We in Los Angeles saw the effects of Trump's constant lying and terrorizing of immigrant communities. Now the feds are arriving in the Bay Area.
Looks like another billionaire’s about to get his way.
Earlier this month, while on his private jet to California, Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff told a New York Times reporter he’d welcome a National Guard deployment to San Francisco. It marked a 180-degree turn for him: A man once seen as the Bay Area’s benevolent billionaire was now welcoming military occupation of his city. Another “good billionaire” had gone bad.
And now, as I write, federal immigration agents are massing on a U.S. Coast Guard base across the bay from San Francisco. If this goes anything like the occupation of Los Angeles, National Guard troops will follow. Immigrant communities will be terrorized.
The Bay Area is about to change. Here’s what to expect.
The lies — my God, the lies. When the immigration raids began in Los Angeles in early June, unrest broke out in pockets of the region. Most of the resistance happened in a portion of downtown L.A. and some areas of South L.A., and officials made clear local law enforcement could handle the situation.
For a national audience, however, Los Angeles was portrayed as a battle zone, a hotbed of violent, anti-government rebellion.
President Trump federalized the California National Guard on June 7. That night, I went downtown to see what was happening near the federal detention center where some immigrants were being held. What I found was a bustling area with full restaurants, busloads of tourists and, yes, a corner where police and some protesters faced off peacefully. Some people there wanted to get through the police lines to check if loved ones were being held at the federal jail. Hardly a war zone.
In the weeks that followed, Trump administration officials continued to paint Los Angeles — the same city where I was dropping my kids off at summer camps, golfing on bucolic courses and hiking beautiful trails — as a battlefield. What a surreal experience, living a life that put the lie to a president’s malicious dishonesty. Kristi Noem, Trump’s Homeland Security chief, even said L.A. “would have burned down” without the president’s action — a remarkably crass statement about a region where thousands of homes had recently burned in actual wildfires.
And what did the National Guard troops do? A July 17 headline in the LosAngeles Times put it best: “National Guard came to L.A. to fight unrest. Troops ended up fighting boredom.”
It’s one thing to know the president lies. It’s another thing entirely to be the object of his incessant distortions and fabrications.
But the terror will be real. Closed car washes. Empty parks. Understaffed restaurants. For people not targeted by immigration forces, this will be what you notice — and you will notice it.
That’s because, in the Bay Area, a huge portion of the population will be too afraid to do the things others take for granted — go to work, drive around, shop for food. At my children’s school, which is majority-minority, I’ve heard from parents who stopped allowing their kids to walk home after class, a freedom that my three (white) sons exercise without fear.
Your friends, neighbors and others will have every reason to be afraid. At the local news site L.A. Taco, journalists have been updating a near-daily list of raids in areas across Southern California, informed by tips from community members. If the Bay Area endures anything close to what’s happened in L.A., here’s what to expect: alleged hit-and-runs, regular physical violence and traffic deaths because people were fleeing agents.
As Gov. Gavin Newsom said at his news conference Wednesday: “What the hell is going on in this country? None of this is normal.”
People will find ways besides protesting to help. In Los Angeles, neighborhood watch groups quickly formed to tip off community members of ICE presence. Also, people too afraid to leave their homes — and there are many, many of those people in L.A. — still need to have their daily needs met. They need groceries and medication. They need money.
Just in my small social circle, friends and church groups banded together to buy and deliver food for home-bound community members.
My advice: Check on your neighbors and do what you can materially to help. It may involve a grocery or pharmacy run instead of attending a protest.
Get ready for Bay Area and immigrant pride to swell. Nothing fosters a sense of solidarity like coming under attack. Perhaps it’s a way of sustaining people facing serious headwinds. Seemingly small acts of resistance — a protester confronting armed agents only with his words or someone singing the National Anthem in Spanish — will galvanize communities. It’s a small consolation, but it will matter.
Which is to say to our Bay Area brethren: People in L.A., Chicago, Washington and Portland have come through this, and you will too. But there will be pain, and it most certainly will not be distributed equally.
