I haven’t been well lately. Burnout they say. I cannot figure out how to return a text, respond to a Signal chat, an Instagram post. Walking into public spaces people greet me excitedly. I can feel them wanting to talk to me, share something. I smile back. I want to be present. I’m still not used to this new form of visibility I have here in LA. I’ve spent my entire life trying to go unnoticed in order to stay safe. Nothing is safe anymore. I can’t take anything in. I feel like the physical manifestation of a sieve. Everything just passes through me. I do my best to make eye contact, to connect, but even I can feel myself far away. I’m not here.

I have nothing left to give anyone. I know I need to take a break. Everyone says it. How do you take a break during a war?

It’s been over a year in this fight and I hadn’t taken a moment for myself until a couple weeks ago, mid July. I’m grateful to my friend who knew how much I needed a mental health break. They also knew I would never do that for myself, for guilt or cost, whatever the excuse I give that day. I’ll always keep going. They bought me a non refundable plane ticket with miles and packed me in their suitcase so I could go sit on a beach, far away, without any devices, and stare at the ocean for 6 days.

Over the last year I’ve felt guilty any time I’ve taken even a few hours to step away from the work, even to watch fireworks with friends over the 4th. What a privilege for me when people are being tortured in concentration camps. It’s not a healthy mindset. I know that, but this is who I’ve always been. Once we got to our destination I was too exhausted to feel guilty. I sat still and stared at pelicans for days doing nothing else. I’m feeling a lot better now. But, everything here is still falling apart.

It’s hard not to get lost in the anger at times, the hopelessness. I really felt like I could help make change by informing people, by getting the truth out when the the federal government went to war with the American People and attacked and occupied LA. I was naive thinking we could stop or even slow down what we witnessed, are still experiencing here in LA, spreading across America. I thought we could at least prepare cities for what was coming. I was certain SOMEONE in power will do SOMETHING. But that didn’t happen. Every person in power performed on TV and then turned around and silenced those of us who tried to warn everyone.

People I thought we could trust to show and tell the uncomfortable truth, people like Rachel Maddow or Jen Psaki, they kept information from the American people. They were sympathetic to LA and called out the Trump administration’s overreach, but Left wing media neglected to show America the violence being unleashed upon communities and peaceful protestors. They didn’t prepare America for the hardest truths that were coming by showing the horrifying scenes of war that took place on the streets of LA, entirely brought on by both the federal government and LAPD and the sheriffs department violently attacking and oppressing The People with no regard for law or constitutional rights.

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Instead of airing first person footage sent in from protestors and other community members, like myself, face to face with local police and ICE, they showed the peaceful scenes of protesters and community members gathering (amazing yes), but not how those same gatherings were what resulted in the violent images on peoples screens across the country that were platformed as “isolated incidents of violence” coming from the people of LA, which was a lie. Every single day peaceful protest was met with brutal and bloody force, making it known using our voices and peacefully standing up to what was happening in our city would not be tolerated. Hundreds of people were arrested. We weren’t shocked by the scenes in Minneapolis. We lived it. We screamed it. The media and our local government refused to speak about it or show America. That moment sent a chill down my spine, realizing everything on our screens is propaganda. Right and Left.

I felt insane, scared. A free press. Freedom of speech. Freedom to gather and protest our own government. A free America. Everything we were taught was a lie. We live in The Hunger Games. You are either a Tribute, a member of The Capitol, Caesar Flickerman or someone trapped in one of the Districts being starved of food, supplies and information. We are all being used to create storylines for entertainment that will lead to division, which leads to more violence and makes the sponsors money. I volunteered as Tribute when I decided to use my white privilege to help people instead of using it oppress them, by calling out the patriarchy and pledging my allegiance to the truth instead of any party or group.

Honestly, there’s never been a more appropriate metaphor that encapsulates my entire life experience than this moment I’m living through right now. Those who have the privilege of checking out, have. I’m a kid all over again. I’m trying to save the people around me shouting, “Don’t you all see what’s happening?! Please help me!” But those with the privilege and power to help, don’t. They don’t want to be uncomfortable. Instead, they turn back to their gilded comfort, looking away while someone slowly dies in the background. “Isn’t it all so sad?” They’ll say.

Those who’ve always expressed themselves as allies now say they “don’t want to be political.” That’s how white supremacy and misogyny work, keeping silent when there’s something to risk for themselves, like their own proximity to whiteness and the patriarchy.

I’ve always been in awe of people who reflect the truth, who dare to speak it, because, the truth doesn’t always set us free. It’s a reality I’ve spent years on a therapy couch struggling with and refusing to accept. We are living through an incredibly painful example of that right now in America where those who witness, speak out against or film criminal acts by our own government are being called liars and targeted as terrorists.

Truth is powerful and it takes courage to vocalize it, especially when you know there’s likely nothing waiting for you on the other side - no allies, no round of applause, no safety. Growing up around addicts and alcoholics I can tell you, when you meet someone who isn’t ready to hear the truth, if they aren’t ready to make a change within themselves, they often project their pain onto whoever held up the mirror, the consequences of which can be absolutely devastating, even deadly. Sick, dangerous people often aren’t held responsible. Exposing them and their behavior would also bring attention to everyone who looked away or even benefitted from their problematic behavior. Truth tellers are often called liars and accused of being difficult. They are labeled as “the problem.” It’s easier for most people to believe a convenient lie than it is for them to sit with the uncomfortable truth.

So much has happened in this last year. I never had a moment to process any of it. I needed to sit on that beach and take in the weight of the last 13 months. When this war started, when I walked away from my entire life, it was just me, anonymously moving from space to space, showing up doing whatever I could to help support the people I saw doing the real work. I didn’t want to be a part of the story or be some insta anything in any way. I wanted to tell people what was really happening, help the people of color around me and rally white women to show up in this moment and do the same. The red pill is disorienting. The last year I’ve felt like Neo having programs of information, truth and reality downloaded into my brain, while simultaneously coming face to face with personal traumas I’ve spent my life burying and hiding from everyone around me.

It can be challenging, tabling my anger and grief to hold space for others and their anger, grief and trauma reactions, which at times can be directed at me simply because I’m there or I’m the representation of colonial whiteness. 99% of the time I don’t take it personally in the activist space. I try and listen and see if there’s something for me to learn. There almost always is. Sometimes we are simply all exhausted and hungry.

To other white people, new in this movement/activism walking into this space, please recognize the people of color around you have been doing this work for decades, generations, and there’s generations of trauma and mistrust of white people walking into these spaces professing allyship and taking over rooms, that is very much warranted. Time after time, white women especially, we’ve left them behind once the danger gets real. Historically we’ve always chosen ourselves. Is that me? No. Is that you? I hope not. Please, don’t take it personally if someone directs something at you. Take a breath and a beat and instead of taking something personally and reacting defensively, think about the exchange. Ask questions, open a dialogue. We are all learning and if you believe you have nothing to learn in those moments, personally I question your allyship in these spaces.

The people in this movement standing against ICE, the federal governments fascist overreach and exploitation of the American People, everyone here agrees this isn’t about politics. This isn’t Republican or Democrat, MAGA or Leftist - you either believe in humanity or depravity. Individualism or community. Good vs Evil. Everyone in this space cares about the wellbeing of all groups of people, not just some. We agree children shouldn’t be sexually exploited, trafficked, starved or murdered for profit. It’s that simple.

I won’t lie, it’s exhausting and it’s taken a toll on me over the last year. I’m watching this horrifying behavior we are all united against be platformed on the largest stages on Earth while revelations of The Epstein Files play out on screens in the background all around me. A Pandora’s Box I haven’t been able to look at, knowing all hope has been left locked inside. Until now.

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Everything and everyone I’ve spent my entire life running away from, doing everything possible to keep safe from, has taken over every lever of power and control in this country and has the ability to hurt me. My running and self preservation didn’t do shit to keep me safe. Neither will yours. No wonder the little kid they locked in a basement so long ago for trying to tell the truth, who I’ve been complicit in keeping locked down there, finally busted out on June 8th, 2025 needing to scream the truth from the highest building she could climb and has been driving this car like Furiosa ever since.

It doesn’t matter how perfect we make ourselves. How well we comply. How silent we keep. The standard for women, the etiquette and manners we are held to, is always moved further and further out of reach while we spend billions trying to dig holes deep enough to lower the bar of what is required of the men around us, especially white men. We’ve dug our way to Hell. There is no perfect version of a women, even a white woman, that “they” will finally believe, that will matter equally in this patriarchal system built by the very white men who claim to keep us safe. The Epstein Files prove that. Everywhere we look it’s women being sexually assaulted in broad daylight by men in power, by masked men with guns who the government claims are here to keep us safe. The actions of ICE, law enforcement, the men in power, all of this violence and open misogyny against women, none of this is new. Trump just took the filter away and let everyone see who we’ve always been.

For all this talk about wanting to hold the men of the Epstein Files accountable, American’s are literally watching Trump and other members from The Epstein List take that same sex trafficking ring and run it through the American government using ICE, growing it to a scale we’ve never seen before, using my tax money, your tax money, driving every day Americans into poverty while they flaunt how many billions they are making off of all of it, off of us. These men are dressing themselves in gold and telling the American people, who’s wages they’ve frozen, jobs they’ve cut, food they’ve tripled the cost of and poisoned, land/homes they’ve bought and priced us out of, clean water they’ve claimed and tax money they’re spending on locking people in cages to be tortured and assaulted, sold to a third countries as slaves and spending a billion dollars a day on a war we don’t want, making these men billions more, instead of funding food stamps/food banks, hospitals/healthcare, education/childcare or any social service tax money is supposed to be used for to help catch Americans now that these men, this government, has taken everything else away from us. These men are living entirely off our government, our tax money, and they are calling us socialists for wanting basic healthcare and programs to help keep people from falling into homelessness.

We are watching in real time on screens across America as children are trafficked, raped and impregnated inside detention facilities, all for profit and not a single major voice in media news is talking to their viewers with the urgency and rage the moment calls for. I don’t expect anything from men, we all know what to expect from them. I expect more from the women with platforms and in positions of power.

It’s too much for us all to keep taking. Either we let these men kill us or we will kill ourselves if we white women don’t pack up our privilege and leave this abusive white male patriarchy and walk ourselves and our privilege across town to where the women of color have gathered in community for generations to break their own chains, where they’ve been fighting these systems of abuse since the founding of this country; where generations before them bled and died, passing that knowledge on to those who’ve followed. We have so much to learn from these brave women.

