Resisting False Narratives
by Lynn Hur
Reprinted from Mennonite Action newsletter where Lynn offers a snapshot of the ICE raids that have shaken Los Angeles the past several weeks.
Our streets ring hollow as our immigrant communities hide in fear. The grocery store next to me is eerily empty and the day job center a block away is totally quiet. As we witness families being torn apart, I can feel my city’s heart also being torn in pieces.
About half of the population in Los Angeles identifies as Hispanic or Latino. The majority of our community here in LA is suddenly shuttered inside or taken away. I know many cities across the United States are witnessing the same thing.
In downtown LA, the epicenter of the protests, it has been overwhelmingly peaceful. The city comes together once again to protect each other, turn up the cumbia and dance, feed one another, to cry out in pain and in joy together. However, these images are scarce in the news cycle. Instead, we see images of violence. It’s important to understand this conflict as incited by state-sanctioned violence: the deportations and unlawful arrests, police brutality and intimidation, all undeniably shaping the events unfolding in Los Angeles.
In many ways, LA is ground zero for a reason. This conflict is not surprising because the patterns of state-sanctioned violence and white supremacy have created fault lines across the city. We know when deeply rooted wounds begin to open, when hidden things begin to surface, when the clashing turns to shaking, and when it’s time for the city to flip tables over.
This is the message of those opposing the ICE raids: No one is illegal on stolen land. You will not take our children, our parents, our elders, our lovers, our neighbors, our friends. And when you do, you will remember us by our resistance.
As a lifelong Angeleno and granddaughter of Korean shop owners during the ‘92 LA Uprising, it is clear that the current administration is trying to fabricate the same narrative today. When Donald Trump Jr. tweets “Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again,” he is referencing the image of Korean men armed with guns, on the rooftops of their shops, protecting their only livelihood as they knew police would not come to protect them. Not only does he use a deeply traumatic event to encourage people to take arms to “protect their city,” but he also knows he is pulling taut existing interracial tensions between people of color in our city. This is where it gets dangerous: conflating the chaos of vulnerable, angry people organizing with the violent conditions the system imposes on the marginalized.
As Mennonites, we may have an aversion to engaging with any movement accused of violence or property damage, as the protestors have been largely painted in LA (despite the peaceful majority). Maybe our initial response is to urge for a more self-restrained reaction to the violence being carried out by our administration. But it is this instinct that disdainfully accuses the cry of the oppressed and echoes the violence of the oppressors. In our commitment to nonviolence, let us be discerning, steadfastly standing with the marginalized and being aware of false narratives.