Life in Downtown
Back in the eighties, when the US was waging a brutal air war against the people of El Salvador in support of a pointless dictatorship, the argument that many of us made against that shame was brief. We said, “El Salvador is a small country.” On the news, our mayor Karen Bass described the unrest that has occurred in downtown Los Angeles over the past week. She said, “It is only happening in a small part of the city.”
True enough. The message that she was trying to communicate was that the problems were manageable by local police. It’s what she needed to say to defend our city and our fellow citizens. As long as the problems can be described as manageable, our convicted felon of a president will stay on shaky ground when he has to defend mobilizing the National Guard and the Marines.
But, the way many Angelenos hear her is different. They hear, “This is a small problem. Nothing for you to worry about,” and back they go sleepwalking towards disaster. Downtown LA is not a small place, neither in its dimensions nor in its importance. It is the public square, the center of governance, of law, of art and music, a center for the production of culture both high and low, a sports center, a center for all kinds of retail and wholesale business, an economic center for finance, and the very heart beating with the many flowing streams of humanity that make up our cultural wealth.
The president, as usual, is ignorant of almost all of that. What he does know is that there are plenty of immigrants here and that Downtown Los Angeles is a good place to trawl for brown faces to fill an inhumane quota of deportations. In this, Downtown is not unlike genuinely small places like Paramount.
Downtown Los Angeles has a sad history in regards to issues of race. Little Tokyo was emptied after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the population was sent off to concentration camps, even as Italian and German immigrants got a pass because of the color of their skin. Young Latino men, Zoot Suiters, were attacked by sailors who used their shore leave to commit random violence without consequence. The sailors attacked people on the street or entered buildings, stripped their victims naked, dragged them out to the street and beat them viciously. These were both Federal attacks on Downtown. What is happening now is another Federal attack on the people of Downtown, of California and all of our country. It is safe to call it an attack, because that is exactly what the president calls it. He isn’t joking.
There are some people who have referred to this moment as the president’s Reichstag moment, a reference to the way that Adolf Hitler used the Reichstag fire to consolidate Nazi control of the German government. To me this feels more like the Pogroms against the Jews in Czarist Russia. These kinds of metaphors can make us feel more comfortable, as if being able to place an outrage on a predictable calendar of events helps anyone who has found themselves in the crosshairs of ICE. This is what it is, the attack of a wannabe despot on the weakest in our society, an attack whose purpose is to cow us all.
For the Jewish community this really ought to be a hair-on-fire moment. A few left-leaning rabbis, predictable in their politics, have spoken out. The Southern California Board of Rabbis made a statement that correctly stated the Jewish stake in this conflict. This was a particularly valuable thing, as the Board of Rabbis represents a broad spectrum of Rabbis over the range of denominations and personal politics. The Jewish point of view is clear: there is no justification to attack the weak and the vulnerable. The Jewish point of view is clear: there is no justification to attack the weak and the vulnerable.
The other night I rode the bus through the Hancock Park Neighborhood towards Fairfax. The streets were quiet and calm and they radiated wealth and comfort. There were no sirens or helicopters or explosions. It was like another world. I have grown accustomed to the frequent sounds of demonstrations coming from the streets or from Pershing Square. It happens all the time.
When I joined the demonstrators on Sunday night near the police line in front of City Hall, I felt the wildness of Los Angeles when it feels stung and riled up. What was going on there was an overflow of what has been going on over at the Federal Detention Center and wherever Rapid Reaction Teams have gone out to confront ICE kidnappers. Perhaps it was just an unleadable situation and it is not surprising that when the police pushed the bubble around enough it ended in our neighborhood getting looted and covered with graffiti.
And now the streets of Downtown have grown unnaturally quiet, not only at night when the curfew is in effect, but during the day. Many stores are shuttered. Neither the customers nor the workers feel safe on the streets. Those stores that are open are quieter than usual. All the work that has been done by the dedicated people of Downtown since the COVID era is being washed away. We hear the same story from time to time. Someone says to a friend of ours, “You should really check out Der Nister. They’re doing some cool stuff down there.” The reply, “Have you been there?” “No. I never go Downtown.” Well, their loss, but ours too.
Los Angeles is one of the largest cities in the world and the influence that it has is enormous, but that does not mean that it functions well, or that it is always a positive force. The way that the homelessness problem has been allowed to fester surely shows that. From good and ill intentions we are desperate for a solution, but as a plurality, Los Angeles prefers to send the homeless Downtown. The homeless are like the goat for Azazel, the goat that the High Priest puts the sins of Israel onto on Yom Kippur and then sends away to the desert to die. At least that is how many people in Los Angeles use Downtown. But Downtown is not the desert. It is not a desolate wilderness despite the fact that so often it is treated as and dismissed as a dumping ground. It is a place with such power that it absorbs that which it is meant to kill - or be killed by - and remains a livable place for those who choose it. But we struggle from the disregard that lets the city send its problems here and then shuns us for it.
This is where we are. Our streets are quiet, not from calm, but from fear. In the immigrant neighborhoods spread through Los Angeles the same quiet reigns. Less visible is the quiet from the many places beyond the immigrant strongholds. If you are in Pico-Robertson go into Glatt Mart and peek your head into the back where the narrow spaces are usually full to near impassible with short stout brown-skinned men. See how crowded the space is now.
Please, if you can, come Downtown peaceably and often and join the protests. This is your fight too. The freedom at stake today may not be yours first, but it won’t be yours last. If there were a million Angelenos on the streets Downtown protesting or just being there to witness it would make a difference. Two million would be better. Please come. Save us and save yourself.
There is a protest this Saturday at City Hall from 10 to 2. If you are planning on going to a “No Kings” protest, the one Downtown really needs you. We will be davening here at Der Nister. You could join us or you could head over after leaving City Hall. Prayer is an obligation in Jewish Law, but one is not obligated to cease from doing one Mitzvah in order to do another.
If you do come Downtown we will be here to greet you all day, and in the evening we’ll head over to The Pico Union Project for Yiddish dancing and a Klezmer Rave with our friend Chaia of Kleztronica.
When I was a young person I was in awe of the 60’s generation. They were the real deal as far as I was concerned. I had a teacher in High School who had recently returned from draft dodging exile in Toronto. I asked him why his generation had done all of the things they had done in the 60s that seemed so fun to me. He told me, “Everything was terrible. We needed to do something to make life bearable.” And so, we are offering you an opportunity to resist the unbearable during the day and reach out for joy in the evening. Please join us.
