Reporting from Los Angeles

Two new dispatches, plus that Padilla video

Hello all, from Los Angeles, where I’ve been reporting since Monday. First piece for Reason dropped Tuesday. Here’s the lede, to “Protesters March, Police Surround, and the Cycle Resets: Dispatch From L.A.:”

"They start shooting, I'm taking off," said Arley Washington, a protester I met on the bus, when he spotted the phalanx of police officers sealing off the corner of Los Angeles and Temple Streets. Protesters who wanted to block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters had to walk around.

Washington, who was downtown on an errand and figured the protesters could use some support, passed teenagers waving homemade posters reading, "Tearing Apart FAMILIES is EVIL" and "ICE out of LA," vendors selling Mexican flags from a pull cart, a half-naked man taking a bath in a fire hydrant, and walls of fresh graffiti riffing on some version of "FUCK TRUMP."

On the other side of the 101, Washington spotted another line of cops and planned an escape route for when they rushed the crowd. "I got shot with a rubber bullet back in 2020 at the [Black Lives Matter] protests," he said, lifting his shirt to show a small dent in his gut. "The police, they were lined up and they were shooting far, like two city blocks; he hit me from that far."

Read the rest here. Not included: that when the police started to rush, I took off and was pushed under some bushes and went down pretty hard on my back. No big deal. What was is that my notepad went flying, and there was no way sixty rushing LAPD officers were going to let me go back and get it. There are few things sadder for a reporter than losing her notes... Interrupting myself here to say there are lots of sirens outside, likely rushing downtown to there the nightly action is. You can read about how these things go in the above piece and more fully, which those of you who’ve been following along with the protest reporting since 2020, in today’s dispatch, in which I try to clear up a few misconceptions…

A clip:

Los Angeles is not on lockdown. On Tuesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass imposed a curfew—from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.—to "stop the vandalism and looting" seen on several previous nights. The curfew area covers only one square mile of downtown. The city of Los Angeles is more than 500 square miles. Most of L.A. looks exactly as it always does, and life goes on as it always has.

Angelenos are not living in terror. Law enforcement is selectively inspiring terror, as on Tuesday night, when they shot a young woman trying to walk to her home, ostensibly within the curfew zone. The majority of sounds coming from downtown in the hours before the curfew were from law enforcement: helicopters, sirens, flash-bang grenades. Still, by 9:15 p.m., the curfew zone was mostly quiet, with local TV stations playing the Dodgers and Angels games.

The protesters are not being bussed in or paid by George Soros. This is the lazy man's explanation for every protest he doesn't like. Does Soros support some things you or I might find counterproductive to the health of a community? Sure. But the notion that there are thousands of people who are part of a professional outrage class, waiting by their bat-phones for marching orders from the billionaire is not merely a fever dream—it's an insult to ordinary people's ability to think for themselves and exercise their right to take to the streets and speak out.

You can read the rest over at Reason, and you’ll be doing me a solid if you become a paid subscriber; I have a lot of reporting ahead and that keto brownie and coffee I just bought at Erewhon* are not going to pay for themselves.

I also happened to be at the Kristi Noem press conference this morning, where California Senator Alex Padilla got himself led out by law enforcement, taken to the ground, and handcuffed. Video I shot of Padilla explaining the ordeal after the break. Also, my appearance on Mark Halperin’s 2Way Tonight, where we discussed how in the right/wrong Padilla was.

See you from the field! xx

*I told my daughter, who’s also in LA working, that were I to live near a store as nice as Erewhon, I’d have to whore myself out in the stockroom to afford the goods.