Provocations
Or What the Last Three Days In Los Angeles Have been Like for an Organizer/Executive Director
I am not ok. After the assassination of Alex Pretti yesterday morning in Minnesota by Border Patrol, I cried in a way I haven’t allowed myself to in awhile. Just the day before I had stood in front of a few hundred people in Downtown Los Angeles reminding myself as much as I was reminding the crowd in solidarity with Minnesota , how I/we could be the next Nicole Good and that’s why we had to continue to document, speak up with our voices, our feet, our votes, our dollars. That morning, my mother said she hoped I wasn’t going to a rally. She worries about me, and I worry about myself, about so many people as walk around with the weapons of domestic terrorism : whistles and cell phones and signal chats. My boyfriend sends her a recording of my speech and texts her that I am safe. I call her my voice as proof. We talk of the snow and she asks me to bring her a whistle the next time I go to visit her. It will be my Valentine’s gift to her. Whistles are how we show each other how much we love each now.
What broke me yesterday morning is a stark realization that despite escalation of state violence and repression and disappearance, so many who have access to power because of who they/we are and/or who they /werepresent are still in such defensive positions, are complying in advance. What broke me yesterday morning was seeing one organization, through the voice of a man asking documenters, like me, like what Rene Good was, like what Alex Pretti was - to not be provoked. When I challenged the framing, not the intention, another man - dismissed me. So I took myself off the chats for the day - not noticing the invites to speak at emergency rallies. I took myself off the signal groups for the day to sob for Alex, for Rene , for Keith Porter. Did anyone else at the rally at Placita Olvera mention Keith Porter, assassinated by an off-duty ICE agent? Or would that provoke looking at the ways we collectively care more about someone killed by migra when they aren’t Black?
What broke me yesterday was that the morning before a white attorney repping an org that in an ideal world we would be working together, tried to diminish my/our work and pump up his own creds when I corrected him, with a raised voice, the other Latina at the meeting interrupted only with “this isn’t productive”. Maybe she was worried about provoking a loss of funds
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I worry about how we will build any kind of united front, that we need to be building if we are going to move through this moment, if we can’t be real and offer real feedback and work through strategy. It’s the hardest part of the work but also the most necessary but the non-profit immigration industrial complex is soooo strong in LA with so few willing to push. It breaks me and makes me legit worry about what if I really am the next Nicole or Alex- what will the narratives be and who will be pushing them.
The other day I read hat rally of folks reminded me of the last chapter I read in One Day Everyone will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad, about the genocide in Gaza, the chapter where he asks “What is the Work?” Of writers, of poets, of artists in this moment of brazen disregard for some lives. He writes, how of course the collective we artists want to be writing from wonder about the moon but what when that moon hangs over landscapes of blood? What is the work of organizations and so called organizers and leaders? Of course we all want to talk about justice and solidarity but what when that solidarity is blinded by the spotlight of self preservation?
I started with a new therapist yesterday. The timing is good, I’m not sure the fit is. She asked if I would quit my job, the same way my mother has and my boyfriend has- as if this is the kind of thing you just quit. I’ll give it a try but finally my sleeping is being impacted. It honestly hadn’t been impacted until this last assassination.
I’m not ok and really none of us should be with what is happening outside. Just today a flower vendor among others was taken in snatch and grabs across Los Angeles by Border Patrol.
I worry about you too and I want you to know it's ok to take a break. as always value your writing here