Battle of LosAngeles
Qualche ora fa, nella notte italiana, Donald Trump ha annunciato di aver mobilitato la guardia nazionale californiana ordinando a 2000 soldati di muovere su Los Angeles.
Si tratta in realtà di un commissariamento dato che i riservisti di ogni stato dipendono dai rispettivi governatori. Solo in casi eccezionali quell’autorità può essere impugnata dal presidente, come aveva fatto Eisenhower ad esempio quando aveva mandato la national guard dell’Arkansas ad integrare le scuole pubbliche di Little Rock.
L’azione di Trump è invece una drastica escalation che sbanda il paese verso l’anticamera del conflitto civile.
Il governatore Newsom ha infatti affermato che l’azione non solo non è necessaria, ma atta
piuttosto ad infiammare ulteriormente la situazione.La “situazione” è la tensione provocata dai raid militari inscenati a partire da venerdì quando dai soliti commando mascherati sono apparsi in numerosi quartieri della città in convogli di veicoli corazzati in stile Falluja, armi da guerra in mano e dita sui grilletti degli AR15.
Così combinati hanno inscenato rastrellamenti davanti a Home Depot (la catena di grandi magazzini del fai da te nei cui parcheggi stanziano lavoratori in attesa di piccoli lavori edili e ingaggi giornalieri). Altri blindati hanno preso la strada di Westlake, il quartiere più densamente popolato della città, dove i marciapiedi sono ingolfati di colorati mercatini e robivecchi, innescando panico e fuggi fuggi fra la popolazione centroamericana.
Altri federales ancora sono apparsi nel “garment district,” il distretto dell’abbigliamento e fatto irruzione nella AmbianceApparel, sigillando i cancelli e arrestando una quarantina di lavoratori della fabbrica.
Come accaduto una settimana prima a San Diego (ma anche Minneapolis a Chicago e in Massachussetts), i raid hanno suscitato la reazione indignata ed infuriata di famigliari e colleghi dei desaparecidos spintonati dentro furgoni senza insegne.
La gente ha tentato di bloccare i veicoli apostrofando i paramilitari come “fascisti!”. Circondati, gli “agenti”(ma la loro identità rimane un mistero, spesso indossano uniformi che sembrano improvvisate e di diverso tipo, non portano nominativi ed hanno il volto sempre coperto) hanno reagito con lacrimogeni e granate stordenti.
Nelle colluttazioni vi sono stati numerosi contusi. David Huerta, segretario della SEIU (il maggiore sindacato del settore pubblico – 700000 membri nella contea), che tentava di informarsi sugli operai sequestrati, è stato malmenato, portato in ospedale e poi arrestato per resistenza.
La gente ha organizzato cortei spontanei sotto il centro di detenzione ed il tribunale federale da cui si sentivano grida di “ayudenos!” provenienti dagli scantinati dove i detenuti sono stati richiusi senza accesso ad avvocati. Le proteste ed i tafferugli sono durati fino a tarda notte.
Ieri mattina altre retate. L’esercito ombra è riapparso al Home Depot di Paramount, quartiere working class a sud di downtown dove si sono ripetute le stesse scene. Quando ci sono passato io, c’erano forse 500 persone in strada che urlavano la propria rabbia agli agenti che si erano portati via una dozzina di uomini.
Occasionalmente i paramilitari sparavano raffiche di proiettili di gomma e lacrimogeni per disperdere la folla che tornava regolarmente ad avvicinarsi tenendo in mano scritte “Fuck ICE” e “Fascists go home!”
Nel pomeriggio ci sono state una serie dichiarazioni dei ministri diTrump. Kristi Noem ha diffidato i “riottosi” affermando che “i manifestanti verranno arrestati e condannati.” Stephen Miller, consigliere per la remigrazione, ha riposto alla sindaca Karen Bass che aveva condannato l’operato delle truppe: “Non ha voce in capitolo, il potere federale è supremo. Sederemo l’insurrezione“.