Last June I saw first hand what was coming for America, including white women. I can’t unsee it. I can’t put the veil back over my eyes. It’s disorienting, finally understanding that everything I ever thought I knew, was a lie. Every day this country reminds marginalized communities they are in a cage where they can be controlled, oppressed, exploited or even killed because they are different. We’ve always known that. But have we ever stopped to ask, different from whom? Who is writing these rules? Did we ask whose playbook we are using and what the end game is? I have more in common with a woman of color who’s suffered at the hands of at the hands of a man or from this system than I do with any white man walking the exact same path as me. He and I might look the same, maybe we come from the same back ground, went to the same schools, but that doesn’t mean our experiences are anywhere near similar. How many women have a brother who grew up in the exact same house as them, is living in the exact same world, but their experiences and how they were treated in those spaces couldn’t be more different?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth. White women, we were born into the exact same cages as any marginalized community. Ours might be gilded in gold, hanging somewhere with a great view, filled with beautiful, sparkly items and fluffy pillows to keep us distracted, but it’s still a cage. It’s not our fault. How could we have known when the only reality we’ve experienced, been taught, the only living examples on earth of women to aspire to are just other women in cages? I honestly believed I broke out and flew away from my cage years ago. Flew far far away. It never occurred to me the water dish I was drinking from my whole life, the only source of water the system told me existed, was drugged. Everything we’ve been taught as white women is a lie. Ladies, our drinks have been drugged.

The dangerous behavior from men everywhere we look, kids being abused, raped, murdered, people being treated like animals, the suffering and poverty people are forced into, it only continues if WE white women keep allowing it. Women of color have been doing their part for generations, protesting, creating movements, voting and every time they choose protecting everyone, we choose white men. We choose ourselves. Everything men have they have because of us, white women, which means we have the power to take it away. And they know it.

That’s why they are trying to take our right to vote away as well with the SAVE Act. It’s the final domino after taking away black women’s vote. Don’t be fooled by the way men speak in circles about fairness. What law in this country has ever taken white men’s power away and given it to women? Asking for an equal seat at the table doesn’t take anything away from men, it simply gives women a voice. And we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that using our voices is impolite in society. Bullshit. Decorum is dead.

There’s a reason the most vocal and visible people in power honestly fighting for the rights of everyone in the country right now are women and specifically women of color. The women who make up, The Squad, all of whom ran for Congress and were elected in 2018 without taking a single corporate dollar, funded entirely by the people they promise to represent, they aren’t concerned about decorum. They know what it means to be preyed upon, to be vulnerable, to feel unsafe. Our patriarchy wants to point at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and although not a member of the Squad, Pramila Jayapal, and say they’re “crazy,” “dangerous,” “terrorists,” “criminals” because they’ve stood up in the most important rooms in this country and spoken with the urgency and fierceness required of this moment and been unapologetic about it.

If the women of America from every background - racial, socio economic, religious, LGBTQIA+ came together, rooted in the commitment of creating a country where every child in the community we’ve built for them deserves to thrive and be safe, that we no longer stand for sexual or physical violence, I believe we could change the world. Women aren’t the ones bombing and terrorizing everyone in the world, men are.

To my fellow caged white women, I know how deeply many of you care. We run head first into many of these causes with the best of intentions. If we are going to break free of our own cages, if we are going to help save the country, not just ourselves by locking the door behind us, once again, leaving all the communities who stood and fought with us on the other side, it will require us to table our ego’s, our fear’s and everything we think we know. When it comes to the resistance and standing up to these systems, we do not have all the answers. We have great ideas and we have so many talents, but we are not the experts at living outside of these systems and how to break them. We need to listen to the women of color who have been in this fight for generations, using our gifts to create space to elevate the lessons they’ve died for learning.

We do bring knowledge from inside the castle walls, however. That’s valuable. Perhaps we have pieces of information that have been missing from the fight? We know the inner workings of the patriarchy, the unspoken rules and ways in which this world of privilege cannot function without us. All the work that goes unnoticed or is made to feel unimportant, we know the system does not work without it or us. What happens if we spend all that energy in community with the women of America, working towards peace instead of keeping a system that functions off violence in place?

We will not be the leaders of this movement and anyone seeking that sort of role is only going to get people killed. It’s our duty to use our privilege to protect and create opportunity for those who’ve spent lifetimes preparing for this moment. We need to be up front, but that doesn’t mean we are going to lead.

Together, in community with all women, we have power, we can make change. I truly believe that. Remember the Women’s March in 2017? I was there in DC. They say 5 million of us showed up across America. There’s 143 million women in this country. Imagine what could happen if even half of us left our cages? Don’t ever let anyone tell you that a man is here to protect you. He’s keeping you in a cage. You are there to empower him. We protect each other. We have the power to change the world. Let’s light up the dark.

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The mayor and City Council of LA are simply the public faces of a city run by a cartel.

*PPL Letter to the City informing them of their impending lawsuit if Council moves forward with putting LAPD accountability and oversight on the November ballot.

June 18th, 2026 the Police Protective League (PPL) the union for LAPD, threatened to sue the city, The People of LA, if City Council allowed the Charter Commissions police accountability and reform recommendation on the November ballot. The Charter commission spent over a year listening to thousands of constituents. They didn’t originally have police reform as a part of the charter reform which is WILD.

This city has done everything possible to protect the LAPD, to allow them to extort tax money from The People, use it to terrorize them and drive them into poverty. The Charter was a way we could begin to change that. The Committee tried every which way not to include police reform, but The People of this city made it impossible for them. That’s how many people showed up demanding LAPD accountability be written into our constitution and sent to the ballot. Thousands and thousands.

*Rae Huang speaks at LA City Charter asking for LAPD accountability and oversight be added to the Charter Reform Commission for review.

*LA Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez makes statement in City Council when council moves to send police accountability measure to committee for “further study.”

*Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez asks City Council to add the City Charter LAPD accountability recommendation to the November ballot.

So, naturally, June 30, 2026 LA City Council voted after years of study, testimony from the people of Los Angeles they could not allow anyone, including themselves, to have any authority to set policy or provide any oversight over LAPD, not without more study. Decades of study still aren’t enough.

They voted 8-6 to kill the LAPD accountability ballot measure.

*A text I received after City Council voted not to send LAPD reform to the November ballot.

City Council doesn’t have any authority in regards to LAPD.

Council can’t do anything to stop LAPD from coordinating with ICE and other federal immigration officials, which LAPD is, even though it’s against the laws of our city.

Council not having authority over LAPD has prevented them from doing anything substantial to address issues with the city budget like all the lawsuits currently bankrupting the city. You’re mad about streetlights, potholes, the unhoused crisis, LAPD is responsible for hundreds of millions in liability payments for things like attacking protestors, using illegal weapons on civilians, violating people’s constitutional and civil rights and all of that money is taken from city and social services. LAPD doesn’t pay anything ever. Doesn’t come out of their budget it comes out of whatever was left to fix the lights.

*Myself and a handful of other activists spent months getting Mayor Bass to commit to a community town hall and on November 3, 2025 her office committed to a virtual town hall where she took 15 mins of questions.

A lot of you came to know me from this clip at LA City Council last year in 2025:

*August 1, 2025 I attended my second LA City Council meeting. A few days prior Council returned from summer break, which they took while LA was under siege by the federal government.

That was August 2025 and things are worse now in LA than they were a year ago.

When I showed up to council that day, LA was under attack by our federal government. We still are by the way that has never stopped. ICE was violently beating and kidnapping hundreds of people and nobody knew what to do at the time, because we were the first to be attacked and none of these networks we now have across the country had been set up yet.

City Council when on summer break and City Hall put up barricades.

The community members trying to help were being absolutely brutalized by our local law enforcement and there was nowhere we could turn to for help.

A year later and there’s still nowhere we can turn to for help. The only thing that’s changed is how many of us have been arrested and are very likely on domestic terrorist watch lists.

*On No Kings 3, I was caught up in an illegal mass arrest conducted by LAPD. I was stunned that each of us were fingerprinted and immediately put into the criminal database upon detainment, making us all criminals in the eyes of the law, without ever having charges filed or a case brought. LAPD changed their policy likely to help create lists of “political dissenters” for the FBI and other government agencies.

*Me speaking at the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners after the illegal mass arrests of protesters on No Kings 3.

I’ve been showing up to City Council, sometime 3 days a week, for the last year. That’s where I learned about the Charter Commission. In the middle of a fascist takeover by the federal government, the city of LA was rewriting its constitution. LA had the chance to leave an indelible mark in history showing that here in this city, you matter. Regardless of race, religion or income, you matter and this city will protect and care for you because we are a democracy that is structured around the people, not consolidation of power.

But LA didn’t do that. City Council killed every single reform that would help people in this city and provide any sort of oversight and accountability to those who break the law.

I went to charter reform meetings for months, waited in lines out in the sun, in the heat, waiting to speak and tell the charter commission how desperately we need things like police reform - how there needs to be some mechanism of accountability for LAPD because right now, there’s nothing. I’ve heard thousands of people asking for the same things as me over and over and over from every corner of the city.

And after a year, not a single one of the issues that would help build trust between the city and the people passed. Thousands of people showed up and asked to be able to vote on expanding city council, ranked choice voting, and police accountability. None of them will be on the ballot in November.

We asked that the controllers office be provided more resources so our tax money was going where we voted for it to go and any fraud or corruption could be dealt with. That’s not happening.

*Kenneth Mejia, LA City Controller

The people have been silenced. It’s very clear our voices do not matter and carry zero weight.

There’s never been a clearer sign that the LA government is no different than the White House. I’d argue City Hall, Karen Bass, is working in lockstep with the Trump administration, because, LAPD absolutely is. They don’t pretend otherwise. Trump loves our Chief of Police Jim McDonnell and Jim happily stands with Kash Patel.

*Eric Langberg has been following the Anti-ICE protests in LA as well as LA City Council and the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners during the last year. I highly recommend following his Substack Parts of A Novel I’m Doing.

*LAPD Chief of Police Jim McDonnell states publicly he and the LAPD will not enforce state or city laws against ICE.

Absolutely nobody from the mayor to the governor has acknowledged that LAPD refuses to abide by state and city laws, much less done anything to protect those they are abusing and exploiting.

*My statement at LAPD Board of Police Commissioners after LAPD Chief of Police Jim McDonnell went on a press tour saying LAPD won’t enforce the No Mask Law. Nobody in the entire state or city government has commented on his statements.

Gavin Newsom hasn’t done anything to protect the people of CA or our constitutional rights. He’s produced tv moments to make people believe he’s doing things. He is no different than Trump. He’s using the same playbook actually.

Here’s the truth nobody will talk about. LAPD is accountable to absolutely nobody, not city council, not the mayor, not the Board of Police Commissioners, definitely not the people who live here, not even the governor of CA, unless, Gavin approves of what LAPD is doing and wants them to be the measuring tool implemented across the country when he’s president?

LAPD is structured and operates no differently than any other cartel.

They operate outside of the law, uses force to assert control over the population, beat and threaten the press, politicians answer to them and nothing happens without their say so.

*Photojournalist Nick Stern is arrested at the May Day protest, along with other members of the press. Nick was shot in the leg at a previous protest with an LAPD flash bang where it exploded and required surgery.

LAPD doesn’t care if they are filmed breaking the law, brutalizing peaceful, unarmed people, illegally arresting us and violating our constitutional rights. It doesn’t matter. They don’t care how many liability law suits they cost the city, how many law suits they need to bring against the people of LA in order to retain their power, because they aren’t spending their money. They are spending taxpayer money.

