whatever it may be, right, However, we're giving
them views, and so when they are profiting off of
the community by making Latini Dad their whole personality or
their online persona, I do hear them and see the
frustration when they're not walking the talk.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
They're all for the Latino community, for the clicks and
the views, but when it comes to the actual issues,
they're silent. So I do hear it, and I see it,
and I understand the frustration. But I do think our
energy will be better spent with people we actually know,
as opposed to folks who can block, delete, move on
(33:26):
and still get their brand deals.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
And and you know, of course we post our coverage,
we post content. If something's going on in the world,
we're going to talk about it, We're going to post
about it. But it's a fine line between like coverage
and creating content for entertainment and profit is the other thing.
And there are people who practically brand themselves as like
(33:49):
professional protesters. Yes, and lots of viral content, lots of engagement, but.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
It's not now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
It's not for spreading the word. It's not for education,
it's not for information, it's not for mobilization. It's not
for documentation, it's it's for engagement, it's for views. It
becomes the content and content and reporting or art are
(34:19):
quite often different things. Content is just stuff, right, and
so I also I also with I feel like it's
a very fine line between yes, you want the people
that you follow and give your dollars to to share
your ethics and your politics and to give a shit.
At the same time, it's like, why are you pressing
this content creator to make content on human rights violations?
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Where is it going? Is?
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Are you sure they're going to donate to a huge
to an immigrant rights organization?
Speaker 3 (34:51):
If not, then.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Where you make a donation where you want to see
money going? You know? So I want to throw that
in there too. People can almost make brand and names
for themselves at constantly protests and rallies and content creation.
So we will post, we'll do some coverage, we'll do
a recap, but we're not branding ourselves is as professional protesters.
(35:13):
That's also something we must be weary of. I have
to get off the internet inform you, but you've got
to move offline. Yes, a lot of people have been detained,
more people will be detained. What people need are lawyers.
People need lawyers, Like, I mean, what else, what else
(35:38):
when you've been unlawfully detained with no charges and you
hope that they let you talk to a judge. You
need a lawyer in a situation like this. And they
and people who have been detained do have the right
to an attorney even in these immigration rates and immigration sweeps,
or at least they should. And I hope that the
courts keeping up.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, And I think that's been the scariest thing of
this wave of raids, uh since Trump has been in
office the second time, is the lack of due process,
and so that that is why the getting getting involved
right before people get detained, right going to the protest,
(36:20):
distributing the know your Rights cards. I called my dad
the other day. My dad is a citizen, but as
is known the ende like, if you're talking to him
in English, my dad speaks English, but as is like
it takes him a little longer. And so and he
works in it works in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. And
so I called him and I was like, hey, like,
(36:41):
you know your your you know your rights right, because
you think it's basic right, Like you're you I would
think that my dad would know, but I was like,
I actually don't know if my dad knows, and so
I called him and we had this conversation and I
was like, I'm just I'm just kind of afraid, Like
if we're they're racially profiling people, they're not giving people
due process. My dad could fit the bill if they
wanted to do. He has an accent, So you know,
(37:05):
I called in him and had that conversation because I
was like, I don't know if I'm being paranoid, but
I also would feel better if I just had this
conversation with you. GIMMEQUESTA took me five minutes, and so
I think even checking in on your family in that way,
you know, because what this administration show is that they
don't care about due process and they are racially profiling people.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
No, they're yeah, they're they're not even they're not like
checking your papers. They're just snatching people up. They're disappearing people.
This is what we're dealing with right now, and this
is why people are responding the way that they are,
you know, in the streets and in the city and
(37:45):
in rallies, and that I think it is important. The
point you brought up earlier, like what is the goal
of the rally? What are we doing with the rally?
People are going to come out because they're angry, they're scared,
they got to do something. Other times people are coming
out because someone like the SEIU is asking people to
come out to ask demand the release of David Weddeta,
(38:08):
who now at this point, at the time of this recording,
he has been released from custody, and hopefully we see
more people released from custody. But it seems like at
the detention centers they are illegally denying entry to elected
(38:28):
officials like Maxine Waters. Though, going back to the lack
of due process, it looks like in this whole rule
of law charade, there is apps, there's no law. There's
it's complete lawlessness.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yes, I mean, and I think just to tie it
back to like the broader picture, right, is that the
one of the reasons that President Trump deployed the National
Guard or sent the National Guard to Los Angeles is
where like a test we're like a testing ground right now,
Like this is what happens when you protest, This is
(39:05):
what happens when you're a sanctuary city, This is what
happens when you protect immigrants and you quote let them
do whatever they want. This is hown. Your own government
is going to respond to you. And so they're showing us,
not just Angelino's but the rest of the country. This
is what happens when you protest. This is how we're
(39:25):
going to respond. And it's meant to scare you. It's
meant to stop you from protesting. It's meant to feel chaotic,
it's meant to feel disruptive because it is. And that's
the goal. That's the that's the whole point.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
And on that note, I think it's time for us
to talk about instead of being scared, how can we
be motivated to act and to support and what can
we do? What steps can we take. We've talked about
taking steps. We have some resources and some suggestions for you.
