Power to the People and Thoughts on Los Angeles

If you’ve followed We Like L.A. for awhile, you know the whole purpose of what Christina and I do is to help people explore our city. How? Well, in a nutshell, we make lists. Lists of things to do around town. Lists for your month or your weekend. Free things and Metro-accessible ideas and just a lot stuff that we like about Los Angeles that we feel others might too. It’s personal. It’s practical. Frankly, it’s all a bit frivolous.

Still, it’s also quite a bit of fun, and I think in our own little way we’ve helped people get to know L.A. and all its sparkling nooks and grimy corners, all its inspiring museums and glossy galleries and hallowed concert venues. All the weirdo horror shows and shiny pop-ups and enough “immersive” events to make you gag.

When we do our job right, we direct you to an experience that sticks. The best experiences imprint memory in a way that carries on and leaves the doer with an itch to learn more, to go further and deepen a connection to this incredible, indescribable, and often contradictory place. Hopefully that experience becomes the starting point of something bigger. Perhaps even a lifelong love affair with the city.

The past decade of this blog has afforded me a sense of belonging that I never had before. That feeling of “home” is the sum total of countless experiences and moments. When I look back, it’s the quiet ones that stand out the most, like a morning hike up Kenneth Hahn, arriving at the MLK monument and staring out on the skyline backed by the San Gabriels. Or maybe it’s serenity of lunch with a good friend in the upper deck of Dodger Stadium, back when the Team Store would let you pass through in the offseason. Devouring a Meatball sando from Eastside Deli, looking out on a cathedral of empty seats, it makes you feel like the luckiest person on the whole planet.

Sometimes it’s the mundane, like standing in an impossibly long line for a breakfast burrito at the Corner Cottage, or in the subtle beauty of watching a heron glide as I walk my dog along the L.A. River path in Frogtown. Sometimes it’s in the absurd, like an oddly touching tribute to Adam West after he passed away. The city projected the Bat Signal on City Hall, and from the throngs of people who showed up, it’s almost like they believed West really was Batman, and that Batman truly was real.

But right now that all seems like folly. Right now the city is in pain. Right now the most powerful force in the world stands at our doorstep, pointing a gun and ordering us to bend to its will. It’s the political apparatus and military might of the richest government on earth. Our government.

I say this because in our Monday email newsletter, I outlined just a few thoughts on what had happened over the weekend and expressed my anger over some of the obvious constitutional violations taking place, the cruel targeting of immigrant populations, the needless escalation by the federal government, and the importance of being hyper aware at this most critical moment in our history.

Readers, from time to time, hit the reply button on our emails and of course this one generated more buzz than usual. I was heartened to see the vast majority of the responses were positive and supportive. By some miracle, there were no profanity-laced tirades or personal assaults.

One reader did gruffly admonish me to “stay in my lane” which if I was a stronger person I would’ve brushed off without a second thought. Unfortunately, my initial impulse was the same refrain that speaks to all insecure people under scrutiny. Maybe the critic is right.

Political diatribes are not meant for the calendar section. Nobody knows me. Nobody cares. Much easier to slink along and let it all play out. After all, the purpose of our newsletter and the nature of our outlet is about social activations, not social justice. And this is not just a hobby for me. It’s my livelihood. Yeah, probably a smart move to keep my head down and wait for the matter to settle.

Except the thing is, I don’t think I will.

There really is only one thing to do this weekend, and that’s to engage. There are over two thousand No Kings rallies scheduled to take place across the country on Saturday. In Los Angeles, the map shows no less than two dozen organized events happening throughout the county, with the biggest scheduled to start at 10 a.m. in front of City Hall. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but my gut tells me it’s going to be one of the most important dates in the history of our city, and maybe our republic. 

For some, engagement might mean attending one of the aforementioned rallies. But that’s not the end all, be all. Everyone can participate, whether it’s by amplifying the reality on the ground, countering propaganda, or gathering with friends. And perhaps you might attend another event on Saturday, something other than a protest. Perhaps you’ll be at work. But wherever you are, don’t leave your baggage at the door. Share it. Talk about it, and make others talk about it too. Make it a part of your experience.

But that’s the what. For me, just as important is the why. And to explain my why, I want to tell you about my dad. 

Dad was probably an even bigger weirdo than I am, which is a bold claim. He was the father who ignored other parents at soccer games, sitting off to the side on a stone wall with a nose in a book, occasionally glancing up to see who scored a goal. At home, sometimes solicitors would call with special offers on a credit card. He was thrilled, he told them, to sign up for that 25% interest rate but he wanted to make sure it was okay that he had only recently been released from the state mental hospital. What a strange dude.

One of dad’s boldest moves was his law school application to UC Hastings (now UC Law San Francisco). There was an essay portion, for which he only wrote four words: “I love the law.”

You might call it ballsy. Or smug. Or lazy. Maybe his grades were that good. Maybe he really meant what he said. The thing is, it worked. He was accepted and that acceptance is the reason he met my mom, which means I guess it’s the reason I even exist at all. Conceived based on an act of arrogance. Somehow it all makes sense.

When my dad was in law school he ran for class president, which I didn’t even know was a thing. For a promotional photo he went across the street of the Supreme Court of California Headquarters to a park where he recruited several grade schoolers to pose with him.

The perfectly diverse little cast of characters jumped and yelled and waved as a way to externalize the slogan of the campaign: “Power to the People.” The resulting image, which you can see at the top of this post, certainly captures that late 60s activist esthetic. It’s my favorite photo of him.