LAPD is happy to bankrupt the city. It’s good business for them. They don’t want a safe, economically healthy city. That’s not their job. Their job is to “protect and serve.” It specifically doesn’t say who they are here to protect and serve. And that’s important.

*The front page of the LAPD website.

LAPD is the cartel in charge of making sure the corporation of Los Angeles stays profitable and their profits come from keeping a system of poverty and human trafficking in place.

There is a billion dollar industry built around poverty and the for profit prison industry complex, and it’s built with our tax money. We pay LAPD salaries, WE pay for the social services people need when they are forced into poverty, WE fund homeless shelters and programs - WE fund the emergency organizations needed to deal with the various crisis - and nothing ever gets safer and better for anyone. Why? Because the system is working perfectly for those it actually serves. The money never actually gets to us. We fund our own city bankruptcy, incarceration, our own oppression.

And the LAPD sponsors, who use the LAPD police foundation to do this, make billions in profits along the way.

LAPD and their union, they serve weapons manufacturers, surveillance/data companies, the for profit prison/detention industry complex who needs an endless stream of “bodies,” the asset management companies and private equity films like Blackrock, the REITs Real Estate Investment Trusts who own most of the Homes + rental units land and the corporations on that land. That’s who runs this city. That’s who LAPD protects and serves.

Whatever you're angry about in this city — trace it back far enough, and it leads to LAPD. It’s not a question for debate. It’s a proven fact. Please get to know Kenneth Majia our City Controller, his instagram and the city controller website. He’s created a very easy to use program which shows you where every single dollar is going and who is spending it. He’s brought incredible transparency to City Hall and has fought like hell to continue to do for this city.

It says a lot that City Council and Charter Reform have attempted to take responsibility and resources away from the controllers office after kenneth found hundreds of millions in fraud waste and abuse.

Over $10M was spent trying to unseat Kenneth, which is incredible because not only did he win; I think he only spent like $100k.

The People want transparency and accountability. It will win every time.

*Results of the June 2, 2026 City Controller Election

The point of origin for nearly every problem in this city starts with the LAPD. Just follow the money. They are not here to create safety. They are here to create criminals out of the poor, to make wealthy people feel unsafe by the poverty that has been created, brainwashing people into conflating poverty with criminality.

The city takes the tax money from vulnerable communities, and instead of investing it into parks, community centers, afterschool programs, third spaces for kids and teenagers, their money is given the LAPD to police them. Their streetlights don’t work. Their roads are broken and filled with potholes, ruining their cars which they don’t have the money to fix. The basics people in an average mostly white community take for granted, things you would never even think are a privilege - vegetation in your neighborhood, trees, shade, clean parks, trash cans, grocery stores, places to ride bikes or gather, all of that is withheld from these lower income communities while you complain about an unhoused encampment near your neighborhood. And I get it, it’s incredibly upsetting to see someone living on the street but the unhoused aren’t the problem. Who is putting them there is.

The people LAPD and politicians tell you they are keeping you safe from, they are the victims and their perpetrators are the ones telling you they are the good guys who will protect you from the victims they created. It’s like taking safety advice from the guy holding a knife to your neck.

It’s the same exact system and structure that allows the Jeffery Epstein’s of the world to operate without accountability. His victims were called prostitutes. They were 11, 12, 14. Prostitutes. There’s no such thing as a child prostitute. Someone living on the street isn’t a criminal. Politicians have criminalized poverty and more or less made it illegal to be unhoused.

"Swept” How Authorities in Los Angeles use Sanitation Sweeps to Criminalize Unhoused People. This short was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy in the Outstanding Short Documentary category. It was produced, filmed and directed by Adam Sliver, and co-produced by John Raphling.

Everybody wants a safe place live. If someone is on the street, that was done to them. If there were actually safe, helpful social services available to them, they likely wouldn’t be on the street.

The LAPD defunds all services and social safety nets that would help a person get back on their feet, which forces people to live on the street which this city has turned into a crime, thus making poor people criminals and new bodies are sent into the system that profits off their suffering.

All of it has been done to them by those sponsoring the LAPD, by those who are donating to Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt’s campaigns.

*The LA Times has an amazing article that traces the timeline and educates readers on the historical moments and political policies that have led to today’s current unhoused crisis.

It’s not about defunding police, it’s about being honest about where money for policing is coming from and how it is actually spent. Nobody has an issue with anyone actually keeping us safe. I’m telling all of you, as a privileged white girl, I don’t care who you are, unless your family has a shit ton of money, LAPD has absolutely no interest in protecting you. They don’t see that as their job.

In fact, I’ve watched dozens of LAPD officers stand and guard an empty street just so ICE didn’t have to look at protestors with signs while they let someone die on the pavement 100 yards away. The officers never moved. Didn’t show concern. A guy on a motorcycle was hit badly, was strewn across the 101 DTLA, and they didn’t do a damn thing. We were begging them for help. I begged them to at least redirect traffic so he wouldn’t be run over and an ambulance could get to him faster. They barely looked at us.

Guarding a federal facility so that human traffickers could move women and children in body chains to undisclosed locations, that’s what they are here to protect. And these city council people voted to keep letting them do all of it.

*July 11, 2025 Protestors watching the DTLA ICE Detention Center (MDC), gathering evidence, recorded footage of children in chains being moved. This sparked the 24/7 ICE Out of LA Protest outside the MDC which, LAPD systematically dismantled with the help of DHS. Tarps were installed soon after, blocking visibility into the building.

*Alexandria Augustine witnesses children calling for help and being loaded into vans in body chains. DHS targeted her soon after filming this and she has been fighting federal charges for “assault on a federal officer with a deadly umbrella” for the last year.

People in LA are watching what’s happening to the protestors in Prarieland, Minnesota, Washington. It’s terrifying because we said they were working on this a year ago. We told LA city council, we told Mayor Bass, we told the press and everyone ignored us. I watched the federal government work out their plan on how to attack First Amendment rights, how to charge people standing in front of ICE vans as domestic terrorists, as members of Antifa Cells right here in LA, in the dark, with zero coverage of any of the cases from any national news outlet or anyone from our local government even acknowledging it was happening - To all of you saying suck it up and just vote for her, mayoral candidate and current city Councilwoman Nithya Raman has been silent all year and that does matter right now on a national level. LAPD brutalized the press so much most stopped covering what was happening.

And now I’m watching the LAPD lay the groundwork for the next phase, and it’s scary because everyone is letting them do it and there’s nothing in our justice system to stop them. LAPD is turning anyone that doesn’t align with the Trump administrations ideology into criminals - expressing your First Amendment Rights, Looking out for your neighbor by delivering groceries, filming a kidnapping, alerting the community to the presence of ICE, whatever being a good American, being a good neighbor used to be, you’ll probably end up with an arrest record. The number of illegal arrests in this city alone is staggering, but you’ll never know that. Watch how arrest records are used moving forward.

When city resources are deployed under the guise of “community safety,” when LAPD launches a drone from HQ to follow me as I leave a protest, after they’ve already illegally arrested me at a previous protest for documenting what the federal government was doing, when this has become normalized here, because it is, I don’t believe anyone in a position of power is fighting back or looking out for the rights of Americans or Angelinos.

*Drone Map from LAPD showing the drone that followed me leaving the May Day Protest.

I need The People of LA, and those who are willing in City Hall, on City Council, to take a fucking stand, get angry, get out in the streets, get loud and forget whatever rules there are for reelection. Anyone approaching elections like a politician does not understand the assignment. Karen Bass started out as a community organizer fighting for the rights of the very people she’s now silencing and sending to prisons and detention centers, all because she will lose power if she does the right thing.

That ideology, in my opinion, is what’s harming our country more than anything else in this moment. People who negotiate their morals in order to stay in or next to power, that’s dangerous. That’s everyone around Epstein, Weinstein, Trump. I’d rather vote for someone willing to risk it all in order to help people rather than someone who isn’t willing to lose their access to power if they do what’s right.

My speech at City Council in regards to Mayor Bass’s 2026-2027 budget proposal. Council voted to approve Mayor Bass’s nearly $14B budget, which takes money from departments the city of LA desperately needs in order to give LAPD the largest budget ever of $3.6B.

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Lady Liberty arrested at No Kings 3 in LA for exercising her First Amendment Rights.

Half way down is a letter with evidence I wrote and sent to the Mayor of LA, the LA City Attorney, City Council, Board of Supervisors, Police Board of Commissioners, LAPD Internal Affairs, the Inspector General, and others in our state government.

They finally got me. Not once since I’ve taken to the streets to document ICE have I disobeyed a legal order. I’m a rule follower by nature. At No King’s 3, LAPD never gave one. Their intention was mass arrest. I was there. I witnessed it. I filmed it. It won’t matter.

Towards the end of the No Kings 3 Protest in Los Angeles, LAPD conducted a mass arrest of protestors and press outside LA’s ICE detention facility (MDC) in DTLA. It was illegal and I have the proof. There is a timeline with metadata. As of last week, the 75 people who were arrested are going through the court system.

LAPD conducts unlawful arrests often. Their goal isn’t for charges to be filed. They arrest peaceful protestors and press, take their personal information, including their fingerprints, and input all of it into the criminal database, which is shared with the FBI, who are gathering lists of “dissenters” to build domestic terrorism cases against.

Even if charges are never filed, even though the arrests are completely illegal and a violation of First and Fourth Amendment rights, the people unlawfully arrested now have an arrest record that will follow them for the rest of their lives. It will show up when they apply for jobs, housing, loans, every basic background check. There is no lever to wipe a person’s false arrest from the system. LAPD knows this and there’s no reason for them to stop.

Over the last year press and protestors have been targeted by LAPD and brutalized for using their First Amendment Rights. Mayor Bass won’t say anything about the illegal actions of LAPD, she doesn’t have much to say about ICE in our city, but she has plenty to say about anyone who dares spray paint a wall. When terrifying videos of LAPD brutalizing unarmed people hit their inboxes and are posted on social media, neither the Mayor or City Council ever makes public comments or does anything to hold LAPD accountable. Usually they claim ignorance to the event. Governor Newsom didn’t even respond when the Chief of Police of LAPD Jim McDonnell went on a tv press tour saying it didn’t matter what laws the governor passed, he wasn’t going to enforce laws against ICE. Mayor Bass and LA City Council also haven’t commented. LAPD was given another massive increase in funding for the next budget year while the civilian workforce and services have been slashed.

So, this time I’m sharing the evidence from NK3 with everyone. How is it that not a single elected person in the state of California knows about the mass arrest at NK3? How do they never know about the similar scenes you will see in my folder of evidence, but those events include LAPD absolutely brutalizing people for no reason. I have undeniable proof that LAPD illegally kettled and arrested press and protestors at NK3. Do with it what you want. The evidence is available for all of you.

I want to note, what happened to us at NK3, it’s in no way even the worst thing that LAPD that day. I don’t believe our arrest, or my arrest, is the important thing people need to be focusing on. That being said, the amount of force protestors and press are consistently met with from LAPD is very important and the fact that this is a weekly occurrence in LA should not be ignored. The way LAPD has no regard for the law, especially when they are in absolutely no danger, that is very important. They ways in which they are working with the federal government to oppress anyone speaking out against the government, that’s important.