Of course, there's a lot out there, so make sure
(40:00):
that you're doing your research and vetting and putting your
support in your money or your time behind the right
places with the most impact.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
So one way you can support detained immigrants is by
donating to Detained Immigrants Fund at Clue Justice dot org
slash bond. You can also gather with your homegirls, your
family members, your primas print out some know your Rights cards,
distribute them. They're literally little squares of paper, Cut them
out together, distribute them to your neighbors, your family members,
(40:33):
to anyone who may need it. I think just reminding
people what their rights are because in a panic, people
forget and having that little card can actually be super
helpful to you.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
There's also ways to join a rapid response network in
your area. If you are in LA, you can call
eight eight eight six two four four seven five two
to report ICE activity. And there are a whole host
of immigrant legitimate, longstanding community based immigrant rights organizations that
(41:08):
you can support, like chiir La carresen Ordla Long Beach
and end ALON, the National Day Labors Organizing Network. And
make sure you connect with your friends, your family, your
community members and check on each other. Thank you for
listening to today's episode of look at Our Radio. We
hope that this ends soon, but if not, we of
(41:31):
course will continue to cover and to share resources when
and how we can.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Thank you for listening. Locomotives, take care of each other,
check in on each other, and we'll catch you next time. Mesitos.
Look at a Radio is executive produced by Vosa m
and Mala munios.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Stephanie Franco is our producer.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Story editing by me Theosa.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Creative direction by me Mala.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Look at Our Radio is a part of iHeart Radio's
Macurdura podcast network.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
You can listen to Loca Radio on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Leave us a review and share with your Prima or
share with your homegirl.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
And thank you to our local motives, to our listeners
for tuning in each and every week.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Besitos Loka Lani
Can you hear that there's a protest walking past my window?
We are recording this emergency episode of locot Our Radio,
and the Ice Out of La rally has just marched
by my window and it is loud, it is boisterous.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
I'm Theosa and I'm Mala. By now you've probably heard
that ice raids have taken place all over Los Angeles,
and LA, being the city we know in love with
the people that make La the amazing place that it is,
have of course fought back. I have, of course organized,
mobilized and are out in the streets. And this all
(00:52):
started on Friday, and Friday is our recording day, our workday.
We're in the studio, We're in Hollywood, and all of
this was happening, and we had no idea. We were
in our little work bubble. And I was after we
recorded in Hollywood. I kind of was running my little errands,
(01:14):
making my way through different parts of LA until I
got back to my home. And so I was in
Los Veli's, I was in Silver Lake until I eventually
made my way back to Southeast LA, which, if you
know anything, that takes sometimes during traffic, over an hour.
So I didn't get back home till like four thirty,
(01:35):
and since I was driving in in my car and
then working, of course with you, I was off my
phone most of the day. Get home, I'm checking back
into my digital life and like starting to see the news.
I'm starting to see the video clips. I'm starting to
see the first hand accounts of immigration enforcement in downtown
(01:56):
La in a in the garment district, which is a
working place where people were there's like factories and showrooms.
It's the fashion district, it's the garment district. It is
concentrated by Latino workers. And so it was a targeted
ice raid in a Latino working community.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, at the exact same time, like I found out
when you found out after I finished like work, I
was doing on campus on one of the stages, and
I'm filming.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
So you know, we're both like our attention is elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
We're not online the second we get back online, as
was my experience, the second I opened up my Instagram account,
like at I don't know, like five pm, five oh five,
when I stepped out of the stage, I saw a
post by scar the actor who like blew up on
the Chillo's Try series online. He posted this video from
(03:00):
the Fashion district off of Olympic of literally a tank,
a tank, like a military tank driving down the street
with a bunch of armed officers riding on the tank
and there's like community members civilians following.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
They're shouting.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
What I'm learning is that it's an immigration sweep. It's
ice and in the video you hear pops and bangs
and then you see smoke and they were throwing like
tear gas and pepperball projectiles.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Is what we've learned.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
They've been using on civilians, on demonstrators, on protesters, on
just people who happen to be witnessing these raids and
these sweeps. So I saw that on Friday. Now we're
like sending posts to each other because we're both in shock,
like this has been going. What's happening, Like people are
being targeted, the communities coming out. Law enforcement is attacking
(04:00):
literally and instigating.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
We're learning and we're like trying.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
To figure out what's going on because it happened, like
we learned about it, so suddenly I feel.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
In some ways it was super sudden and scary, and
people showed up to work that day, you know. At
the same time, there the federal Administration and our president,
in particular, Donald Trump, has made it very clear that
LA was going to be a target for mass deportations.
