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RAGE AND PRAYER IN LOS ANGELES  
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Manuel Pastor
June 13, 2025
Dissent Magazine

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_ The task of this moment is to build a broad front that can resist
authoritarianism. The recent protests are early skirmishes in the
fight that will be needed. _

Faith leaders pray in front of National Guard officers at a protest
in Los Angeles on June 10, 2025, Courtesy of Joseph Tomás McKellar

 

Los Angeles is convulsing—and maybe being reborn. The immediate
trigger was the unleashing of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) agents upon the region, a tactic adopted after White House
Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller—appropriately labeled “vile
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by a journalist who was suspended for speaking truth to power—became
frustrated
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what he saw as the slow pace of deportations.

ICE arrests are up
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but not as much as the administration hoped. As it turns out, focusing
on the “worst of the worst
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(those with a proven criminal record), as Trump promised to do, is
tough work; immigrants who have a lot to hide tend to do just that.
It’s much easier to send authorities to a target-rich environment
where they can easily locate and arrest day laborers, car washers
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and parents dropping their kids off at school.

That’s Los Angeles, of course. A place where nearly a fifth of the
population
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either undocumented or a U.S. citizen or documented immigrant living
in a mixed-status family. A place where roughly a third of our
residential construction labor force
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to rebuilding after the January fires
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without papers. A place where immigrant rights activists
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built a social movement infrastructure
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is parallel to none.

ICE raids ripped their way through the L.A. region on Friday, June 6,
with the locations of choice including a Home Depot near Downtown L.A.
and an apparel company
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workers with nearly two decades in the country—and dependent family
members who rely on their income—were arrested and transported to
detention.

Or perhaps better put, shipped into a vortex
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due process is abrogated, lawyers are not made available, and
information is scarce. Immigrant rights activists and family members
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themselves spending time trying to find out just who was kidnapped and
where they might be held—and knowing that no amount of ransom will
get them back from a regime dedicated to the theatrics of cruelty.

Los Angeles fought back—occasionally in ways that have spilled over
into violence. I was at City Hall on Sunday night and got a first-hand
glimpse. I was headed there because of a prayer vigil, one that was
called off because of the emerging possibility of violence (prescient
as it turns out
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I went nonetheless to meet a community leader and friend who was
helping to steer people away who had come for the vigil and found
themselves in a crowd that seemed ready for full-scale confrontation.

The easiest arrival to identify as one of “our people” was
a ninety-year-old priest 
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gathering and was eager to warn everyone of the threats of impending
fascism. On the stole draping his shoulders was a picture of the
Catholic Saint Maximilian Kolbe
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a Polish priest famous for his resistance to the Nazis. One of the
acts that got him canonized as a martyr was offering to take the place
of one of ten men Auschwitz guards chose to starve to death as
collective punishment for a prisoner escape.

As the priest patiently told the story, the police geared up to
charge the crowd
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About half a football field away, some on the protest side had
stripped out benches and created a barricade between them and officers
who were shooting projectiles and flash-bang grenades. Behind the
barricade, folks tossed water bottles, then metal bars, and eventually
shot off fireworks. Finally, officers charged, some on horseback and
some on foot, and released a barrage of tear gas in our direction.

My friend and I were already stepping away, and we had urged the
priest to do the same (to our surprise, he lingered
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Our own ginger steps turned to a run as tear gas was fired, horses
were mounted, and the barricades were overrun. It was, as one of my
organizer allies would say, a “spicy” moment. There were clearly
some who wanted and relished the conflict—agitators and provocateurs
are always in the mix—but the striking thing to me was the large
number of young people milling around who were just incredibly pissed
off. Their view: this is our city, our families, and our future
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They were determined to resist those seeking to rewrite our identity
and our destiny.

This raises a question that reverberates beyond the landscape of Los
Angeles in a moment in which authoritarianism is on the rise: how do
we effectively channel the hot rage of protest into the cold anger of
strategy? Marches and tame demonstrations are not enough: we must
instead muster a real (and hopefully nonviolent) way to jam the
system, stop the deportations, and so much more. The latest barrage
from the Trump administration seems to be angering not just activists
but nearly everyone, offering the real possibility of a new broad
front.

Local police forces have been baited into a fight they did not want;
on that same Sunday, National Guard troops surged into a peaceful but
vocal crowd with riot shields, smoke grenades, and tear gas—and then
withdrew to leave the resulting hours-long battle
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the locals. State and local political figures, including Mayor Karen
Bass
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Gavin Newsom
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are pushing back against the heavy hand of Washington.

