What are we to make of the demonstrations currently underway in Los Angeles?
For those of us not facing blocked freeways and tear gas canisters, what are we to think of their presence in our sister state of California?
We’ve not seen our federal military getting between protesters and the rest of us since Arkansas in 1965 when the mission then was to protect school children when we were trying to shed our shameful national practice of segregation.
Watching the events in Los Angeles – the armed military positioned among the various scenes of dissent – you have to wonder just what it would take for one Marine – just one – to fire a shot. Just one.
At the moment, that would be unimaginable. But, then, so is what we’re seeing on our TV screens. Thousands in the streets in what started as a protest of a government agency trying to capture and deport people who’ve entered the country illegally.
How do you identify those folks from the rest of us? How do you not round up some innocent people who don’t speak English but who are in our country legally?
Now, were seeing more demonstrations – in other cities in other states. What started in a few blocks of a Los Angeles neighborhood is now a seeming national “push back” against immigration authority elsewhere.
One of the inherent problems with social protesting is that – like a herd of stampeding cattle – a few folks at the front can turn it this way and that. What started as meaningful dissent can run amok if those front folk aren’t careful. So far, the LA story seems to be staying on track.
For those of us here on the sidelines, our association with the story is like watching a movie. We know the players – the protestors. We know the story – immigration both lawful and not.
The tipping point here seems to be trying to keep the peace without stepping on someone’s rights and dignity. That’s a tough assignment for young military folks carrying rifles and facing fellow Americans at the protest site for the first time.
I watched – and covered – similar protests in the late ’60’s in Washington D.C. as a young reporter for a major news organization. There, we had a “demonstration-a-day” for several years. Our equipment was a helmet, a gas mask, a tape recorder and an orange “press pass” hung around our neck. That “orange press pass” became a tear gas target for cops who objected to our presence. And, many did.
The LA protests will end. So, too, those in the rest of the country. But, however it ends, it won’t really be over. The size and scope are too large to disappear. There will be a quiet time when all sides withdraw to their respective corners. But, the basic causes of the street marches will still be with us. Simmering just below the surface like some Yellowstone geyser.
There are many social problems in this country. Many. We’re living with a political administration unable – or unwilling – to “take the gloves off” and do anything meaningful to take them on. So, the problems will continue. At least until the 2026 and 2028 national elections.
If we don’t “clean house” – if we don’t change the leadership in Washington – these problems will continue. There’s never been a time, since the Civil War, when we’ve so badly needed a change in direction – a change in national political and social directions.
What’s happening on the streets in Los Angeles doesn’t have to end badly – though our President is doing his damndest to make it so with the introduction of armed Marines while local leadership says they have things “in hand.”
The protests will run their course. Left alone, the steam will run out. Traffic will again flow on those same streets as it did before. The businesses – now closed because of the demonstrations – will reopen. Life will get back to normal. It always does.
That’s one of the great things about our nation. We get “hot-under-the-collar” about something, blow off the steam in various ways, then get back to the business of being one country “with liberty and justice for all.”
Ain’t that great?
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