(04:32):
He does not he is not in agreement with our
sanctuary laws, and technically speaking, LAPD is not supposed to
help ice and border patrol. We've seen videos where that's
not necessarily the case. All that to say that there
were immigrant rights organizations that I think have been preparing
(04:54):
for this, and one of the reasons I believe that
that's true is because while the raids were happening at
in the garment district, there were also immigrant rights activists
on site standing on a bed of a truck using
megaphones to speak to the workers who were being detained,
who were inside of the store, and reminding them of
(05:15):
their constitutional rights, instructing them not to sign anything, not
to say anything. I felt like it just felt so
heavy that day. Everyone. It felt like in the community
and in the community being like the people we share
space with, right, like everyone like kind of texting each
other or checking in like what's going on, Like are
you okay? How are you feeling? Because this is LA
(05:39):
is just so special, right the immigrant community make LA
the beautiful place that it is. And I don't mean
because of the labor that they give. That's not what
I mean. It's the culture that they bring with them,
the way that they have made La the place that
it is beyond any labor. I know that people like
to reduce Latino immigrants to the labor and that that's
why they should be seen as valuable, But no, because
(06:02):
they're humans and they have every right to be in
this country and every right to be in a city
like Los Angeles, and so it's definitely been really heartbreaking
to see all of this play out the way that
it has the last couple of days.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Oh yeah, And what we're learning is they're straight up
snatching people off the street and people are being taken
I mean, people are being kidnapped with no warning. You know,
we'll get into this later because we're kind of going chronologically,
but what I learned today and what we continue to learn,
is that they're popping up at very unexpected and vulnerable
(06:39):
moments where families are together, like high school graduations and schools.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
So it's very insidious, it's.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Very vicious and really targeting people at home and at
work and part of their daily routines. And so it's
like very sneaky. And so then so back to Friday.
Right now, back to Friday, I'm downtown. All this stuff
(07:06):
is going on downtown. People are being motivated to head
to the Federal Building and head to the Metro Detention Center.
So I'm seeing this and I'm walking my dog, and
I'm like, you know what, let me head over there
and see what's going on. And we got to cover
this on the show, so let me go down and
(07:28):
see what's happening and document and do some filming and
get a feel for what's about to happen and what's
already going on. So I walk over there, mind you,
completely unprepared. I have my dog with me, bop bos famously,
and I'm wearing like platform leopard print shunk glass and like,
(07:50):
I don't remember if I was wearing a bra that day,
but I'm like not prepared.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I literally texted Mala because she says, I'm walking over
and I was like, did you change your shoes? That
was literally the first thing I thought of, because I
knew what you were wearing that day.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I was like, if you know, you never know and
say if you need to run, are you wearing sneakers
or are you wearing your little platforms? And you were
wearing your little platform.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Little platforms, because it was very like I had just
you know, I was on the bus home when I
saw news.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Get home.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
I have to walk the dog and okay, one thing
leads to the next. I'm already out here, let me go,
So I.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Head over there.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
There was a smallish crowd, you know, less than one
hundred in front of the Federal Building.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Signs.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
I said, of LA, don't separate families. There's Mexican flags,
Palestinian flags, and things are calm. There's cars honking as
they drive by, honking in solidarity. And I noticed that
across the street from the Federal Building, all up and
down Aliso for several blocks, the highway patrol is blocking
(08:55):
all of the freeway entrances on both sides, as they
tend to do when people gather and demonstrate, presumably to
stop them from taking the protest onto the freeway, and
also because when the highway patrol blocks freeway entrances in
a major artery of the city at rush hour, basically
it also causes a lot of chaos and confusion and disruption.
(09:19):
So things were not in the street, but the law
enforcement preemptively blocked all of those entrances and exits. So
then I walk around from the detention center from the
federal building around the corner to the detention center on Alameda,
A crowd is gathering. There's probably there a couple hundred
people right away.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
There's smoke.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I see smoke, and I'm not there for very long
because an older woman passes by me and says, get
your baby out of here. They have tear gas. I
see the tear gas and she's like telling me to
get out of there. I'm leaving, you know, and I'm
not prepared for this, and my poor dog cannot consent
to being guess, you know, poor guy. So I notice
(10:04):
also the LAPD blocking Alameda across all lanes, like a
block away from Munion Station, major transportation center of the city.