The way scenes like these are reported, propagandized, to the public are incredibly damaging to whatever democracy we have left - she’s hanging on by a frayed thread. The local news footage from helicopters shows a sparse crowd milling about, but it’s presented to the public as a dangerous scene of agitators. Let’s be clear, law enforcement was never in danger and they attacked protestors. Law enforcement doesn’t like it when people show up and tell them they are working for the wrong side of history. They take it personally and use the billions of dollars in weaponry upon unarmed people who have no defense but maybe a gas mask. I want everyone to see how we can provide every piece of evidence and not a single thing will change.

Nobody cares about the brutality LAPD/DHS/ICE inflicts upon people of color here.

LAPD executes 45 year Elias Real April 6, 2026

Here’s an intimate look at what is coming for everyone in America who doesn’t comply and obey, regardless of race. You don’t have First Amendment rights. You don’t have Fourth Amendment Rights. You don’t have rights period. The laws don’t protect you anymore, if they ever did, but they will be used against you. We are your future. What you will see in my evidence folder, I’ve seen force like that deployed on the average Wednesday against 30 people. Say hello to the New America.

Evidence for the following is in this Dropbox. The videos in the folder with my name on it I filmed and you have my consent to use on all platforms. Credit me and link to my Instagram or Substack. All other footage needs consent from the person who filmed it.

Photo by Eric Anders

Dear Mayor Bass, LA City Council, CA State Government, LAPD Board of Police Commissioners and on and on,

My name is Catie Laffoon and I was falsely arrested March 28, 2026 outside the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) at the No Kings III Protest with around 75 other people who were also falsely arrested. We were detained at 5:35pm. I was arrested, had my hands zip tied behind my back and everyone arrested was denied food and water after being exposed to chemical agents until they were released. I was released around 1am.

I have proof that LAPD unlawfully arrested us, including proof from LAPD itself. I have video of LAPD and DHS working together to kettle and detain people who were not a threat, were not violent, most of whom were press or were community members documenting. I have video and photos with metadata that show LAPD arrived on scene, did not give a dispersal order and immediately trapped people documenting the federal government’s use of chemical weapons. We know LAPD was using the City Council approved Skydio drones to surveil protestors which means they know the crowd was in no way violent or even agitated. Apparently someone threw a rock over a fence sometime before 5pm and LAPD decided to illegally arrest anyone but those who threw a rock when they arrived on scene at 5:35pm after 40+ minutes of DHS deploying chemical weapons at protestors and press. Everything is in the dropbox folder attached.

This isn’t a small issue. The LAPD purposefully violated the law. These are First and Fourth Amendment violations. LAPD lacked probable cause to detain us in the first place and then violated our rights by arresting us and taking our personal information, including fingerprints, and putting it into the criminal database. This means our information is now in the system, in the hands of the FBI who is actively pursuing domestic terrorism cases against Los Angeles community members who protest ICE and are a part of community rapid response networks. LAPD has been conducting unlawful arrests like these regularly since last June, 2025. They know there is nothing that can be charged, no case to be filed, but once someone is in the system there is no lever to undo it. The point is gathering names and information of “dissenters” and doing whatever LAPD and the federal government are doing with that information.

There’s no reason for LAPD to stop. They have been openly breaking the law on camera, in front of press, towards the press and nobody at City Hall has said or done anything in the last year. LAPD doesn’t follow injunctions. We’ve been begging the Mayor, City Council, the Board of Police Commissioners, Congress and Assembly members, even the Governors office. Nothing. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people’s constitutional rights have been violated since June 6, 2025 and you are allowing it.

People being on a street, using their First Amendment rights and tear gas being deployed at them doesn’t mean the people are violent. It doesn’t mean the people on the street are a danger or a threat to anyone, least of all LAPD, who was not even present when the original “incident” took place.

Someone threw a rock over a fence. Not a single DHS officer was ever in danger, and DHS used an escalatory response in reaction - mass chemical weapon deployment and collective punishment in response to a single act upon hundreds of innocent people, most of whom did disperse and leave. Those who remained behind were mostly press and people recording to document the wildly disproportionate escalation of the federal government upon the American people.

We are covered by First Amendment as press as we were filming in order to inform the public. LAPD showed up without notice, without giving an order, would not tell us the order when we asked and immediately kettled and detained us. Only later, at 6:03pm, when the alert hit our phones, along with the rest of LA, were we notified of the unlawful assembly being declared. By then we had already been in LAPD custody for 20+ minutes.

The information on the citation given to me is also incorrect/a lie. The citation says the following:

That my violation took place at 20:46 (8:46pm). Incorrect. This is when LAPD finally wrote my citation after we were kept waiting on a sidewalk for 3 hours. I was one of the last 15 people taken in.

The citation states dispersal orders were given at 17:32 (5:32pm). If true, it could not be heard by anyone on the ground and therefor could not be complied with. We were unable to leave the area by 5:35pm when LAPD arrived on scene and trapped everyone on Alameda St. If the purpose was for us to disperse, then why didn’t they let us leave? We were not given the 15 mins LAPD posted online to the public we had and it’s not reasonable to think everyone can clear an area that large in less than 3 minutes.

The citation goes on to say I was unsafe to release and cite at the scene. I would like clear evidence to substantiate this. What probable cause or evidence does LAPD have to support that I was any sort of threat to them, the public or that I had committed any act of violence? I was simply present at the scene documenting what was happening. I was gassed and shot at by DHS. I asked for an LAPD supervisor and was denied. I reminded LAPD of the laws THEY had to follow. Repeatedly I watched as LAPD officers raised their less lethal weapons and pointed them directly at people who were backing up and not a threat. I would like to see the body cam footage of the officers, or any video you have from anyone, that shows I was a danger to LAPD, DHS or any person, anything that would label me as, “unsafe to release at the scene.” I sat patiently for 3 hours waiting my turn to be arrested and then sat quietly in a parking garage basement for several more hours waiting to be “cited and released” all the while having my hands zip tied behind my back and having no access to water after inhaling copious amounts of chemical agents.

LAPD violated my rights. They violated the rights of every person they arrested in that kettle. LAPD does this daily to anyone protesting ICE and nothing stops them from continuing to violate the rights of Angelenos because nobody in our government holds them accountable. You are just as liable as the LAPD for every person that is illegally arrested, detained, assaulted and humiliated by LAPD.

This mass arrest is another way for LAPD to collaborate with the federal government, oppress and silence those who dare to stand up for their neighbors, The Constitution and the freedoms granted to us as Americans. This is a perfect example of what the new Homeland Security Taskforce wants to do across the country by working with local and state law enforcement. LAPD is using these arrests to keep tabs on and create lists of people who show up to protest ICE, which we know the federal government, including Kash Patel and his FBI, are using as a platform to label every day Americans as terrorists, saying our “anti-ICE” stance is a domestic terrorist threat. The people asking for peace and safety are a threat?

Attached is a link to a dropbox folder of evidence. Included in this folder is a PDF timeline with photos (shot by Eric Anders) detailing frame by frame the sequence of events with the metadata. I’m also including a folder with my RAW video, as well as my footage (still unedited) pieced together in timeline order to see how events unfold. These include the social media posts by LAPD, setting a timeline proving their unlawful act. There’s also other footage included to give you more context and see it’s not just my POV.

Even though LAPD never called a dispersal order on the ground, they posted one on social media at 5:30pm saying people had 15 minutes to leave the area. LAPD was on scene at 5:35pm immediately trapping everyone not allowing us to leave. All of this is noted in the timeline with images AND video attached. When LAPD officers instructed us to “MOVE!” I asked what the order was - why we had to move, to leave - not a single officer would answer. I asked for a supervisor. I was ignored.

In my footage you will see LAPD is working with DHS/Border Patrol. You will see them talking and coordinating. We also watched as LAPD played janitors for DHS, clearing the street of the smashed concrete pieces - something DHS easily could have done themselves but apparently, the Los Angeles tax payers need to pay LAPD to declare a tactical alert in order to do that for DHS.

With the level of LAPD surveillance conducted on press and protestors outside the MDC during this event, LAPD already knew who was a threat, if one existed, and chose to collectively punish innocent people.

You will see in the videos there is no threat to LAPD or DHS from anyone on the ground when LAPD arrives. There’s nothing to support the show of force LAPD arrived with. LAPD drones were used to surveil protestors and press - LAPD Skydio drones that city council approved against the wishes of The People. These drones, a cost of $4M, are supposed to be used for “public safety.” Instead, the drones were used ON the public who is in fear for their safety FROM the federal and local government. This is what we said and feared the drones would be used for and they were.

The public should be able to see the LAPD drone footage and hear what LAPD was saying while reporting the footage and deciding to get involved. As we’ve seen in court cases thus far, the cameras are focusing on specific people and those people are rarely the agitators if any are present. Who were the drones focused on during our arrest March 28? In what way were they surveilling us? We have a right to know. That footage belongs to the people - both the drone and body cam footage. If the footage backs up LAPDs reasoning for being there and using the show of force they did it shouldn’t be a problem to release.

The people who gathered outside the MDC on NK3 want their communities to be safe from masked men illegally abducting friends and family. They didn’t want violence. They just want to be listened to. But our tax money is being spent surveilling nonviolent community members standing up for their community and their rights instead of actual criminals doing real harm to our city. LAPD is making criminals out of community members for doing exactly what Mayor Bass asked them to do - stand up for their neighbors and communities, nonviolently, and document.

Our tax dollars are being spent every time LAPD is deployed. The city is in financial crisis, yet, LAPD is allowed to spend money like it’s Monopoly money. The city doesn’t have money to pay our human work force, youth programs, civil and human rights dept/programs, even our animal shelters - they’ve all been slashed in the budget. There’s no money for services to help people, but there’s always money to hurt people, for unnecessary use of force, which leads to more liability lawsuits, putting the city at further risk of bankruptcy.

How much did it cost to deploy LAPD at No Kings to arrest us for a failure to disperse and then also call a tactical alert? LAPD shows up en force like this most nights to scare off protestors around the MDC. The city is taking on liability lawsuit costs that Angelenos pay in order to stop people from documenting what DHS and ICE are doing in that building. We always have money to pay for whatever that costs, none of which is necessary. But somehow there’s no money to hire people to work for the city in a non law enforcement capacity? No money for after school programs to help the hard working people of the city who pay these taxes? No money to fix street lights? It’s reckless spending. DHS took one or two people into custody, I assume the two who maybe threw a rock? There was no violence from the masses of people and no reason for LAPD to be there helping DHS on NK3.

Someone in City Hall needs to start taking a stand. Nobody is interested in these political games in which we, the people, are pawns. This isn’t like anything we’ve ever lived through before as a country and those who understand that are taking advantage in the most diabolical, cruel ways possible. You are watching them and saying there’s nothing to do. You think decorum will save you. It won’t. Decorum is dead. Do something to help The People.

