The threat of ICE raids on commencement ceremonies was credible enough that our Los Angeles school district devised plans to protect students from being kidnapped as they received their diplomas.
Apparently, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi and President Donald Trump, “California is burning.” Here in Los Angeles, however, we know too well the smell of a serious conflagration ‒ and also the stench of political gas when politicians try to justify corrupt assertions of authoritarian power.
We are protesting now not because we are lawless, but because what is happening is a racially selective application of immigration laws that should have been reformed years ago. We are protesting because we still believe in decency, human dignity and respect for hard work and family.
Some protesting among us have succumbed to anger, while others have opportunistically caused mayhem the way some revelers do when the Lakers or the Dodgers win a championship.
Meanwhile the president and his ministers of cruelty, hysteria and lies are opportunistically causing far more mayhem, disrupting businesses and communities and devastating families and insulting our brave troops by gratuitously deploying them to our streets, pitting them against American civilians, trying to use the selfless members of our military as an authoritarian flex.
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