So as I'm leaving, people are arriving and people are
running towards the crowd to I see people with coolers. Definitely,
people are going to help. There are people with food,
(10:25):
giving out boxes, a little Caesars and feeding people. Definitely
in the coolers, I'm sure there was water and milk,
and because they know that in moments like this, when
the community comes out to protest a grave injustice, they
respond with suppression and violence.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
They being the police state.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So I see that the people are mobilizing, and they're prepared,
and they're masked up, and I think folks were ready
for a bad night, but not because they were planning
to create a bad night as protesters, but because they
knew that law enforcement was going to give them a
really bad time, and they did. It's gotten very aggressive,
(11:06):
very violent over this past weekend.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Don't go anywhere, locomotives.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
our episode.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
On Saturday, Border Patrol agents were spotted across the street
from a home depot, gathering like around nine am. And quickly,
I like on the neighborhood apps that I'm on, I
started seeing because Paramount is local to very extremely local
to me, I started seeing like ices at the home
depot in Paramount. I saw different surrounding cities that ice
(11:40):
was being spotted, and some of them were really hard
to verify, I will say, but the one in Paramount
was actually true. There were Border Patrol agents across the street.
They actually hadn't rated the home depot. As we know,
there are day laborers. They gather at Home Depot looking
for work at multiple both locations across the country. This
(12:01):
is just a place where folks look for work. And
Home Depot was never actually raided, but just the presence
of border patrol caused a lot of anxiety and it
caused people to mobilize and get to Paramount in droves,
whether that be residents of Paramount or the surrounding community.
(12:21):
And things quickly escalated, as we know, and I think
because of the way things escalated, that is one of
the reasons that our President Trump deployed nearly two thousand
National guardsmen to Los Angeles, and it's actually one of
the first time since nineteen sixty five that a president
has deployed the state's National Guard without the request from
(12:45):
the state's governor, our governor being Gavin Newsom, who swiftly
was like, that's not necessary, do not do that. Mayor
Bass said the same thing. We know already from experience
that agents of the state always escalate protests and it
always leads to violence. And so this is I think
another example from trickling from Paramount to Compton and then
(13:09):
to back to the heart of LA.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And this coverage is everywhere. So the good thing about
the amount of recording that goes on at demonstrations because
everybody has their phone out right, and what we have
is everyone from La Times, La Taco, Ktla Telemundo, and
then everyone with an Instagram account documenting what's going on.
(13:37):
So you're seeing the demonstration and the state violence from
all angles. And it's just very clear and very obvious
that ICE and our local law enforcement are instigating by
attacking first unarmed people, unarmed civilian in some case, this
(14:00):
is just people witnessing what's going on.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, And I was reading a report in the La
Times by two journalists who were at and I'll link
this report in the show notes, but there I was
reading an account by both of them who were on
the ground in Paramount, and there were protesters that were
simply there. Sure it was loud, but there was no
physical violence. Sure people were chanting, Sure people were making noise,
(14:27):
but there was no actual physical violence against said police
officers or Border patrol agents. And yet there was still
tear gas being used. And so a protester said, like,
you can't handle noise, We're not doing anything. You can't
even handle the sound of protests, like you know, this
is not the protester but me saying like, well, how
(14:47):
fragile are you? You can't even handle people chanting that
you have to use tear gas against civilians.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, it's just so clearly it's a eight sanctioned attack US,
like using military and armed forces.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
I do want to add something, and I don't want
to dive too into this, but I do want to
add that this past Saturday, while there was protests happening
in the city of La surrounding municipalities surrounding cities, there
was also a really big run in Inglewood and I
participated in it, and it was the Nike After Dark Tour.
(15:29):
It was billed as like this women's race. But while
I'm driving to Inglewood with my group of friends who
were all running together, we start to get notifications that
there is immigration and customs enforcement in Inglewood, and so
it felt very dystopian that there was city resources event
(15:53):
organizers police making the streets like safe for runners, you know,
to run on the street, while at the same time,
in another pocket of Englewood, people were being detained by ice,
And so I would be remiss not to bring that
up because it felt very dystopian. It felt very uncomfortable.
