It was just another pretty day in Los Angeles. People jogging, walking their dog with a coffee or smoothie in their spare hand, having brunch—and pro
It was just another pretty day in Los Angeles. People jogging, walking their dog with a coffee or smoothie in their spare hand, having brunch—and protesting. Hundreds of thousands turned out for joyous, sun-drenched No Kings Day demonstrations, dozens of them scattered all across the city and LA County on Saturday.
The thing that so many Americans don’t grasp is just how comprehensive greater Los Angeles is: a sprawling patchwork of neighborhoods and diminutive towns spread across more than 4,000 square miles, each with its own vibe and population mix. This disconnect is true in normal times, but is particularly jarring when LA is the center of national news—as it has been since Donald Trump directed the National Guard to the city on June 7 in the wake of protests over ICE raids. Those images on social media and in the news of tear gas and burning cars in the days since? That was mostly happening in a diminutive sliver of downtown, an area most locals rarely visit—to serve jury duty, maybe, or to visit an art museum. This past week, 98% of this city has been calmly and quietly going about its everyday business.
The difference, though, is that so many Angelenos are alarmed by Trump’s actions and stunned by the maddeningly out-of-whack version of reality being presented to the world. (I can’t tell you how many emails I got from friends asking if my family in LA was secure from the riots.) Sending in the National Guard, and later the Marines, to guard ICE agents as they stage their unpopular raids, and justifying constitutionally suspect measures by describing LA as a “trash heap” rife with criminals—well, the motivation to get out into the jacaranda-lined streets was forceful. While hundreds of other actions unfolded throughout Saturday across the country, it would be fair to say that the stakes seemed particularly high in Los Angeles.
I started out my day in West Hollywood Park, the only protest site in spitting distance of both SUR (Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant, made famed by the reality show Vanderpump Rules) and The Abbey (an iconic gay bar that inspired Chappell Roan’s hit song “Pink Pony Club”). Protesters gathered in two separate areas to cheer rousing speeches on everything from the intricacies of the US Constitution to LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights to immigration and LA’s prosperous multicultural mix. My favorite, a drag queen wearing fabulous white thigh-high boots, talked about her own immigration story, leaving the diminutive crowd chanting, “Chinga la migra!” (Loosely translated, that’s “Fuck the border patrol.”) A pretty good portion of the protest signs I saw all through the day offered a play on ICE: “LA Heat Melts ICE” or “The Only Place I Want ICE Is in My Horchata.”
The noise of the crowd drowned out great chunks of the speeches, but the gist came through: “It’s exhausting how he wants it to be all about him, but it’s never been about him…. He is only able to rule through a show of force…. We will use this country’s system of checks and balances to stop him…. When it comes to court cases, he’s now the losing-est president in US history.”
A squad of volunteers handed out free water, COVID masks, and diminutive American flags, turning the park into a rippling sea of stars and stripes—a reminder that patriotism isn’t the domain of one party. WeHo protest signs ranged from the truculent (“All Hail Donny the Tiny Dick Dictator”) to the trenchant (“Even the Gestapo Showed Their Faces”). The most popular might’ve been the image of legendary drag queen Divine sneering at a juvenile Trump. Sadly, it’s photoshopped, but that only slightly detracts from its power.
Next on the trail was Los Feliz. The first thing that greeted my eyes was a throng of protesters standing on a traffic island joyfully singing along to Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street.” There was no park here, so the gigantic crowd—an eclectic mix of pierced hipsters, parents toting babies, and lots of people with dogs—distributed itself on all sides of the busy intersection. Protesters crossed the road back and forth when the lights changed and marched up Vermont Avenue (home to cafés and vintage clothing shops) and down Hollywood Boulevard, just below Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural landmark Hollyhock House.
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