La qualifica è risibile. I disordini non solo ammontano ad un centesimo di ciò che è avvenuto il 6 gennaio 2021, ma non si avvicinano nemmeno a quello che puntualmente si verifica quando vincono un campionato i Lakers.
Questo non ha impedito che Tom Homan (titolo ufficiale “zar delle deportazioni” e un phsyique du rôle alla Hermann Goering) di dichiarare “inammissibili” gli “attacchi terroristici” (al massimo sono volate delle uova) contro gli agenti impegnati ad arrestare “pericolosi criminali e trafficanti di bambini”. La consueta narrazione del “american carnage” qui sonoramente smentita dai fatti..
Ma questo naturalmente non ha impedito che si giungesse alla fase già da prima preventivata, annunciata per mezzo del solito tweet ieri sera: la mobilitazione della guardia nazionale “per proteggere la cittadinanza” (che prima di venerdì e dei raid militari, a dire il vero, stava benone).
Saranno ora i soldati a presidiare la città – contro la volontà della sindaca. del governatore e dei cittadini per i quali le truppe equivalgono ad una forza di occupazione ostile.
Ad aprile un decreto esecutivo titolato “sguinzagliare le forze dell’ordine,” ordinava specificamente “il trasferimento di materiale militare quali veicoli blindati ed equipaggiamento tattico” ai dipartimenti di polizia nonché l’addestramento degli agenti da parte del ministero della difesa, disposizioni in palese contravvenzione dei divieti costituzionali all’impiego civile della forza militare.
Ecco ora l’operazione organizzata ad arte per creare l’emergenza fittizia che ne giustifichi l’impiego per controllare una popolazione inadempiente che Trump ha nel mirino da tempo. Parliamo di un’area urbana allargata di 13 milioni di abitanti – la metà ispanici, fino al 10%potrebbero essere sprovvisti di permesso di lavoro.
La comunità – come tutto il Southwest – è economicamente, culturalmente e storicamente integrata a tutti gli effetti. La rimozione di un milione e mezza di persone – se fosse pure possibile – dilanierebbe la città producendo un trauma sociale irrimediabile.
L’etnostato americano esiste solo nei deliri dei suprematisti e nella narrazione Maga utile ad aggregarne il consenso. Si tratta piuttosto di un atto dimostrativo – colpire Los Angeles e la California per educare tutti gli altri stati.
E’ un delirio anche quello dei fanatici accelerazionisti Maga che a Los Angels sembrano avere ogni intenzione di imboccare una pericolosissima strada a senso unico senza rampe di uscita.
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- The arrest of union leaderr David Huerta is going to have a major impact on the coming months as deportations continue.
- Huerta was taken to the hospital for treatment, then into custody, where he remains until a Monday arraignment.
Unions in California are different from those in other places.
More than any state in our troubled country, their ranks are filled with people of color and immigrants. While unions have always been tied closely with the struggles of civil rights, that has become even more pronounced in the years since George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
In the subsequent national soul-searching, unions were forced to do a bit of their own. But where that conversation has largely broken down for general society under the pressure of President Trump’s right-wing rage, it took hold inside of unions to a much greater degree — leading to more leadership from people of color, sometimes younger leadership and definitely an understanding from the rank and file that these are organizations that fight far beyond the workplace.
Which is why the arrest of David Huerta, president of SEIU-USWW and SEIU California, by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Friday is going to have a major impact on the coming months as deportations continue.
“They have woke us up,” Tia Orr told me Saturday morning. She’s the executive director of the 700,000-strong Service Employees International Union California, of which Huerta is a part, and the first African American and Latina to lead the organization.
“And I think they’ve woke people up across the nation, certainly in California, and people are ready to get to action,” she added. “I haven’t seen that in a long time. I don’t know that I’ve seen something like that before, and so yes, it is going to result in action that I believe is going to be historical.”
While unions have voiced their disapproval of mass deportations since the MAGA threat first manifested, the unions’ might has not gone full force against them, taking instead a bit of a wait-and-see approach.