I was running with a couple of women who are immigrants,
(16:17):
who are undocumented as well, and who were kind of like,
do I sit this out. I've been training for months,
you know, this is really important to me, but also
my anxiety, but also I want to be in community,
and so they were holding like all these truths at
the same time. And so I did see like a
lot of I saw a lot of Mexican flags, Guatemalan
(16:40):
flags throughout the run, like either supporters that were like
holding them. I saw a lot of fuck ice signs,
and I myself was wearing something which is.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Not really me.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I don't really do that during runs, but it just
felt like a very tiny thing to do to just
show like, I'm aware that this is happening right now
and this is fucked up, and I just wanted to
share that briefly because running has been such a beautiful
thing for me, and this was the first race where
it felt really fucking weird that there were so many
(17:15):
resources being used to keep us safe while at the
same time, like LA and the surrounding community like was
in shambles and people were afraid and families are being
torn apart, and so yeah, I just want to share
that because I know that I'm not the only runner
who was feeling that this past weekend, and the violence
continued into to Sunday and into to Monday present day
(17:38):
when we're recording, don't go anywhere, look amotives.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
I'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
We're back with more. We hope you didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I think something important is that the resources and the power,
the evil behind what's going on is so they're gonna
go at it.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
They're here for a month. I don't think.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
One event or the other is going to stop or
deter them from what they're after, which is snatching people up.
And so I sort of feel that because there's been
some like I saw some I think misplaced criticism of
like the Nike after Dark run on TikTok, because we're
now we're like scrolling and looking at what's going on
(18:34):
because we want to be we want to be up
to date now with what's happening, and the most up
to date news is honestly just is coming from social
media because it's regular people who are there on the
ground witnessing, posting in real time. If we can't wait
to for the La Times to put something out or
you know, for the five o'clock news to know what's
going on. Like we're online and so part of being online.
(18:56):
I saw some like criticism of the Nike After Dark run,
and I'm like, this is not where our energy needs
to be right now. They are relentless and very powerful.
This is military force. Like, let's be realistic about where
we need to be angry.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
I saw some of those two and it definitely feels
like a distraction. And I get it. A lot of
us are so angry and we're stressed. And I will say, like,
for someone like me, right that like made like a
little sign. I'm fucking realistic. My little sign is not
going to change the world, but I think what it
can do is make you know, other runners feel like
they're safe here. What I challenge us to say is okay,
(19:34):
and then what you're gonna do your sign? You're gonna
show your like active protests at this event, whatever event
it may be. What are you going to do next?
How are you gonna mobilize your own little circle? And
so I want to challenge us to challenge us as
a community to like, instead of being very nitpicky about
what we are or aren't doing, like challenge each other
(19:54):
to do more and whatever that more looks like for
each person, which I think is something you and I
have been do discussing internally. Is like some of us
can't actually be out at a protest. If you're not
out at a protest, what else are you doing? And
I think that that's something we have to remember that
not everyone can actually be at a protest.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I think that there's a lot of ways to help
right now. It's first and foremost imperative to check in
with your community and your family and your friends to
see how you can help personally one on one with needs, Like,
for example, if you know someone who needs the right
(20:36):
to work because of their status, can you offer that
to them? This is something that we've heard of as
an immediate need actually.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Or even going to the grocery store, running errands, picking
up children from school. I think that if you are
a citizen, like that is one way to leverage and
help people live their daily lives in this immediate way
where like, yeah, kids have kids who are going to
school or maybe daycare, right, but there are tangible ways
(21:09):
that you can help either your neighbor, a community member,
your own family, your own friends. Approachests are important, but
there's also other ways that we can be helpful.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, there's a need to prevent ice from getting their
hands on community members first and foremost. The protest is
a response once community members have been snatched up and
detained and kidnapped. That's when people are mobilizing on the
street level. But how can we prevent it with what
(21:43):
resources we have? I think that's a question. And can
you hear that there's a protest walking past my window?
We are recording this emergency episode of Look at our Radio,
and the ice out of La Rally has just marched
by my window, and it is loud, it is boisterous.
(22:05):
I think it's a lot of the same people who
were at Laplacital Vera, which is where I left the demonstration,
and they're out here and they're heading to Pershing Square.
I think it's going to be loud tonight. I think
it's gonna be a long night. There's a lot of
law enforcement, highway patrol ice for army looking motherfuckers out there,
(22:29):
you know, like they are out there and they were
set up this morning, like as of this afternoon, it
was like two pm. Maybe the LAPD headquarters completely barricaded
officers and their vehicles on the sidewalk lined up in
front of the LAPD station. I hope things calm down,
but everything we're seeing as of today. Also during today's
(22:53):
rally at Grand Park, the demonstration stopped for a moment, channing, channing,
you know, free David wuerta ice oid of LA, all
the usual other protest chants that we hear. And there's
a woman walking around showing us a news article on
her phone that the Marines.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Have been deployed to LA, so stay safe.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
And we already know national Guard has been two thousand
National Guard have been deployed to Los Angeles as well,
So LA is heavily militarized right now.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
As a Monday evening. According to LA Times, this is
a direct quote. In light of increased threats against federal
officers and federal buildings, five hundred active duty US Marines
from Camp Peddleton will be deployed to Los Angeles to
help protect federal agents and buildings. Not civilians, not protesters,
(23:46):
but the fucking buildings and the federal agents. Mind you,
if you've been on social media, if you've been watching
the news. How many of those ICE agents LAPD are Latinos?