Use NK3 as an example of how the city plans to act moving forward. Either you will signal to the public, and the nation, you support illegally arresting Americans who heard their neighbors call for help and showed up to use their First Amendment Rights, like they were taught to do as Americans, aligning yourself with Trump and the federal government, or, signal that you’re willing to stand next to The People and lock arms and defend our city against these fascist Anti-American, Anti-Angeleno forces, including LAPD.

LA isn’t just a city, we are a beacon. Right now we are setting a chilling example of what is to come to the rest of America. Every single one of you is already a part of history. It’s up to you to decide how you want to be remembered. Right now history isn’t going to be kind to your legacy.

Thank you for your time,

Catie Laffoon

The crowd laughs and applauds. It’s a tone deaf way to start a book tour event for the man people think will save our democracy. Our freedoms and rights are under attack by the fascist government this man claims to be fighting. The joke and the reaction to it are ominous signs.

Everyone in this room has paid upwards of 100 dollars to hear California Governor Gavin Newsom talk about himself. He came to LA to sell a book about…himself. I wonder if he will speak to the people of LA about ICE, the masked men terrorizing our streets and the occupation we’ve been under for the last 9 months. He hasn’t held a town hall for anyone not paying.

Most notably, neither the governor nor the Mayor of LA, Karen Bass, have directly addressed Angelenos about the impediments to our freedom to protest. They tell us to document ICE and DHS abuses and then when we are arrested or beaten by local police for doing so, we’re told that local police are not collaborating with the fascist federal government. Newsom won many people over by fightingTrump on Twitter, Instagram et al. with trolling and memes. But that’s not even him. That’s his young female social media manager.

Each week about 200 people are abducted from LA’s streets. Tens of thousands are traumatized and thousands are being tortured in concentration camps within driving distance of The Ebell Theater. Vulnerable people are strategically being fired from their jobs and communities are literally being left in the dark so that even more tax payer money can go to LAPDs two billion dollar budget. Seriously, the street lights don’t work in many areas around LA. Not the wealthy areas, of course.

On any given night, 10 minutes down the street at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the ICE facility in downtown LA, protestors and legal observers face off with DHS and LAPD. Right now there’s a solid chance someone is being tear gassed or shot with less lethals that will seriously injure them, while Newsom tries to invoke a sense of sympathy from the crowd for being mislabeled “Prince Gavin” because he grew up alongside the Getty’s.

People are arrested regularly for documenting what is happening at the LA ICE detention center and beyond, and witnessing and reporting on LAPD complicity. Gavin Newsom is here selling a book. More than that, he’s selling his Presidency. He is the one guy who cares enough to save America, all while not acknowledging any of the abuse happening right here in California?

The way Newsom tells it is that when the military left LA in July, that was him stopping all the ICE related violence in California.

There is nothing in place legally that is being enforced that has changed a single thing happening with how ICE operates in CA. He hasn’t used his office to instruct law enforcement to actually enforce laws put in place to protect us. Nobody has. Those laws might as well not exist. Governor Newsom could instruct CHP to ticket ICE vehicles driving around without license plates or tags. CHP and local law enforcement could ticket ICE for intentionally causing traffic accidents and putting civilians in danger, but they don’t. There are many things they could be doing.

In February, ICE was involved in a hit and run involving a veteran outside the VA, in DTLA ,in front of many LAPD officers. Not only did they not check to make sure the vet was ok they didn’t check to verify if the masked man driving the plateless car was a federal agent. They arrested the veteran instead of even admonishing the masked man, dressed in Boogaloo Boy attire, for clearly hitting a civilian and driving away. It’s all on camera. Incidents like this happen daily.

So I’m watching him on stage at the Ebell. Newsom plays the crowd using dark humor so they lower their defenses. (See the freedom of speech joke at the top of his show.) He smiles at them. I can see the frame of the film. He’s Cesar Flickerman, knowingly manipulating the audience of Panem. The people of The Capitol truly do not understand the stakes. This is entertainment for them. They don’t understand the real fear because they can’t imagine it. They will never be at risk of living it.

Newsom describes how dangerous “the other side’s” actions and intentions are and the repercussions for vulnerable people. He really cares about marginalized groups and everyday people. He isn’t working on behalf of billionaires like Trump is. He draws the audience in with his seriousness. He knows he’s lying to them. I know he’s lying to them. They love him.

I feel sick.

I’m vibrating in my seat. One moment I’m hyper aware, the next I’m dissociating. I look around the theater. It’s a room full of WASPY people in wealthy, casual attire and it’s caught me off guard even though I knew this would be the crowd. Everywhere I look it’s my family and their friends from when I was growing up.

Suddenly, I’m not the activated activist I’ve become over the last 10 months. I’m the little girl trained by the men and women in this room. Anxiety. I know the rules. I grew up in this world. Very white, upper middle class, wealthy, connected to extreme wealth, societal and financial strings intertwined to the point that nobody has ever really stopped to ask if they like their friends or if they are simply expected to be friends so you don’t lose access to financial opportunities or power. You are conditioned to operate in this world the “proper way” and you don’t stop to ask who decides what proper is. It’s in bad taste, after all.

“I can’t be seriously considering yelling for help in this room?” I think sardonically. I know Newsom isn’t going to help and I’m in a room full of the very people I asked for help so many times growing up that I lost my voice and nearly disappeared.

“These people are the very reason you NEVER ask for help,” I think. Here are 1,200 of them. All around me.

In this privileged, white, wealthy world, you can’t scream. You can’t risk drawing attention to yourself in any way that will embarrass or shame your family, especially if it implicates someone from your world. They won’t be cast out, but you will. Sit there, Catie. Look pretty. Be silent. Smile.

I feel that scared little girl, who grew up with these people, looking at me with wide eyes, pleading for me not to do it. Don’t make a scene. Don’t draw attention. I can feel her shaking. She will die if she doesn’t clench her teeth, make herself invisible and go somewhere in her mind nobody can hurt her.

Forget turning in their graves, my grandparents are about to haunt whatever life I have left for making them the social pariahs of the afterlife. Fuck it. These people at the Ebell need to know who they’re fawning over. The women especially.

He’s talking about wearing various masks throughout his life again and about wanting to write a different story. He’s very good. I can tell people are being manipulated into thinking they are having an intimate experience with him. This would be the perfect time to talk about unmasking the ICE agents kidnapping people in our state or about how important it is to stand with the people who sacrifice in the dark so we can succeed.

He writes about his mother in the book. She sounded like an extraordinary woman who loved her son very much. I can’t help but hear the judgement in his voice when he speaks about her. She seemed to want her son to be a man who thinks for himself and not be seduced by money and power. The idea that she and others could love him if he was a regular guy still angers him to this day.

He wrote about his father, whom he clearly idolized, a man who cared more about himself and what he needed. He abandoned Gavin and his sister, and chose to be at the beck and call of billionaire Gordon Getty and his sons. He was happy to be a father figure to the Getty sons but wouldn’t financially support his own kids? Even after all Gavin’s reflection in his book, he still doesn’t admit who his father was. He speaks about his father with reverence and of his mother with judgement. It’s hard to listen to.

He says he wants to write a new story.

I break. You have to risk something to be an ally in this moment and he’s risking nothing. My friends and I are risking our freedom. Our safety. He risked something in the early 2000’s when he married same sex couples as mayor of San Francisco. Where’s that guy? All I see now is a guy who is entertaining Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk’s extreme right white male supremacy talking points, saying there’s no genocide, like we don’t have eyes, and how the democratic party needs to be more culturally normal. Culturally normal to whom, governor?

“Then write a story that helps us!” I yell. I’ve stood up in my seat.

“Please, help us! We need your help!” It won’t be until I watch the footage later that I clock the pleading in my voice. It’s hard to watch, especially when the whole theater begins to boo me. I’m pleading with our governor, Gavin Newsom to help us, help the people being held prisoner inside the California City concentration camp north of LA. He’s smiling and laughing at the situation. I watch him return to his script. I’ve watched his last five book tour talks. It’s the same every night. He’s smiling as I’m being pounced on by security and the privileged white people in the theater that say they are allies to the people being held inside these detention centers, are booing me. They are booing the person asking for help, not the governor, who is smiling and laughing or the Pod Save America guys who look uncomfortable but say nothing.

People will say it “wasn’t the proper time or place.” “He’s on a book tour! What did you expect!?”

I’d expect the governor of the most economically important state in the country not to be on a book tour and recording a podcast when California is in a state of emergency and America just entered a potential world war and Iran’s first target, supposedly, is California?

He’s been too busy promoting himself to hear from constituents about the violence and illegal abuses happening on a daily basis, in violation of orders he has given! As for time and place, The Preppy Handbook never went over the the appropriate time to beg a governor to do his fucking job or how to ask, “Hey, Governor Newsom, why haven’t you acknowledged the CoreCivic ICE facility in California City, which is the largest ICE facility in the state, operating in violation of California state laws and with documented human rights abuses inside? Why not bring what is happening to those people to national attention instead of yourself?”

I feel hands on me, it only took seconds. The pleading changes to the people in the theater, to the people booing me. I need them to understand they are being lied to by this guy they are ready to make President. They are being conned by Gavin Newsom the way that Trump conned MAGA.

To be fair, most of the people in this room will benefit from Newsom becoming president. Things will become less scary for them, and more importantly less uncomfortable. They will believe things have gotten better because they will stop seeing the imagery on TV. But it won’t stop. It’ll just be off camera. They will believe that they did something good for America and for the communities they are “allies” to. It’s the propaganda that is fed to us, our class of white people, so we can “unknowingly” uphold this system of oppression and turn our backs on the communities we ideologically say we support. We risk absolutely nothing in order to do so.

“He’s not perfect but at least he’s not Trump,” is the same logic wealthy Republicans used when they voted for Trump by saying he wasn’t perfect, but at least he wasn’t “HER.” Plus, he was an ally to the poor white, working class American just trying to make ends meet.

Trump was always there to help the wealthy class, and not the poor factory workers, the farmers, or those who are actually powerless. Gavin Newsom is funded by the same people. He was raised around billionaires and has spent his life working his way into their circles. To him, his upbringing of “upper middle class” is “poor” because his baseline was and is billionaires.

They are the same guy. Trump. Newsom. It’s just one Ruling Class team beating a different Ruling Class team. Most of the people in this room will never understand that. They’ll never need to. If Newsom gets elected, the people here will go back to their comfortable lives with a clear conscience, believing that now things are better. But nothing at all has really changed. It’s just a different season of The Hunger Games.

ICE won’t go away or it will be renamed and “fixed.” People will still be rounded up like cattle for profit. Corporations will keep exploiting workers and sending money out of communities, which defunds them, leading to poverty and crime. This will feed the incarceration system which is slavery with legal protection, funded by us so there’s no resources left to build healthy, stable communities. People will be collected and traded between various groups who will all be paid with the tax money collected from the very people they are rounding up, their loved ones and the communities they come from. They will trade us on Wall Street and profit off of our suffering.

I need the people in this theater to know that The No Secret Police Act, the law that states no law enforcement can hide behind a mask and that they must clearly identify themselves is bullshit. It’s a law Newsom is touting as an achievement by signing, but he set it up to fail by changing the bill to exclude the state police. That one line makes the entire law discriminatory and unconstitutional so it was overturned. He knew it would be. Even the judge was perplexed and asked why they would put that exception in, saying they had to know it would lead to the law being overturned.

