Hi,
Getting tear gassed by the National Guard fucking sucks.
Everything stings, you can’t breathe, and you can’t see. You can hear just fine — the almost comical pop-pop-pop as more tear gas canisters are sent arcing over the crowd. It strikes you how everyone has their own unique cough; their own way of spluttering.
Like many of you, I heard last night that Donald Trump was allegedly sending 2000 members of the National Guard to LA, all with the purpose of stopping the terrible violent protests against all the ICE raids and deportations going on in this city.
Of course there has been little to no violence — Trump just wants to swing his tiny lizard dick around, and stoke fear. His dream, I imagine, is conflict. “See, look, the people of LA are out of control,” he’ll mumble and dribble, distracted by whatever bugs are buzzing around in his sloppy mess of a brain.
I noted there was a planned protest outside City Hall at 2pm — so I drove downtown at 10am to get an early start. You fund my journalism here on Webworm, so let’s fucking do journalism on my Sunday.
The two off ramps sending me towards Little Tokyo were both blocked by cops, so after an extended winding drive through backroads I parked a 20 minute walk from City Hall. But I wasn’t really interested in City Hall, I was interested in the Metropolitan Detention Centre — a 10 minute walk from City Hall — where ICE holds many of their victims. You know, the people who were working in restaurants, teaching kids in schools, and building shit before they got thrown into the back of a van.
So before you think “some good cops I know a cop he does good job he is good cop” please understand what’s in the air when people scrawl DEAD COPS everywhere.
And at around 10.30am, I spotted them — spilling out of the Edward R Roybal Federal Building (a courthouse), next to the prison: Some of Trump’s National Guards ordered in to bring peace to the city.
The crowd outside numbered around 50 — and I talked to a bunch of them for the audio you hear attached to this newsletter.
If you’re on the app, you may have seen some of the live-streaming I did here on Webworm — my first try at this feature — and due to my own stress, a barely existent 5G signal, and some buggy tech it was a bit of a glitchy mess. I didn’t know what way was up. I couldn’t read your comments flowing in, because the sun was too bright. At one point my phone overheated and turned itself off.
Anyway, the audio above — 3 or so hours condensed into 15 minutes — is a lot better, I assure you. The mix is a bit cooked, but I wanted to get this newsletter sent out. You’ll cope.
As 11am moved to 12pm, more and more people came. Some of them tried to reason with the National Guard, begging them to essentially change sides. To be on the right side of history. You do wonder about these people — the ICE agents too — they can’t all be into it, surely?
A woman got closer than most, sometimes talking, sometimes yelling at this man she paid tax dollars to so he could stand facing her with a mask and gun, later tear gassing her face.
A weird thing happened as I saw the dead eyes and indifference from members of the National Guard: I started getting really angry, too. Or sad? I cried, I think? It was weird, as tear gas from yesterday was getting flicked up by the traffic and we were all starting to cough and leak. But yeah — I felt anger, and those motifs — FUCK ICE, KILL ALL COPS — I connected with it.
Something about being unarmed in this country, looking at these Americans with their guns who are there to fuck you up because — why, again? Because you are someone who seeks justice in some way, or gets annoyed sitting at home just watching and feeling powerless at this shit?
I should note, at this point, it was all peaceful.
Different voices, ages, nationalities, genders, flags. I asked everyone permission to take their photos, because members of the Nazi Proud Boys group were there, taking photos too. Maybe they have a database; maybe they’re just jerking off to them, I don’t fuckin’ know.
By 1pm, more people have gathered — hundreds of people. And more National Guard and LAPD appear. They have AK47s or whatever they are (I don’t know guns, fuck guns), and big wooden batons, and some of them now have tear gas canisters. A few have what look like little grenade launchers.
I guess they were for the tear gas, too.
People were passionate, and sometimes angry, but always smart. They talked of this country’s history of slavery, and of murdering the native people here, and of how we got to this point today. It struck me that I was white and (sort of) safe and the worst thing that happens to me is I get sent back to New Zealand — but so many people here were risking so, so much.
One incredible, wonderfully camp man took to listing the physical attributes of the National Guard members’ faces, noting that they were all short. This was really, really funny — but also: they had guns and stuff. I felt worried.
At some point near 1.30, I was trying to charge my phone, and a convoy of ICE SUVs peels around the block. They were led by armored vehicles — something you see in a war — and then more ICE cars, then more armored trucks. There was a big long line of them coming down the street, and people were fucked off and yelling, and I guess they needed to get into the detainment facility.
In another world, I don’t know, they would have gently moved through, and the crowd would part because really, who wants to get run over — but then the National Guard (normally fighting floods, distributing aid, helping people or something) sort of just put their heads down and did what they’d always wanted to do, I guess: Fuck people up. They put their heads down and they charged.
Rubber bullets pelted and hit, and tear gas canisters rocketed through the sky. I was far from the front line but I couldn’t see and everything burnt and everyone was yelling, coughing, screaming. That’s the audio you hear at the end, if you’re listening along.
But, in all of it, defiance. That guy I was talking about earlier — the one telling them they were short and bald and had small dicks and wore glasses — he was right up the front, metres from them. I talked to him after — he was 24, and brave as hell. Some kid who worked at a local university paper got a blast direct to the face, too.
In all of this shit, it was nice to be reminded that everyone here cared.
I still can’t fully comprehend how a great deal of this country voted for Donald Trump again — when he’d already made it so clear what he was about.
But here we are, it’s super weird, and I am not sure what new fresh chaos will arrive tomorrow. As I write this back at my small one bedroom apartment I hear so, so many sirens in the air. A news alert pops up, and the 101 is closed and three driverless Waymo cars have been set alight.
Good. If we don’t push back then we just get steamrolled and we might as well all just die. Why have free will if we don’t use it.
Thanks for being here and supporting my stuff. If you pay for Webworm — thanks. If you can’t afford a full membership, email me and I’ll sort you out. If you read for free and are sitting on shitload of money, fuckin’ sign up. My eyes hurt.
David.
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