Speaker 3 (24:02):
A lot of them.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
A lot of them, a lot of them. And we've
known this, we've talked about this on the podcast before. Yes,
so many members of our Latino community are so vocal,
so critical of Oh, this influencer isn't posting, Why isn't
this influencer speaking, or they don't like they don't like
the way you talk, or whatever, hyper critical horizontally within
(24:29):
the community, to peers to people they don't even know. Meanwhile,
how many of them have family members? How many of
us in our communities as Latinos, as Southern California Latinos
have family members who are active duty ICE, LAPD, sheriffs,
so on and so forth. A lot Are you doing
the work at your kitchen table? Are you doing the
(24:50):
work in your own family? Are you doing the work
when you have an agent of state violence at Christmas
and at Thanksgiving? You know, like, come on, this is
I want to focus our attention. And we get so
picky with each other and what like we're not we're
really not in solidarity like that, And it's because so
many members of our community do have actually these direct
(25:14):
ties to these oppressive agencies. So how can they be
in solidarity? How can we be in solidarity? Loyalties are
extremely split. And this is not oh usc UCLA, no, no,
no, no no. This is state violence and the citizenry and
not citizenry, just the community, just the people, human beings, just.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Living, working, you know. So I don't know how we're
going to overcome this. I believe that we can.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
But you're right, A lot of a lot of the
oppressive agents of the state out here, to your guys
and people, are Latinos.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah, I mean, and I think it just to drive
home this conversation, right, it's like, in the same breath
of Latinos that are like agents of the state, you
also have the groups of Latinos their trumpers or not,
but that buy into this rhetoric of quote doing it
the right way. Oh, Maya Wilito did it the right way.
(26:08):
Maya Walita did it the right way. Why do people
wait so long to get their papers? Why do they
wait so long as if it's this really easy cheap process, Right,
there was a time where maybe it was easier to
apply for residency. We know that during the Amnesty Act.
(26:29):
We know that during the Brasseto program there were some pathways.
We know that it was at one point easier to
petition to bring your family over. Yes, those things are true,
but the policies that were in place then are not
the policies that are in place now and have not
been in place for decades actually, So I also want
(26:49):
us to squash that when we hear that in our
families of oh, well, our grandpa did it the right way,
because so many of us are born here by chance.
I think about that all the time. You know, my
father almost went to Brazil, he almost went to Venezuela,
he almost went to Australia, but by chance ended up
(27:10):
here in the US. I think about that for my
grandfather too. You know, he was going back and forth
from Chihuahua to Texas and ended up in Pasadena, You
know what I mean. And so so many of these
things are by chance. And depending on the decade your
family immigrated here, things may have been easier for them,
but that does not mean that they were not exposed
(27:32):
to discrimination, to racism, to xenophobia. Just because there was
some pathway of legal citizenship for them does not mean
that there was no struggle for them, and so I
think I want us to also remember that that just
because there was some quote legality for them, then that
does not mean that they were free from suffering. How
(27:54):
many of those same people were also like told to
not speak Spanish.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
It's like all kind in that way. And I think
that going back to like calling out the influencers or
calling out the people on social media for not doing
something the right way, like call out your deal that
says we did it the right way, So why can't they?
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, and there are so there's a plenty of Latino
Trump supporters out there who voted for this very thing.
They voted for this, This was the platform, this was
the promise, this is what they asked for. You know,
do the internal work. That's where you have the most impact,
and that's where it's most needed. We can't reach those
(28:38):
family members.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, I mean. And also, you know, just broadly speaking
or on a more national level, right, the co founder
of LATINUS for Trump, Ileana Garcia, is now criticizing Donald
Trump and calling these immigration enforcement actions unacceptable. I'm like,
is this not your king?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Is this not what you voted for?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
You Latino for Trump, Like Donald Trump has showed us
who he is, and not only him, but the people
that he has put in his cabinet and the people
that continue to vote for him. So to believe that
he was gonna do something differently, that's on you, because
he has shown us time and time again who he
(29:20):
is and what he believes and the policy that he
is gonna enforce in this country.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
These were his campaign promises. This is what he ran on,
this is what he said he would do. I don't
understand the cognitive dissonance of the surprise. It's so bizarre
and it's really cowardly. Also, don't have surprise now now
that you see the horror of what you wanted. This
is what you wanted, and it's horrible. You know, face what,
(29:46):
face it, face it. I think sometimes too, with the
pressure on the influencers, it's like, don't don't like as
a as a fan or a follower, And I am
a fan and a follower of plenty of people, like
I'm just as much of your.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
As any as anybody else, Right, you like, don't like.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Demand that Hajesu's nalgas who has posted by the way,
but I saw these like video edits of like basically
accusing Haysus naldav like hating the community and not caring
and being mindless and not talking about what's going on.