“THE NO MASK LAW FAILED BECAUSE HE WANTED IT TO FAIL!” I plead for the people to hear, “HE WANTED IT TO FAIL!!” I’m being dragged out of the theater by maybe 8 Secret Service, CHP, and staff who are pulling my arms, shoulders and waist. The moment they pull me down the ramp, out of sight of the crowd, I stop yelling and I put my hands up and say, “Ok, I’ll go. I’m not fighting you.” And I walk silently and calmly down the stairs as several staff on walkies race past me like their hair is on fire up the stairs.Outside, I feel the hot tears begin behind my eyes. I’m trying to breathe as security pushes me from behind telling me I need to leave the area. I turn and look at him and say calmly, “Seriously? What is it you think I’m going to do,” as I turn to show that I am clearly unarmed and not any threat. “I asked him for help. Nobody is here to hurt anyone. I’m not going anywhere. I still have rights.” And I stay, feet planted firmly on the public sidewalk.

A man approaches and asks if I’m okay. I immediately clock him. He followed me as security removed me from the building. He looks at me with deep concern, hoping I’ll let down my guard because “he cares.”

Straight white men have no idea what it’s like to be prey. So many of them have no idea women have been playing dumb this whole time as a way to keep themselves safe from them. We act like we don’t notice them noticing us. Calculating us. Taking us in like data into a computer. I see the calculations. You have your camouflage. I have mine. I play along.

I look at him. “Hi. Yeah, I’m fine. You work for the Governor?” He looks startled, “Oh, no, no.” He points to the theater and says, “I work for them,” implying he works for the theater. It’s a lie. He works for Newsom and I know it. But I have nothing to hide so I allow him his subterfuge fun and every so often while we speak, I drop a little fact about The Ebell Theater, a theater founded by suffragettes, just to see his eyes slightly panic. I don’t bring up the optics of three white men sitting on a stage smiling at or completely ignoring the women yelling for help as they are dragged away by police, in a theater founded by women seeking rights and opportunity. I keep the focus on how Newsom could be helping us but isn’t.

I tell this Newsom staffer I’m not crazy, I’m just scared for the people who don’t look like me. I give him my name and my Instagram. Again, I know he works for the Governor. I have nothing to hide. Later, after he goes inside and gives the entire Newsom staff and security team my Instagram, they all look at it in the theater, in full sight of the people in the crowd. People in the audience tell me about this later.

He comes out and talks to the next person who is removed, our friend Eddy. I approach and ask if he’s still pretending he works for the theater or if he’s admitting he works for the governor. He knows he’s been caught.

“I really didn’t mean to mislead you. That wasn’t my intention.” He says.

“Yes you did and it was.” I reply matter of factly. “And I want to point out that none of us have lied or tried to manipulate any of you. We’ve been very forthright. I even gave you my name and Instagram knowing you work for the Governor. We aren’t the ones lying. How can we trust Newsom with our safety when he won’t even veer off script when a constituent of his yells for help?”

He doesn’t answer.

We tell him about the terror and violence happening in LA with ICE and LAPD, the media blackout when it comes to covering what is really happening in LA and California City. I ask him if he knows who Masuma Khan is. He doesn’t. I shake my head in exasperated disbelief. “You work for the Governor and neither you nor his office knows the name Masuma Khan? That’s a problem. That’s a big problem.”

“There’s no excuse to not know about California City or Masuma Khan’s story,” I say. She’s the first person to ever escape that concentration camp and that happened because of everyday community members, like us, not giving up until she was free. The governor and the AG would not take or return a single call.

A few days later I will be standing next to Masuma, her daughter Riya, Senator Sasha Perez and Congresswoman Judy Chu at a press conference as they announce SB-995, The Masuma Khan Justice Act. It will pass across the governor’s desk this year and either he will sign it, or he will delay it until he can make it someone else’s problem. He’ll finally learn her name, I guess.

Later, after the event lets out, I will have a conversation with two women, one who really wants to engage and understand why we did what we did. I like her. She is excited to meet me and tells me her women’s group sends my Instagram videos around. They think what I’m doing and what I’m saying is important. She’s not sure she agrees with my opinion on Gavin. She admits she doesn’t really know what opinion is, just that I clearly felt the need to interrupt his book talk. He’s “he’s our best shot,” she says.

I see in her someone I believe I can reach. She’s curious and wants to understand the motivations behind tonight. The adrenaline is pumping through my body and now my crashing low blood sugar is releasing more adrenaline. I’m not in any state to clearly articulate the nuances needed to explain the very important moment she and I are in as white women.

She tells me the Democrats and Gavin Newsom are better for women than the Republicans. It’s the safer choice. And what I can’t articulate as my body begins to shake with desperation, what I need to express to this incredibly well intentioned, liberal white woman who wants to help and be an ally, is that this is the thinking that has made so many women of color, and people of color, fear us white women more than white men. Because yes, he is a safer choice. For us. Privileged white women. We will be better off with Gavin in office rather than Trump. But things will not change one bit for the people we say we stand with. Throughout American history, white women choose their own safety and leave behind the women of color who stood with us, marched with us, and bled for us. If we aren’t willing to risk our safety and freedom for theirs, then we aren’t allies, we are using them as props to make ourselves feel better.

I’m asking this group of white women to upend their entire worldview, to shake off everything they’ve been programmed to believe keeps them safe and to see it for what it is, a cage of control operated by the men in power.

It’ll be more than a week before I begin to process this night and interactions like these. My old life and new life colliding in a very public way, where everyone will have an opinion on me, my friends and our actions. Very few, if any, will actually know the truth, my truth, or why. Story of my life.

My mom, whom I have not had a relationship with in over 15 years, will text me that she’s proud of me for standing up to Newsom. She’s inspired by me and all that I’m doing in this moment. She admires me. I don’t know how to process this. She’s celebrating me for the very things she, and my family, would punish me for as a kid. Become the container for their rage, no matter the injustice. I wasn’t allowed to defend myself. I was made to feel ashamed for wanting to show up and defend others. I don’t come from people who show up looking for nothing in return. Everything is conditional and the idea that I could or would. Now I can reflect back and see the projection, those who are too scared to look inwards and make a change in themselves, had to tear down anyone willing to do that work…especially a child.

“Children are to be seen, not heard,” I hear my grandfather say into the night air as I walk to my car.

I’ve never been someone who wanted to be seen, I’ve only ever wanted to be heard. So, please hear me when I say we can do better than Gavin Newsom for 2028. We HAVE to. And if we can’t, well, that’s a problem we can’t blame on MAGA. We need resistance leaders, not politicians.

Please hear me when I say we white women MUST do better in this moment than we have in past moments in history. Please do not abandon the women of color who have fought with us, next to us, for us, only to stand next to the white men, who will take those rights, rights we’ve had for barely a generation, away. We have the power to shift the course of history for the better.

Special thanks to Gabe Dunn for editing

I’ve been trying to figure out how to best take everyone on the ride with us while we Make a Ruckus. The money being donated to this GoFundMe is absolutely changing things on the ground for us and I cannot thank you all enough. We are living in a time where it’s hard to know what innocent expenditure, say to buy pizza for a late night group work session or a plane ticket to a front line, could one day be used against me/someone as supporting domestic terrorism. I’m going to do my best to be as transparent with all of you and let you know how impactful each dollar is, while also trying to protect the people involved who are not doing anything wrong. They are standing up for what’s right for their neighbors. They are standing up to our own government officials who are not conducting the oversight we pay them to to do with our taxes. Every meal bought, every metro card, plane ticket, every reimbursement for printing supplies or being able to cover someone’s cell phone bill or rent can be the difference between whether someone is able to show up to the fight or not. Thank you for being a part of this and for supporting the people on the front lines. There’s more gratitude for each dollar contributed than I can express.

As you are seeing play out on socials, people have been busy holding power to account. To catch you up, in November activists organized a town hall with LA Mayor Karen Bass so the people of LA could have the chance to see and talk to their mayor. There had not been a space or platform for the residents of LA to ask their mayor basic questions about ICE activity and LAPD involvement since the federal government attacked in June. There was a lot of confusion with what was being said on national TV and what people were experiencing on the ground here in LA. We fought for months for a space for the people to have an audience with their mayor and get a chance to see what we deal with on a daily basis when trying to get answers from our local government.

Community activists also lead the charge to get 64-year-old Masuma Khan released from the monstrous California City ICE Facility. This facility is being illegally run by CoreCivic, without any permits, two hours north of LA. The conditions inside are a violation of the international human rights agreement, all of which have been substantiated by AG Rob Bonta and senators Padilla and Schiff.

Masuma Khan was detained under the wrong identity, which the government was fully aware of, and still refused to release her. Activists fought night and day for her release and this led to her being the first person to ever leave this concentration camp, something the guards inside said would never happen.

Masuma’s release led Senator Perez to put forth the Masuma Khan Justice Act (SB 995). This allows state authorities to inspect private detention facilities, which have historically operated with little to no oversight. It imposes fines of up to $25k per day for failing to meet health and safety standards. It also allows for the suspension or revocation of state-issued operating permits for negligent facilities.

For months we’ve been vocal, trying to get media, press, and the community activated and aware of what is happening in California City. For months not a single elected official would even acknowledge its existence. Governor Gavin Newsom has not acknowledged its existence, while having no issue talking about Alligator Alcatraz and camps in other states. He even visited Alligator Alcatraz. We cannot let what is happening in CA happen in the dark. The world needs to know there is a 3k+ capacity concentration camp in the middle of the Mojave desert.

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In January a group traveled to Sacramento to deliver demands to the governor and the State Assembly. We had the very same experience at the State Capitol that we have had here in LA with our city government. We handed our elected officials a list of demands that are within their power to execute and we were told either they would take a look, or they couldn’t do anything. But they can. These are actionable items.

Activists also traveled to the front lines in Minneapolis. It’s important that we show up in moments like this and bring what we have learned in LA over these months to the next cities that the government attacks. In LA we have been dealing with this regime and this terror for 9 months now. We need to show up to share what we know and build upon that. Activists went to Minneapolis, bearing witness to the next phase of this oppression and providing resources on the ground. They can now bring those tools back to LA so we can be prepared for the next wave of ICE activity. It’s vital that we know what we are up against. The media does not show you what the reality is on the ground, how people actually stay safe, keep roofs over their heads and still stand up to this violence.

In January, we coordinated and hosted a general strike rally in LA outside the CNN building with tons of materials to educate people on what a strike is and how it can be effective against the powers at play in America right now. The Trump regime wants violence on the streets but we know the most effective way to hurt them is to cut off the money. We are trying to teach people how to be in community, how to shop local, what the difference can be when you spend a dollar with a vendor who will spend that dollar in that community rather than sending it out of the community, state, and country to corporate coffers.

