The sirens have barely let up in the last 5 days. We hear them race passed Dodger Stadium on their way to downtown only a few miles away. On Friday, the first of the ICE raids started in the garment district. They rounded up people at work, splintering families and terrorizing a community. Los Angeles is no stranger to unrest and this is a provocation.

Two deeply rooted political instincts drove Trump to power again. A reflexive distaste for disorder and a pernicious fear of the unfamiliar that constantly threatens to metastasize like cancer – a vestigial remnant of the Malthusian world of our evolution. In a word – racism – but it’s best to invoke that accusation sparingly.

This provocation is mostly about disorder. The administration’s attempts to ramp up deportations have run into two hard countermanding realities:

• Immigrants, even undocumented ones, commit crimes at less than one quarter the rate of native born Americans.
• The vast bulk of undocumented people are deeply rooted in our economy, our culture and our communities. They live in families with mixed status and have American friends.

Disappearing these valued members of our community would hobble our economy and invite backlash from the same people who voted for this without truly knowing what it would mean. Unemployment is hovering around 4.2% - historically about as low as it can go. There is not some deep reservoir of untapped American born labor willing to do this work. The shelves at my local grocery store already sit empty as the folks that drive the local supply chain are too terrified to show up. The administration knows this and so they want to localize the pain to communities that have opposed them politically while maximizing the perception of disorder in our national media. That’s why they’re doing this in Los Angeles and not Omaha. This strategy is as obvious as it is cruel.

I do not have to be in the room to hear the cacophony of pearl-clutching Democratic consultants clamoring about polling on immigration. “Stay focused, do nothing” they probably say, “do not give them what they want”. This is a trap and we should take that seriously - but doing nothing is unacceptable. There has been, and will be enough unrest to register negatively in our national media. We should price that in. Doing nothing will cede the narrative, not drive it and most importantly, this is a moral moment. People are being disappeared, families are being ripped apart and active duty US military have been deployed to the streets of an American city that did not ask for them and does not need them. No part of this is acceptable and most Americans are not down for it – but we need to show them that.

If you are an elected official or anyone with attentional draw or community respect in California we need you to be a leader. This means:

1. Get to know the stories of the impacted families and tell those stories. Do what you can to help them.
2. Make it clear that disorder will not be tolerated BUT you must encourage and provide constructive/peaceful outlets for your communities to protest. Attend and speak at those protests!
3. Name their strategy! And draw attention to the awful legislation the timing of these raids is meant to hide! The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (yes, that’s the official name 🙄) will destroy our energy future, add trillions to the national debt and transfer unconscionable amounts of wealth from the poor to the rich. Nobody wants this!
4. If you control municipal law enforcement, keep them restrained. Do not deploy more assets than needed. Do not tolerate abuses like this or this. Some amount of law enforcement is necessary to maintain order, but when deployed irresponsibly it will escalate rather than deescalate. Be visible!

If you are just a citizen like me, we must protest peacefully and we have to police ourselves. I am usually not a protest person - but this moment demands it. My wife and I will be attending the No Kings protest this weekend with our 8 month old daughter – her first lesson in patriotism. I hope to see many of my fellow Angelenos there!

After the protest, think about the gap between where your community is and where you think it aught to be. Then do something about it.