But it's like, if you're a fan of the content,
just be a fan of the content. You don't have
to validate your follow by like forcing artists to take
(30:36):
political stands, where like just just enjoy the content. You
don't have to like, oh, well, I'm going to make
myself feel better for consuming this content because now my
favorite influencer is posting about social unrest.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
But like it's so misplaced.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I also want to say that it's very important
for us to remember that not everybody who is being
targeted is from Mexico. And I'm not here to like
criticize protesters, but I see so many Mexican flags, and
it's like almost like attension seeking sometimes, like when we
make it such a blatant like this is like almost
(31:17):
like branding. And I'm sure plenty are from Mexico, but
not all of them are, and a lot are not,
a lot are not. And this is a bigger issue
than a particular nationality or ethnic group. Let's remember that
there are a lot of Haitian immigrants, that there are
a lot of Asian immigrants. There are immigrants from all
(31:37):
over the world who come to Los Angeles and work
in factories and who are being targeted, who live in
places like Compton, what have you, who could be downtown LA. Like,
it's important that we keep that in mind as well.
Now is are a lot of Latinos in general being targeted.
It does seem to be the case.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yes, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I agree.
The Mexican flags have been kind of synonymous with like
protests in LA, and I don't know if it's always helpful.
I see the energy and I respect it and I
get it, but I do agree it. The dominant narrative
(32:21):
right of who's in LA is that it's a Mexican community,
and that is true, but there are also other immigrants.
I do want to go back to what you said
about the influencers, just to further complicate it. Two things
that I feel is one unfollow unfollow. On the other hand,
I also see, like, yeah, there are Latinos who are
(32:42):
profiting off of the community because we allow them to,
because we follow them, we support them, we use their
affiliate links, whatever it may be, right, However, we're giving
them views, and so when they are profiting off of
the community by making Latini Dad their whole personality or
their online persona, I do hear them and see the
frustration when they're not walking the talk.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
They're all for the Latino community, for the clicks and
the views, but when it comes to the actual issues,
they're silent. So I do hear it, and I see it,
and I understand the frustration. But I do think our
energy will be better spent with people we actually know,
as opposed to folks who can block, delete, move on
(33:26):
and still get their brand deals.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
And and you know, of course we post our coverage,
we post content. If something's going on in the world,
we're going to talk about it, We're going to post
about it. But it's a fine line between like coverage
and creating content for entertainment and profit is the other thing.
And there are people who practically brand themselves as like
(33:49):
professional protesters. Yes, and lots of viral content, lots of engagement, but.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
It's not now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
It's not for spreading the word. It's not for education,
it's not for information, it's not for mobilization. It's not
for documentation, it's it's for engagement, it's for views. It
becomes the content and content and reporting or art are
(34:19):
quite often different things. Content is just stuff, right, and
so I also I also with I feel like it's
a very fine line between yes, you want the people
that you follow and give your dollars to to share
your ethics and your politics and to give a shit.
At the same time, it's like, why are you pressing
this content creator to make content on human rights violations?
Speaker 3 (34:43):
Where is it going? Is?
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Are you sure they're going to donate to a huge
to an immigrant rights organization?
Speaker 3 (34:51):
If not, then.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Where you make a donation where you want to see
money going? You know? So I want to throw that
in there too. People can almost make brand and names
for themselves at constantly protests and rallies and content creation.
So we will post, we'll do some coverage, we'll do
a recap, but we're not branding ourselves is as professional protesters.
(35:13):
That's also something we must be weary of. I have
to get off the internet inform you, but you've got
to move offline. Yes, a lot of people have been detained,
more people will be detained. What people need are lawyers.