Some of us flew to Ohio to see what is happening on the ground there. I cannot express how important it was for us to be there in person to witness. ICE will infiltrate communities differently depending on where they are. It won’t always be with tanks rolling down the street and guys waving their guns. This is America now. We are not safe and the government is learning just like we are. They are adjusting. We also have to adjust. Some places will be terrorized like Minneapolis, others you won’t see it coming until it’s too late. We will all wake up one day and the people will already be gone.

I launched this GoFundMe a month ago because I saw a very real need to support the people on the ground doing the day to day work that holds movements like this together. The most meaningful work in this fight is thankless. It’s tedious. It’s unpaid. It means going to city council meetings, sometimes in towns hours away, paying attention to how council votes and why, showing up on the front lines in a city where you don’t know anyone to help organize mutual aid and grocery delivery around neighborhoods. Showing up for one another is something we have to do very carefully now because local and state law enforcement is no longer about holding the people doing bad things accountable, if it ever was. Right now, law enforcement in this country is being used to punish Americans who use their Constitutional Rights and to silence those who remember what standing on American soil grants every person by the constitution. It’s wielded to punish anyone who defends the innocent or asks for due process. People are being punished, sometimes executed, for reminding the government that we have Rights.

Thank you for being in the fight with us. We have so much more work to do.

xo Catie

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Ironically, I’ve only just begun to use my voice in this life and then, of course, my actual speaking voice has completely disappeared.

I look at the sleet and snow covering grey winter fields surrounded by beige nothing. Is this the time to pause and listen? Or is this just “Little Catie” trying to silence me? Is she trying to stop my digging? She shows up whenever I venture too close to the darkest truths. It’s the only way she knows to protect me - block it all out and shut it down. Is this old trauma coming up because I’m looking into things here? Here could be anywhere, but right now it’s Springfield, Ohio.

It’s February 16, 2026 and I am driving down one of the most depressing roads I’ve ever been on while my friend Alex sleeps in the passenger seat.

We are both sick. I feel bad. I was violently coughing until dawn. She didn’t sleep. We flew here because we are worried about what might be about to happen to the Haitian people here, in particular, the children. We aren’t journalists, but, I guess we are this new era’s truth tellers, doing what we can to make sure The People have the truth of what is happening in our country. We cannot rely on traditional journalism or media to tell Americans the truth. This is the reality we live in. It’s one where ICE rounds people up for the police state’s arena.

We’re from LA, which was the first city to be attacked, so we know how this regime controls everything we see and hear. We’ve heard rumblings about Springfield but the only way to be able to get the truth out is to be here to verify. We have to see with our own eyes what is going on. When I talk about life now, it feels like I’m narrating a movie, but the irony is that we’ve just woken up from the American propaganda film they’ve been showing us over and over again. We walked out into the real world to discover the movies we’ve been watching were simulations. Unfortunately, everyone else is still asleep in the theater or glued to the screen.

I go through my phone to see what I was doing February 16, 2025 and all I have from that day is a screenshot of Julianne Moore’s instagram where she’s posted that her children’s book, Freckleface Strawberry, has been placed on the banned books list by the Department of Defense. A few days before that, I’m at The Elysian Theater supporting a couple friends who are singing and doing an interpretive dance to Roxette’s Fading Like a Flower. I remember how anxious I was that night at the thought of potentially running into a former friend. It was the last person I ever thought would abandon me, but it was a lesson I needed to learn. People used to have so much power over me. That version of me no longer exists. She died when Luna died. I thought this version of me from February 2025 was a ghost. Now, as I drive in this forever gray, I’m thinking that she was in a chrysalis. That was a year ago. Everything is different now. I’m awake. This isn’t a movie.

The Elysian Theater has a whole new meaning to me. Elisabeth, who I’ve only known for a matter of months, works next door at DSP Studios. I consider her and her sister Addie family – like the cousins I wish I’d grown up with. DSP is where I was when a vendor was kidnapped not thirty seconds into a podcast pitch with my friend Alex. She sleeps beside me in this car. My sister in this new life. I feel oddly at ease when I’m with her and fiercely protective over her.

Alex and I, both sleep deprived and sick, at Waffle House

I’m not getting paid to be here. Neither is Alex. We used what little money we had, with help from a GoFundMe supported by people who want to help the cause, to get here because we don’t spend money on vacations anymore. We go to the front lines. There’s such a short window to stop what we all can see is being put in place. America isn’t safe anymore but not everyone understands that yet.

Some of us, like me, Alex, the sisters and others on the ground, are living in the shitty dreary red pill world Neo stepped into from the Matrix. Some still bury their heads in the sand and lean into their privilege. But most people have no idea what is happening even on the other side of their own city. Billions of dollars are spent making sure the truth never scrolls past their screen unless they search for it specifically. Even then, the algorithm will lull you back with fan edits and dances and discourse like the Sirens calling to Odysseus.

One part of LA is living in The Last of Us, doing ICE patrols and communicating over Signal about kidnappers on the move. Observers at the ICE detention facility get tear gassed and arrested daily. Neighbors make grocery deliveries around the neighborhood like avoiding zombies. They take precautions to make sure they aren’t followed to where they drop off bags of food, diapers, and soap to people whose names they don’t know. It’s for everyone’s safety.

The other side of town is binging The Kardashians, and posting manipulated images of themselves on social media to feel something. They feel nothing because that picture isn’t them anyway. So they scroll, consuming and molding themselves into whatever the puppet master wants. The Sirens hit those high notes beautifully.

Once, I had dreams of photographing the cover of Vanity Fair or bringing a film project to life. I don’t care about personal goals anymore. I don’t do anything with myself in mind. I work just enough so that I have a safe place to lay my head at night. I spend every other waking second trying to figure out how to help people and how to wake up those that are still asleep.

There’s that movie metaphor again. The character arcs are wild and I’m stunned by my beautiful Island of Misfit Toys who are on the frontlines with me. They use everything they have and put their bodies on the line to fight. I have to stop thinking so LA about it all. Coping mechanism, I guess.

This is the heartland of America. I was born in this state. Barns empty and in disrepair. Closed factories and empty spaces that stand as skeletons of a life that used to be. Dead Norman Rockwell times that were sold to these people as a future that was possible again.

We’ve all been playing each other and the ruling class isn’t even in the game. We haven’t pulled them on the board. Whenever society begins to move towards cooperation and matriarchy, closer to the edge where we might see the gamemasters and spectators, they pull a lever so the people will get distracted. As long as we battle each other, we won’t realize we are both mad at the same thing. The ruling class can never lose.

It’s fine, they tell us, because the stock market is so high it absolves the men named in the Epstein Files and erases what they did to those women and children. The survivors. That’s what the Trump Administration believes. That’s what Pam Bondi implied to the world. In the Epstein files, we see a class of people who play with us on a chess board of geopolitics.

Unfortunately for the Pam Bondis of the world, the weak white women who enable these egomaniacal little boys believe being close to power will save them. It never does. That version of Man you bend the knee to is not evolved or secure enough to ever be able to let you be his equal.

The only thing these narcissistic, stunted men have figured out, that us white women haven’t, is that white women are the source of their power. Everything they have, they have because of us. That means we can take it away.

He has you believing you’re safe because he keeps you safe. Safe from the violent acts he will commit. He will train you to only fear people who don’t look like him or like you, doing those things to you. But when he does them? Well, that’s different.

Who will save you from the very thing you helped create?

My voice stayed just long enough to sit with Alex while she cried on the floor of our hotel room. I’m in awe of her. We are all carrying so much. She’s spending her 20s helping set up front lines in different cities, holding power to account, and feeding the community when she’s home in LA. She should be out building a life. A dream.

This is why my speaking voice has gone. I do need to be quiet and listen and reflect. Yes, Little Catie is here, but she’s using the tools she learned escaping from that basement to help people. She doesn’t feel emotions the way she used to but she’s still reminding me of my humanity.

I was that kid doing everything possible to keep moving and surviving, trying to make it all mean something. I’d try to turn all my pain into something beautiful while also trying to stay a digestible version of myself that the world demanded I be to make them comfortable. I don’t care about making myself digestible to the world around me anymore. All my years of trauma and therapy have shown me that people will always decide who you are based on who they need you to be because of their own fears. There’s absolutely nothing you can do, no perfect digestible version of yourself that you can create, that will change that.

I get to show up to this moment now. I get to be the person I wish I’d had when I was the young person who deserves better. When I was crying on the floor.

*Special thanks to Gabe Dunn for editing.

Dear Charter Commission,

On June 8th, I watched LAPD officers knock an unarmed man, holding nothing but a cardboard sign, out of his prosthetic legs.

The man screamed in pain and tried to drag himself away from police, but officers surrounded him to beat him. Myself and other people protesting the federal government, as our Mayor had instructed us to do, begged these local officers to please stop, and to let us help him. The officers allowed protestors to gather around the man but after about 30 seconds the police began beating and shooting all the protestors who were trying to help safely move this man. This is a practice I’d watch play out repeatedly: officers letting protestors gather around the wounded and then attacking anyone who tried to help. I watched them drag this man, who has nothing below his knees, behind their police line. Four officers pinned him face down on the pavement with their own knees, one of them pinning him by the neck as they put cuffs on him. I thought I was going to watch this man die. The officers began shooting everyone around us with less than lethals - aimed at people, not the ground. I don’t know what happened to this man as we were being shot at with dozens and dozens of rounds.

Later, an officer would fracture my hand with a metal baton when I put it up to defend my skull and to indicate I was unarmed. This was not the National Guard or the Marines. This was local Los Angeles law enforcement.

First and foremost, I would like to apologize to the commission (all except executive director Justin Ramirez) for my outburst at the meeting on December 18th. I apologize not for my passion, but for my language. I’ve never cursed anyone out before. It’s been a very long six months and it shows. Executive director Ramirez, however, seemed bored or amused as I was speaking. I hope you are able to see through my triggered moment to the reason I was standing up there speaking. It was not for myself, but for the people who are so much more at risk than I am.

For the past six months I have shown up every single day, and I do mean every single day - I’ve taken 5 days off since June 8th - to City Council, where I’ve met with nearly every councilperson, Mayor Bass, and members of congress. I’m actively involved in community rapid response and local CDCs and food distribution. I’ve fought to free people from inside of deplorable ICE facilities including Masuma Khan at the illegal California City ICE detention center, the first person to ever leave that place. Masuma is a 67-year-old Bangladeshi mother who was detained under a mistaken identity. The largest detention center in the whole state, by the way, is a place guards told her she would never leave because, “nobody will ever leave this place.” Horrifying.

I say all of this to qualify myself as someone who is doing the work and has earned a few minutes of your time to read this letter in full. I’m typically a quiet person. I care about rules and I care deeply about when the rules are only applied to a specific group. This is why I was there on the 18th, as I have been at other charter meetings, because the rules that apply to us, the public, currently do not apply to the LAPD. That needs to change and you are in a position to help.

I’ve come face to face with our own law enforcement - both LAPD LASD and CHP- every step of the way as I’ve tried to help the people in my community since ICE arrived. I am forever changed because of what I have seen from our local law enforcement’s violent response to this moment. I’m not speaking just about their actions during protests. I’m speaking of their daily response to the residents of LA in the face of ICE occupying and terrorizing our city. The LAPD does not protect us. They protect ICE. This fact should concern every person on this commission.