I wish my dad were alive today because I’d love to get his opinion on all this. Unfortunately, he died when I was ten years old, succumbing to complications from a disease transmitted by a blood bank. It was a blood bank that should have been more careful, but wasn’t. It was a time when this disease, which is so famous now I don’t even have to tell you the name, is something that no one wanted to talk about.

Looking back, I often wonder about the secret pain dad must have carried for years after his diagnosis. I ponder the weight of a stigma so heavy that he could not share it with his children during his final days. But I also think about the good things. The trips to the San Diego Zoo. The oral reports he forced me to do after reading each of the The Little House on the Prairie books. I think about that stupid slogan.

It came back to me during the George Floyd protest five years ago when I saw a sign held up with the same four words. I think about the phrase now and how my dad would feel seeing the thing he loved the most trashed and trampled like a wrapper left in a Taco Bell parking lot.

Any lawyer knows you can have all the rights and promises and guarantees in the world, but they mean nothing without due process. Speak your mind. Own a gun. Organize a protest. Face your accuser and receive a fair trial from a jury of your peers. They’re all just ink stains on a piece of paper if the people who run the system can decide on a whim how and when the rules matter, or if they even matter at all.

And so we get ICE in Los Angeles. They stalk graduations. They stake out Home Depots. They prowl churches and restaurants, waiting to make warrantless arrests, hauling away our neighbors to send them where, exactly? 

As I said in my Monday email, ICE lost its legitimacy the minute it disappeared U.S. residents to foreign prisons without due process. Angelenos have every reason to believe that if they see a friend or neighbor handcuffed and stuffed into a van, that person may never be seen again. Gone without so much as a word from a lawyer or a glance from a judge.

In the span of less than a week, we’ve seen masked goons carrying weapons of war execute one act of terror after another, all against the most vulnerable of our population. They’ve intimated pastors. They roughed up a pregnant woman, sending her to the hospital. One group of agents rammed a car in Boyle Heights with a family inside. The assailants tossed a canister of tear gas near the vehicle, with a baby and toddler still in the backseat. ICE dragged the father out, cuffed him, then took off. Everyone in the car was a U.S. citizen. No warrant was shown.

Don’t tell me this is all about law and order. This is about fear. And that fear has twin objectives, both to force submission and to elicit confrontation. Confrontation, violent or otherwise, which becomes nothing more than a photo op. A content creation tool to generate scenes of “chaos” which are broadcast through an endless web of propaganda outlets. But it’s far from reality.

The truth is that while we are under attack, L.A. is not the apocalyptic nightmare your family back east saw on FOX News. It’s not the war zone depicted by AI slop spreading on social media. Part of it is that Los Angeles is so damn big… over 450 miles squared counting just the city limits. Ongoing protests in Downtown make up only handful of blocks, and the curfew zone enacted by the mayor is only a few square miles. Headlines tout burned Waymos and organized looting. But those have occurred sparsely. Those are the result of provocateurs and opportunists. And honestly, what are a handful of property crimes weighed against the shredding of the Constitution?

In fact, most everyone I know is going about their lives in peace, albeit with a dark cloud of tyranny hanging over their heads, like a noose tickling the back of their neck. And while blaring of sirens and whirring helicopter blades have become an hourly constant, it is not because the city is on fire. Rather, it’s because the federal government has come looking for a fight.

Yet even in the face of obvious provocations, I hope that the protests remain peaceful, and that the spectacle that the world sees is not one of violence, but of solidarity. I hope that this Saturday the song of resistance sings a chorus across every channel, on every station and on every screen from the steps of L.A. City Hall to the cobblestones of the Place de la Concorde. 

If you live here, share what’s happening. Tell the world what you see. Let others know that if any enemy, foreign or domestic, comes to our city and attempts to terrorize our people, we will not abide that incursion. I see it as a moral imperative. But maybe that’s not enough.

Imperatives—ideas like common good and unalienable rights—work in the abstract. Experience, on the other hand, tends to be a much firmer gas pedal. And when it presses down, it drives us to actions that we’d never thought we’d take, for better or worse. We all need a reason, and reasons aren’t abstract. They are personal.

In the space above I’ve tried to outline my reasons. Writing, for me, is an act of figuring things out. I write in order to clarify thought. But what I realize now, through the product of my own reasoning, is that what I said before was wrong.

The most powerful force in the world isn’t wielded by any government. It’s not in tanks and tear gas. It’s in the love we have for one another, and for this place. It’s in the sense of belonging that connects each and every one of of us, documented or undocumented. History has shown us again and again, in the marches and the sit-ins and the hunger strikes, in the revolts and the boycotts and the elections, it’s the people who have the power.

But then what do I know? I’m just a guy who loved to go on dates with his wife, and decided that it should be my profession. I am, by many accounts, a clown. A joker. Somebody who, when it’s all said and done, is probably a lot like their dad, minus the law degree.

The funny thing is he never did win that election. If you know our family, I guess that’s pretty on brand. And while he’s not around for me to pry into the details of his failed campaign, the idea to which he aspired has stuck with me. Right now, I grip those words tighter than I have ever before.

You see ideas are stubborn things. They may not always motivate us they way they should, but they endure. They stick around for generations, through genocides and internments and systematic oppression, through booms and busts and depressions and wars. And even when we feel like the whole world is a sham based on a lie resting on a bed of hypocrisy, it only takes one good idea to offer a chance at redemption. 

My idea for this Saturday is that we fire up our own Bat Signal. Be our own superheroes. Let’s turn on that spotlight to the sky, and let it shine like a blazing beacon of hope in the darkness. And maybe it won’t just be a singular moment, but the start of something bigger. An experience that changes us forever.

Perhaps when history looks back to this time, it will be with great surprise.

Who knows, we might just make it through to the other side.

If we stand together, we might just win.