People need lawyers, Like, I mean, what else, what else
(35:38):
when you've been unlawfully detained with no charges and you
hope that they let you talk to a judge. You
need a lawyer in a situation like this. And they
and people who have been detained do have the right
to an attorney even in these immigration rates and immigration sweeps,
or at least they should. And I hope that the
courts keeping up.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, And I think that's been the scariest thing of
this wave of raids, uh since Trump has been in
office the second time, is the lack of due process,
and so that that is why the getting getting involved
right before people get detained, right going to the protest,
(36:20):
distributing the know your Rights cards. I called my dad
the other day. My dad is a citizen, but as
is known the ende like, if you're talking to him
in English, my dad speaks English, but as is like
it takes him a little longer. And so and he
works in it works in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. And
so I called him and I was like, hey, like,
(36:41):
you know your your you know your rights right, because
you think it's basic right, Like you're you I would
think that my dad would know, but I was like,
I actually don't know if my dad knows, and so
I called him and we had this conversation and I
was like, I'm just I'm just kind of afraid, Like
if we're they're racially profiling people, they're not giving people
due process. My dad could fit the bill if they
wanted to do. He has an accent, So you know,
(37:05):
I called in him and had that conversation because I
was like, I don't know if I'm being paranoid, but
I also would feel better if I just had this
conversation with you. GIMMEQUESTA took me five minutes, and so
I think even checking in on your family in that way,
you know, because what this administration show is that they
don't care about due process and they are racially profiling people.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
No, they're yeah, they're they're not even they're not like
checking your papers. They're just snatching people up. They're disappearing people.
This is what we're dealing with right now, and this
is why people are responding the way that they are,
you know, in the streets and in the city and
(37:45):
in rallies, and that I think it is important. The
point you brought up earlier, like what is the goal
of the rally? What are we doing with the rally?
People are going to come out because they're angry, they're scared,
they got to do something. Other times people are coming
out because someone like the SEIU is asking people to
come out to ask demand the release of David Weddeta,
(38:08):
who now at this point, at the time of this recording,
he has been released from custody, and hopefully we see
more people released from custody. But it seems like at
the detention centers they are illegally denying entry to elected
(38:28):
officials like Maxine Waters. Though, going back to the lack
of due process, it looks like in this whole rule
of law charade, there is apps, there's no law. There's
it's complete lawlessness.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yes, I mean, and I think just to tie it
back to like the broader picture, right, is that the
one of the reasons that President Trump deployed the National
Guard or sent the National Guard to Los Angeles is
where like a test we're like a testing ground right now,
Like this is what happens when you protest, This is
(39:05):
what happens when you're a sanctuary city, This is what
happens when you protect immigrants and you quote let them
do whatever they want. This is hown. Your own government
is going to respond to you. And so they're showing us,
not just Angelino's but the rest of the country. This
is what happens when you protest. This is how we're
(39:25):
going to respond. And it's meant to scare you. It's
meant to stop you from protesting. It's meant to feel chaotic,
it's meant to feel disruptive because it is. And that's
the goal. That's the that's the whole point.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
And on that note, I think it's time for us
to talk about instead of being scared, how can we
be motivated to act and to support and what can
we do? What steps can we take. We've talked about
taking steps. We have some resources and some suggestions for you.
Of course, there's a lot out there, so make sure
(40:00):
that you're doing your research and vetting and putting your
support in your money or your time behind the right
places with the most impact.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
So one way you can support detained immigrants is by
donating to Detained Immigrants Fund at Clue Justice dot org
slash bond. You can also gather with your homegirls, your
family members, your primas print out some know your Rights cards,
distribute them. They're literally little squares of paper, Cut them
out together, distribute them to your neighbors, your family members,
(40:33):
to anyone who may need it. I think just reminding
people what their rights are because in a panic, people
forget and having that little card can actually be super
helpful to you.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
There's also ways to join a rapid response network in
your area. If you are in LA, you can call
eight eight eight six two four four seven five two
to report ICE activity. And there are a whole host
of immigrant legitimate, longstanding community based immigrant rights organizations that
(41:08):
you can support, like chiir La carresen Ordla Long Beach
and end ALON, the National Day Labors Organizing Network. And
make sure you connect with your friends, your family, your
community members and check on each other. Thank you for
listening to today's episode of look at Our Radio. We
hope that this ends soon, but if not, we of
(41:31):
course will continue to cover and to share resources when
and how we can.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
Thank you for listening. Locomotives, take care of each other,
check in on each other, and we'll catch you next time. Mesitos.
Look at a Radio is executive produced by Vosa m
and Mala munios.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Stephanie Franco is our producer.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Story editing by me Theosa.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Creative direction by me Mala.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Look at Our Radio is a part of iHeart Radio's
Macurdura podcast network.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
You can listen to Loca Radio on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Leave us a review and share with your Prima or
share with your homegirl.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
And thank you to our local motives, to our listeners
for tuning in each and every week.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Besitos Loka Lani
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