While other cities are finding ways to stand up and make life difficult for the masked men brutally assaulting and kidnapping people without warrants and denying them basic rights, the LAPD’s presence in any situation isn’t to look out for the safety of the residents, but rather to intimidate and scare people in LA from standing up to ICE or the federal government in the future. Community members have to worry about what LAPD might do to them for showing up to document ICE or peacefully protest. They worry about their physical safety or whether or not they can risk getting arrested. LAPD arrests people on charges the officers know won’t hold up, but they are then able to log "Anti-ICE” protestors into the system where it will live forever. And then when released, people are not given their police reports for up to a month. That’s illegal. It’s been brought up many times and nothing has changed. LAPD are not changing their behavior because they don’t need to. We are scared. You are in a position to help.

This entire year I have watched LAPD break the law on a daily basis without concern. I’ve watched them violate peoples constitutional rights. I watched them let a man die on the road because they said it wasn’t their jurisdiction to help him. They watched protesters direct traffic on the 101 so nobody ran over this man, stayed with him and held his hand as he died, all while more than 20 LAPD officers stood by, holding less than lethal weapons, blocking off an empty street in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center just so nobody could show up to protest. The city of LA paid LAPD to stand guard over an empty street so ICE vans didn’t have to deal with people yelling at them or documenting their actions, and so LAPD ended up letting a man die.

I’ve watched LAPD do all of this while they KNOW they are being filmed. They know they are on camera breaking the law beating unarmed, peaceful residents and they are doing it anyway. We need police reform addressed in our charter. We have no real checks and balances in place.

Lawsuits don’t affect the officer who used excessive force/broke the law or the department. The settlement doesn’t come out of the LAPD budget, but out of the general fund which means it comes out of other programs. Programs that actually have positive impacts in the communities most at risk of crime due to poverty. It’s also we the tax payers paying ourselves reparations for being violated by the police. The LAPD uses the general fund like their own personal piggy bank. If LAPD actually cared about safety, they wouldn’t defund the programs that are proven to make communities safer, provide opportunities, and lead to jobs which help lift communities out of poverty and bring crime down. Be proactive instead of reactive. You can help change this by addressing police reform in the city charter.

I’ve spoken with people at city hall who say there’s nothing they can do about anything in this city because whatever the issue, it comes back to the LAPD. No one seems to have any power when it comes to the LAPD, not even the mayor. Nobody will stand up to them.

Several on the ground activists and myself met with city council staff ahead of No Kings II, to discuss our concern about the public’s safety from the LAPD. We wanted the people of this city to be allowed to protest peacefully and safely but everyone knew the LAPD wasn’t going to allow it, even those in city hall. Their only advice was to either cancel the protest or, “Film them.”

They said, “We know LAPD/LASD are going to hurt you. We know they are going to break the law. Film it and bring a lawsuit.” I looked at these people, stunned, because our local government’s only advice to keep the entire city of LA safe from its own police force was, in fact, not to keep them safe from them, but to suffer trauma and injury at their hands and then later sue.

Which leads me to police brutality bonds.

Police brutality bonds must be illegal. You have the power to do this in the charter. People are making money off of these lawsuits via these bonds. LAPD has only increased their violence – like I said above it’s on film – and somehow they are less concerned than they have ever been about lawsuits. Police brutality has become a business, traded on Wall Street, and the people that are profiting are the same people who don’t want this committee to include police reform in the charter. Stand up for the people, ALL the people of LA, and do the right thing. We currently don’t have a police force that protects the people. You can make additions to create a buffer for that.

I can name 50 incidents off the top of my head of LAPD meeting a peaceful protest or situation (even celebrating the Dodgers’ win, for example) and instigating violence as if they were directed to escalate and create a violent interaction, not diffuse one. Where there would have been no violence, no lawsuit, it seems as if they go out of their way to create one.

I watched officers charge people standing away from them like NFL linebackers. I saw LAPD throw two unarmed women to the ground and beat them mercilessly. I watched three officers beat these girls with metal batons in the head. They were face down on the pavement covering their heads begging for help. I tried to intervene. I told the police I was unarmed, not a threat, I had my hands up, it was clear I was not a threat to them. I begged them to please let me help the girls and an officer looked me in the eyes, never broke eye contact, closed the 8 feet of distance between us and swung his metal baton as hard as he could at my head. This is when I shielded myself with my arm and hand. He only managed to fracture my hand instead of my skull. Then, I watched those girls get dragged behind the police line and beaten. I didn’t sleep for six weeks because I couldn’t get to them and that’s all I saw when I closed my eyes. There was no reason for any of it.

I’ve never seen any organization whose job it is to keep the peace or “control,” do every single thing to accomplish the opposite result – to try and get a crowd to react violently – than I did from our local law enforcement in June, July and August. It wasn’t the National Guard or the Marines, it was LAPD and the Sheriff’s dept.

Since the protests, what I’ve found more concerning is the way the LAPD has approached smaller actions around the city, rapid response groups and anyone who is there trying to stand up to the federal government “the right way.” I watched the LAPD systematically dismantle the 24/7 protest outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. That protest was originally made up of people gathering evidence and documenting what was happening at that building. Nobody tried to break in, cause damage, or break any laws. They just tried to make it uncomfortable for ICE. I watched citizens keep track of the number of vans in and out, license plates, people documented the people they were able to see to try and help connect to their families, protestors communicated with those being held inside via lights and mirrors as families would come by trying to find their loved ones they couldn’t locate.

And then a protester by the name of, Alexandria Augustine, documented what happens in that building in the dead of night, in the early hours around 4 a.m. She captured footage of women and children, fully chained by the arms and legs and in their pajamas, being loaded onto buses, which validated the need for 24/7 documentation of what happens in that building. We realized in the middle of the night buses filled with people came in and out of that place, elderly women and young children, many in bathrobes and pajamas. ICE and DHS didn’t want people to see that. They still don’t. It took Congressman Jimmy Gomez a lawsuit to be able to get inside the MDC just this week in December.

Immediately LAPD was a presence at the MDC daily. The entrances to the MDC were covered with tarps so nobody could see what was happening inside the garage. LAPD would come by and harass the people documenting. It started as intimidation and harassment, then they began showing up saying the protestors were in violation of 42.18 - Nobody was living on site. Nobody was sleeping there, but LAPD said they couldn’t have umbrellas or shades up on the opposite side of the street from the MDC because there is a daycare nearby. Remember it’s summer and 90+ degrees. Every day their reasons for why people being there was illegal changed. They would threaten and follow through on arrests if people didn’t leave.

Every day they would come by and tear down any sort of information center the protestors put together. That is what it was, an information table with know your rights cards, information for families on how to find your loved one abducted by ICE, how to connect to immigrant legal orgs, books, stuff like that. We even set up a voter registration table and that person was arrested by LAPD. They would bring a garbage truck and throw everything into it, including books, water and food, on a regular basis. That was during the day.

In the evening LAPD would show up to hurt people. Again, people are standing outside a building documenting and yelling on public sidewalks, which is their right, and the LAPD would show up looking to fight. If there were 30 protestors LAPD would send 20-30 cars with 2+ officers per car. Every night we would watch these 60+ officers stage nearby, just sitting there for hours waiting until it was show time. That is wasted taxpayer money. That’s $17 million in overtime approved by the city council.

Nothing specific would happen, but usually right after dark LAPD would arrive at the MDC in riot gear and decide protesting is now unlawful and declare unlawful assembly and say people had to leave. Sometimes they skipped the formalities of declaring unlawful assembly, because both sides knew it was BS, and they would just start shooting less than lethals, pepper balls and pepper spray and beating people. Charging at unarmed people fleeing. They attacked and arrested the press repeatedly until members of the press got the message to never come back. It worked. There are hundreds of videos of this all over social media from June to September. Again, they knew they were being filmed and it didn’t matter. Because people are arrested in real time, sent to the hospital or in jail in real time, bankrupted in real time but maybe a suit gets in front of a judge years later. Meanwhile, they’ve helped DHS dismantle any opposition to their presence.

These are people protesting ICE, not LAPD, but our local law enforcement is showing up to back up the actual terrorists who have invaded our city, are kidnapping our family, friends, neighbors, and actually breaking the law. There’s no scenario where the people of Los Angeles are not helping fund the kidnapping of their neighbors and then punishing those who are trying to bring awareness to that because of the LAPD.

These protestors were doing what Mayor Bass asked them to do - showing up for their community, documenting safely and letting the federal government know these ICE raids are not welcome here. When our mayor states repeatedly on national TV that LA is not cooperating with ICE, says ICE is not welcome here and tells communities to stand up, but when they do they are met with an aggressive LAPD not looking to protect them from ICE, but looking to protect ICE from being documented, it feels like the point is actually to imprison anyone who would oppose the federal government on a local level. It feels like a set up to those trying to help their communities. Because communities are showing up and they are being criminalized for it by the LAPD.

The rapid response networks and CDCs around LA are doing the actual jobs our LAPD officers should be doing. Every day our Rapid Response networks track ICE vehicles and license plates so people know who is really an ICE agent/Border Patrol/some other agency and who is an imposter. They make note of the illegal use of a car without a license plate. They show up to the kidnappings to document and take information on those being abducted so their family members know. LAPD is legally required to check if these masked men are agents or not. LAPD never shows up to a raid/kidnapping to check credentials, a warrant, nothing. They don’t even write police reports for the “kidnappings” they are called to because they don’t care who’s being taken. They show up to the scene and without hesitation turn their backs to the unidentified masked men in mismatched clothes to protect them and turn their guns on residents who are doing exactly what the mayor asked of them, even when these masked men point loaded weapons at civilians. We’ve even witnessed LAPD hand over people to ICE. They handed over an American citizen, Andrea Velez, who showed them her Real CA ID. That’s LAPD denying an American citizen her rights and handing her over to kidnappers where she was then detained, illegally, for weeks. All LAPD had to do was tell ICE to fuck off. all they had to do was protect Andrea. Why didn’t they? Why DON’T they?

I’ve seen community CDCs show up and engage with their communities in the way we are told police are supposed to be showing up. They are out there speaking to the community, telling them how to keep safe, what to do in case of emergency. Their presence deters ICE vehicles and they let businesses know when ICE is in the neighborhood. LAPD doesn’t do any of that. Why?

The LAPD spends half the budget of LA and they don’t do the basics of their job. They are bleeding this city dry. Last year their budget was over 3 billion dollars and STILL they took millions from the general fund to use for overtime, hiring, and anything else they wanted. As we look at over $68 million in settlements from unlawful use of force and civil right violations and $155+ million outstanding in settlements against the department from this year alone, also coming out of the general fund, it’s clear they don’t care about the people of this city they are supposedly paid to protect. It’s clear they don’t care about the money being spent on their behavior because it’s not their money.

Please stand up for us, the people of LA. Include police reform in the charter reform.

Thank you,

Catie Laffoon

PS,

To submit a public comment, you can email reformLAcharter@lacity.org - I encourage everyone to do so.

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