This was the first time National Guard troops have been deployed
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the request of a state’s governor since the 1960s. In that era, the
National Guard was there to protect civil rights marchers from racist
and vindictive state authorities. Now, the intention is to sow chaos
and fear, and to enact what is clearly a racist and vindictive
strategy on a city that wants no part of Trump’s agenda.

To some extent, Trump’s strategy is working—if you define working
as getting the television images he craves. What is less clear is
whether it will eventually play well with the public. In keeping with
the nation’s polarization, he is getting high marks (nearly 90
percent approval) from Republicans. In stirring up his own base, he
has been helped by a media too often eager to portray all of Los
Angeles as on fire—when, in fact, people were dining outdoors just
blocks away from the action—and too infrequently focused on the
families whose lives are touched and torched by the government’s
actions.

As the raids and riots continue, Los Angeles has begun to find its
footing. Monday brought a large demonstration in a downtown park,
organized by SEIU California, whose president David Huerta had been
arrested the previous Friday at one of the ICE raids. Injured in the
process, he spent the weekend in custody and was then charged with
“conspiracy to impede an officer
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a chilling response to protest and one likely to keep labor engaged in
this bigger movement for justice.

On Tuesday night, a vigil led by faith leaders—representing
Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and other
traditions—attracted a large crowd in the same downtown park. I will
admit my own initial frustration at that event. From the stage rang
calls for peace and nostalgic renditions of 1960s folk songs; I kept
thinking this was out of sync when the emotion of the moment is
indignation and the soundtrack of contemporary Los Angeles is Kendrick
Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us
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But then a bit of bravery—and indeed magic—occurred. As the event
ended, faith leaders and about half the crowd marched out from the
park, trekking through what had been a highly localized war zone to
the nearby Federal Building. They were greeted by officers from the
Department of Homeland Security who trained pepper ball guns on the
crowd
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They responded by taking a knee, offering flowers, and praying.

Perhaps more remarkable was what happened along the way. The phalanx
of faith had come across a group of young protesters chanting slogans,
waving flags, and hoisting signs that said “Fuck ICE”—a
sentiment that was raw but real given the pain that has been caused by
Trump’s commitment to cruelty. Meanwhile, the faith leaders were
singing “This Little Light of Mine” and carrying banners with the
words “Families are Sacred.”

It should have been a sonic and generational clash. But the tune and
message were soon picked up by youth seemingly happy that someone was
meeting them where they were—in their desperation and on the
streets—and then leading them to courageous but considered
confrontation. And when the faith leaders started praying—straight
in the face of the armed state—the young protesters knelt and
joined, demonstrating how a quieter strength could both fuel
resistance and project a different image. The next night, a newly
popular chant began ricocheting through the streets of the city’s
downtown: “Peaceful protest
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The task of this moment and the years ahead is to build a broad front
that can resist the turn to authoritarianism. These last few days in
Los Angeles are early skirmishes in the fight that will be needed to
build that front: one that challenges Trump but also figures out how
to link those who are immigrant and those who are native-born, those
who are faithful and those who are furious, those who are woke and
those to be awakened, into a single struggle for multiracial
democracy.

The stakes could not be higher. It’s easy to think that this is just
about borders and migrants. But the attack on immigrants now
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a dry run for the strongman tactics that will later be used on us all.
And finding a path of resistance that is fierce but not reckless, mass
but not middling, strong but not violent will be a challenge. From the
streets, communities, and workplaces, Los Angeles is rising—and
hoping the nation will join in a fight for opportunity, community, and
dignity for all.

_MANUEL PASTOR is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American
Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and
director of the Equity Research Institute. He is the coauthor, with
Chris Benner, of Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles,
and a Just Future._

_Dissent is a magazine of politics and ideas published in print three
times a year. Founded by Irving Howe and Lewis Coser in 1954, it
quickly established itself as one of America’s leading intellectual
journals and a mainstay of the democratic left. Dissent has published
articles by Hannah Arendt, Richard Wright, Norman Mailer, A. Philip
Randolph, Michael Harrington, Dorothy Day, Bayard Rustin, Czesław
Miłosz, Barbara Ehrenreich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Chinua Achebe,
Ellen Willis, Octavio Paz, Martha Nussbaum, Roxane Gay, and many
others. Sign up for the Dissent newsletter
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* deportations
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* Los Angeles
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* migrants
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* Immigrants
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* Authoritarianism
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