Damaged irreversibly, but still not yet lost
On the federal government's quick descent into fascism and how L.A. must lead anew.
In Redlining, Gentrification, and Housing, we told the story of the internment camps our neighbors from J-Flats were placed in, and how their contemporaries came together to aid them during their time of greatest need. Before then, I wrote about the numerous attacks and displacement faced by Black, Asian, and Latinx communities in Los Angeles from the 1920s through the 1970s, and how this shameful legacy of American life was only amplified vis-a-vis the gentrification of our communities in more recent years. In each case, I engaged in these documentations and analyses not simply for the sake of looking at the past, but to show our community–near and far–and imagine with them a better, more equitable world.
Today, as more than 1,600 families across Los Angeles reel from the absolutely inhumane, yet entirely legalized abduction of their loved ones under the guise of “Homeland Security,” we’ve been thrust into the exact opposite of that world. Over thirty years after the unrest of Rodney King which first catapulted L.A. into international infamy, now the very government tasked with establishing order is the one looting our neighborhood corners, places of work, and even places of worship in broad daylight. It is a “riot” in the truly measured definition of the term, which historically will be noted as more than an insult in addition to the injuries of land theft and enslavement of Black and Brown people, but as a direct extension of these savageries.
In a now world-famous clip of Angela Davis while she was incarcerated in Santa Clara County jail in 1972, at one point the interviewer asks her whether she “approves of violence” to achieve the goals of the Black Power movement. She curtly replies that: “...when someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible because what it means is that the person who's asking that question has absolutely no idea what Black people have gone through, what Black people have experienced in this country since the time the first Black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.”
For a long time after I first heard Davis speak those words, I actually wondered about how even despite the long list of crimes inflicted on and endured alike by Black and Brown communities on stolen land, the latter could never recount the horror of being kidnapped among them. Now, this is no longer the case. Now–in the 21st century–once again some untold number of families whose only crime is the color of their skin and the zip code they reside in have their lives uprooted and humiliated by a lawless, fascist empire and its goons, that is, by small, hateful little men and their sycophants.
Now a new theory and practice must take hold if the next generation of Americans hope to see even a modicum of the more equitable world we wrote and hoped for alongside our dear Kiwi Burch and in honor of her and our families alike; one which will take all of us, on every corner we can find, to stand up for their fellow human beings against the racist and fascist military machine unleashed not only abroad, but right here at home.
This is not the most unlikely result. After all, the world in which Professor Davis was incarcerated was not the one she deserved on account of her ancestors; neither was the one my peers and I inherited along Virgil avenue, Santa Monica boulevard, and countless more stretches of Los Angeles; while it’s also true that the fangs of the state may run deeper than they ever have, so does my heart in resistance, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I know I’m one of vastly more and that despite the storm, there are still brighter days ahead.
Yesterday, for one, Public Counsel announced the first class-action lawsuit by workers and families across California against the Department of Homeland Security. From their Press Release:
“‘Since June 6th, marauding, masked goons have descended upon Los Angeles, terrorizing our brown communities and tearing up the Constitution in the process,’” said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, representing the plaintiffs. “‘No matter their status or the color of their skin, everyone is guaranteed Constitutional rights to protect them from illegal stops. We will hold DHS accountable.’”
J.T.