Well, folks, we’ve seen. We’ve seen the unidentified masked men rounding up immigrants across the country and shipping them into life sentences at torturous foreign prisons; we’ve watched a 9-year-old Southern California boy separated from his father and detained for deportation; and Friday, across Los Angeles, we saw an anonymous military-style force of federal agents sweep up our neighbors, family members and friends in what seemed to be a haphazard and deliberately cruel way.
And for those of you who have watched the video of Huerta’s arrest, we’ve seen a middle-aged Latino man in a plaid button-down be roughly pushed by authorities in riot gear until he falls backward, and seems to strike his head on the curb. Huerta was, according to a television interview with Mayor Karen Bass, pepper-sprayed as well. Then he was taken to the hospital for treatment, then into custody, where he remains until a Monday arraignment.
U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli wrote on social media that “Federal agents were executing a lawful judicial warrant at a LA worksite this morning when David Huerta deliberately obstructed their access by blocking their vehicle. He was arrested for interfering with federal officers ... Let me be clear: I don’t care who you are—if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted. No one has the right to assault, obstruct, or interfere with federal authorities carrying out their duties.”
I have covered protests, violent and nonviolent, for more than two decades. In one of the first such events I covered, I watched an iconic union leader, Bill Camp, sit down in the middle of the road in a Santa suit and refuse to move. Police arrested him. But they managed to do it without violence, and without Camp’s resistance. This is how unions do good trouble — without fear, without violence.
Huerta understands the rules and power of peaceful protest better than most. The union he is president of — SEIU United Service Workers West — started the Justice for Janitors campaign in 1990, a bottom-up movement that in Los Angeles was mostly powered by the immigrant Latina women who cleaned commercial office space for wages as low as $7 an hour.
After weeks of protests, police attacked those Latina workers in June of that year in what became known as the “Battle of Century City.” Two dozen workers were injured but the union did not back down. Eventually, it won the contracts it was seeking, and equally as important, it won public support.
Huerta joined USWW a few years after that incident, growing the Justice for Janitors campaign. The union was and has always been one powered by immigrant workers who saw that collective power was their best power, and Huerta has led decades of building that truth into a practical force. He is, says Orr, an organizer who knows how to bring people together.
To say he is a beloved and respected leader in both the union and California in general is an understatement. You can still find his bio on the White House website, since he was honored as a “Champion of Change,” by President Obama. Within hours of his arrest, political leaders across the state were voicing support.
“David Huerta is a respected leader, a patriot, and an advocate for working people. No one should ever be harmed for witnessing government action,” Gov. Gavin Newsom posted online.
Perhaps more importantly, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, speaking for her 15 million members, issued a statement.
Huerta “was doing what he has always done, and what we do in unions: putting solidarity into practice and defending our fellow workers,” she said. “The labor movement stands with David and we will continue to demand justice for our union brother until he is released.”
Similar statements came from the Teamsters and other unions. Solidarity isn’t a buzzword to unions. It’s the bedrock of their power. In arresting Huerta, that solidarity has been supercharged. Already, union members from across the state are making plans to gather Monday for Huerta’s arraignment in downtown Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, the Santa Monica native and architect of Trump’s deportation plans, has said the raids we are seeing now are just the beginning, and that he would like to see thousands of arrests every day, because our immigrant communities are filled with “every kind of criminal thug that you can imagine on planet earth.”
But in arresting Huerta, the battleground has been redrawn in ways we don’t fully yet appreciate. No doubt, Miller will have his way and the raids will not only continue, but increase.
But also, the unions are not going to back down.
“Right now, just in the last 14 hours, labor unions are joining together from far and wide, communities are reaching out in ways I’ve never seen,” Orr told me. “Something is different.”
Rosa Parks was just a woman on a bus, Orr pointed out, until she was something more. George Floyd was just another Black man stopped by police. Until he was something more.
Huerta is the something more of these immigration raids — not because he’s a union boss, but because he’s a union organizer with ties to both people in power and people in fear.
The coming months will show what happens when those two groups decide, together, that backing down is not an option.
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